Our new hostel was just a block away from our old one so as soon as we booked it online, we booked it over there and dropped off our stuff before heading to the Ukraine Peace Corps office. There we met two volunteers who had been scheduled to come to Turkmenistan in the fall of 2011. They were very interested in hearing what Turkmenistan is like and why their group was canceled. It turns out the entire group that was supposed to go to Turkmenistan was sent to Ukraine. There are well over 400 volunteers in Ukraine. The Ukrainian PCO lounge is smaller than ours but nicer with newer furniture and newer (and twice as many) computers. But their library is piddly compared to ours.
After our chat with the vols we headed to the caves monastery. By the time we got there, the caves had closed, but they are part of a large complex with churches and monks’quarters and other buildings that now house museums, so we saw what we could. This included the Microminiatures Museum that houses such fascinating entries as a dead flea shod with golden horseshoes and a portrait of Ernest Hemingway on half a pear seed.
We had dinner at a cafeteria style restaurant where we could get Ukrainian food for cheap. I had borscht and chicken Kiev (of course) as well as a sausage and vegetable ragout. Outside, on the main historical street, not far from our hostel, we bought lemon-chocolate twist ice cream cones. It was after purchasing her cone that Ilana was pickpocketed. She discovered it just a couple minutes after it happened so we immediately went to our hostel so she could email her parents to cancel her credit cards. This meant that after I exchanged some of my USD, our roles reversed and I was now paying for everything. (This is one of the best reasons to have a travel buddy.)
On Sunday we got up early to go to the caves monastery before it closed. We had to buy headscarves but they were cheap. So, in the caves are the bodies of monks encased in glass coffins. You have to buy a candle to take down
there in order to see anything and of course you can’t take pictures. It’s worth the trip since it’s so cheap (a candle is about 25 cents and you could bring your own headscarf). When we reemerged we wandered this new (to us) area of the complex (it really is very large) and discovered a long row of honey vendors. There were about 50 vendors there, all selling honey, beeswax candles and honey products like mead. I found a seller with a keg of mead that was clearly labeled as such in Russian and took my picture next to it.