This is a complete list of the 10 best and 10 worst things about Kyiv from Kyiv Post staff members.
To make your own list of 10 best/10 worst things, e-mail [email protected] and please put “Best & Worst of Kyiv” in the subject line.
We will publish excerpts.
ALEXANDRA ROMANOVSKAYA, staff writer
BEST
1. Home.
2. Feeding ducks in Golosiyivsky Park.
3. Podil.
4. Lots of trees in old districts.
5. The open lookouts.
6. Kyiv at night.
7. Many small things you are usually unconscious of. For example, small birds sitting on the ledges above the Kamera photo gallery or the plaque saying the Kyiv Post above the arch on 22B Prorizna St.
8. Sitting at The Dnipro River pier.
9. Always meeting people you know in unexpected places.
10. Architectural landmarks from the 18-19th centuries.
WORST
1. The subway where you often get shoved around or yelled at by someone ignorant. I usually come out of it with dirty footprints on my shoes.
2. City outskirts with Soviet housing blocks that smell of cats’ urine and have syringes and needles scattered on the floor. Using an elevator in those buildings is a nightmare.
3. Men (and women) with beer in public transport any time of the day: be it 10 a.m. or 8 p.m.
4. Bad roads and traffic jams.
5. The homeless at Kontraktova Square.
6. Garbage on the streets.
7. Mean and rude marshrutka drivers.
8. People not cleaning after their dogs on the streets
9. Crazy drivers.
10.Constant reconstructions.
ALEXEY BONDAREV, editor
BEST
1. Women.
2. Old downtown.
3. The Dnipro River.
4. Parks in the city and forests around it.
5. The city view at night.
6. Trams.
7. Intellectual youth gathering to sing and talk in subways in the evening.
8. Podil.
9. Petrovka book market.
10. Women again.
WORST
1. It’s dirty.
2. Roads and traffic jams.
3. Stupid and aggressive policemen.
4. Reconstruction works everywhere and ugly new buildings.
5. Many homeless people.
6. Many heavy drinkers.
7. Nouveau-riche Ukrainians who park their Lexus cars everywhere they want. Their wives with miniature terriers who drive and talk on mobile phones at the same time.
8. Smoking is allowed almost everywhere.
9. Many shops don’t accept credit cards
10. A lack of affordable restaurants with good food.
BRIAN BONNER, chief editor
BEST
1. Women (what else for heterosexual men? C’mon! ) The Beatles had it right.
2. Kyiv Post
3. The ancient soul – I feel the spirits of ancestors who walked the streets. True story.
4. Public transportation – I think it’s great not to have a car!
5. The view of the Dnipro River from the River Voksal café.
6. St. Volodymyr Cathedral – a good place to re-charge your soul.
7. No rules – the feeling I had as a kid when my parents left the house.
8. Cheap beer that you can drink on the street despite rules against it. See No. 7 about no rules.
9. Street markets, cafes and kiosks – we don’t have so many of those in Minnesota.
10. Ploscha Peremohy (Victory Square) with its the wide-open square, the memorial, Ukraina mall, coming and going of people.
WORST
1. The feeling I could get beaten up or murdered in front of witnesses, and nobody would care. Police wouldn’t investigate!
