I'll balance it out with a little bit about one of the few ugly things I saw in Kiev. One of my friends that went with us has a penchant for staying in hostels everywhere he goes. He's stayed in them all over Europe. The times he and I have gone places, he has tried to talk me into staying in one. I've managed to avoid that so far. He managed to talk one of our friends into doing it with him this time though, and they were determined that the hostel was going to be just as good as the place we had found. They were very wrong. The place was so bad, the group decided we wouldn't let them stay there. We were a little worried they'd wake up in a tub of ice without kidneys in the morning.
The fact that there were no signs out front was the first indicator something was wrong. The other was that it was on the sixth floor in one of those soviet style apartment blocks. The 'hostel' turned out to be a 3 bedroom apartment run by a Ukrainian couple. The only indication it wasn't just another apartment was the business card sized plastic plaque declaring Apartment 18 to be the Jazz Hostel. The lady certainly seemed nice enough, but the smell of burnt onions and something vaguely resembling eggs was not a good sign. We all sat out in the hallway laughing and taking pictures while the two went inside to negotiate getting out of their booking. My friend subsequently received an email from the hostel company informing him that he was now blacklisted from ALL of their hostel facilities in the Ukraine for cancelling on them. I guess they must have apartment 17 also.
Fortunately they were able to get out of it, and we all went on and checked into what turned out to a much nicer hotel than even we were expecting right off of Independence Square with a great view.
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