Kiev

I arrived in Kiev at 7 am, and my plan was to find a hostel first. I had checked some places from internet in advance. The thing is, for some reason they seem to hide their hostels here as well as they can. Basically you have to know the exact address to the place you're going, then find some small door form the scariest and darkest corner from the backyard. After finding the supposedly right door, try to get inside the corridor, when starts the obstacle course where you try to avoid stepping on the passed out people lying around the stairs (true story). Don't excpect to find any numbers from the doors because that would be just too easy. So in the first hostel after finding it no-on came to open (tried to get in at 7.30 and 10 am..) the door, the second hostel offered me a dorm for 40 euros and the third one I couldn't even find. At this point I decided to quit. So back to the railway station to meet Mariusz, and next missions to get some food, train tickets and place to store the luggages. When we finally succeeded to leave the railway station, I noticed that I had spent the first nine hours in Kiev looking for a hostel (but not finding one) and in the rw-station. Cool.



Luckily now was the time to head for the Fan Zone! Huge area full of football fans having fun. I was actually a bit surprised how well everyone acted, there was no problems at all. Even the British fans just kept singing and having fun. So when entering the stadium, the atmosphere was already very good, and to see the game itself live at the stadium was awesome! Even though most of the spectators were Ukrainians, there were enough supporters for England and Italy to keep the atmosphere up. Almost the only disappointment was the result of the game: Italy won after penalty shootout.

We slept the night in railway station in a waiting area which had leather chairs and sofas. Unfortunetaly we weren't the only ones to get the same idea, so it was packed.of people trying to get sleep. In a sitting position it's a big challenge. During the night most of the people left, so we finally had space to lie down in the morning, but for some reason the steward kept waking everyone up whenever they looked like they might actually get some sleep. I guess the idea was not to courage people to use it as a ”hostel” as we did... or the steward was just a very mean person. Last day in Kiev we were joined by Manuel from Germany, who spent the game night with us in Lviv also. Again quite a lazy day, we took a small walking tour, otherwise just walked around and enjoyed the sun.