2. Drivers in general – I feel I could get run over and nobody would care and police wouldn’t investigate!
3. Garbage.
4. Smoking.
5. Feeling of abandonment – letting beautiful buildings rot.
6. Police officers – not as obnoxious as Leonid Kuchma era, but still generally not there to help you.
7. Bad service.
8. Bad manners.
9. Simple transactions take longer than needed in stores and so forth.
10. Taxi drivers who hear my accent and think I’m so stupid as to pay the outrageous rate they have just quoted me.
ELENA ZAGREBINA, staff writer
BEST
1. Chestnut trees, especially in mid-May.
2. Trams. There’s even one coffee tram and one tram that can take you outside the city to Puscha-Vodytsa.
3. Unknown to many landmarks like ravens on Reiterska St, funny monuments, interesting frescos, etc.
4. Stone pavements.
5. Andriyvsky Spusk – I love all that hand-made stuff and paintings.
6. Bridges.
7. Kyiv night lights.
8. Beautiful playgrounds for children.
9. Small flower and vegetable patches near high-rises.
10. Roofs
WORST
1. Street and house signs are missing in many places
2. A lack of garbage bins.
3. Waiting lines.
4. I hate the tasteless architectural mix at Independence Square.
5. Advertising everywhere
6. Underpasses– dark and stinking.
7. Air conditioners and satellite TV dishes on the sides of old buildings.
8. Homeless people and dogs.
9. Babushkas selling cigarettes and sunflower seeds everywhere.
10. General ignorance. You have to watch out when walking under balconies because a cigarette butt or a beer bottle may land on your head. Also, many older women like gossiping in a very loud manner in public transport and on the streets. .
JAMES MARSON, editor
BEST
1. Kyiv Post.
2. Summer evenings when everyone has left to dachas and the streets are quiet.
3. Arriving back from Moscow or Minsk and feeling relief at coming back to a (relatively) free country.
4. People’s ingenuity at circumventing the suffocating bureaucracy.
5. Outlaw spirit in attitude to the state and its officials.
6. Khreshchatyk on weekends.
7. The funicular, as it sums up the whole experience of being in Ukraine: kinda creaky, kinda Soviet, feels like it could break loose and go hurtling off at any point.
8. Street cafes.
9. Small enough to walk around the center; big enough to be interesting.
10. Parks in summer.
WORST
1. Paid-for articles in newspapers are not journalism, and are as useless as PR.
2. People not saying thanks when I hold the door for them.
3. People not saying hello back when I say hello to them.
4. Shop assistants asking me to find Hr 2.28 because they are too lazy to work out the change.
5. Ice on the streets in winter.
6. Holes in the roads and sidewalks.
7. General “khamstvo” of people in many situations, from government down to a man on the street – pushing in queues, sexism, being rude.
8. Road closures so the gods of government can get to work fast.
9. Collapsing old buildings or their destruction for profit to be replaced by new eyesores.
10. The terrible transport links from the airport.
KATERYNA PANOVA, staff writer
BEST
1. Cozy bars and restaurants with good food
2. Polite men opening doors for you
3. Cheap museums and opera
4. Green parks and beautiful ancient churches
5. Well-dressed people. Girls wearing spike heels and short skirts even while walking in a snowstorm.
6. Vivid nightlife. You can not only club or go pub crawling, but may also go to the movies, gym or do your grocery shopping at night.
7. Open-air festivals like Krayina Mriy.
8. Andriyvskiy Spusk with all the galleries, artists and musicians.
9. Some services come really cheap – electricity, water, hairdressers, plumbers, etc. You can also get cheap DVDs and books.
10. You can easily make good friends.
WORST
1. People not respecting your personal space. Once a man stood very close to me in the subway crowd and kept holding my hand (obviously afraid of falling down) without even asking my permission.
2. Beautiful 19th century buildings in the state of collapse and waiting to be replaced by ugly office centers.
3. People dressed in black and gray in autumn and winter, probably to match pallid streets and trees.
4. Illicit dealers and corrupt cashiers making it hard to get tickets not only to a theater opening night but even to a simple circus show.
5. Taxi drivers charging triple prices in Boryspil airport.
6. Expensive clothes and shoe shopping.
7. The streets are either slippery or covered with garbage.
8. Waiters and shop attendants with so much sorrow on their faces.
9. Traffic jams on the bridges across the Dnipro River. City authorities don’t quite get it yet that four bridges are not quite enough for the three-million-people city.
10. Scary bands of stray dogs.
MARIA SHAMOTA, staff writer
BEST
1. Docker Pub, especially rock concerts there.
2. Historical center with Goncharka and Andriyivsky areas.
3. Parks in autumn.
4. The Dnipro River slopes are great for climbing and drinking wine.
5. Kyiv during summer nights.
6. Friends.
7. Drinking coffee in the morning in the center of Kyiv.
8. Reading books in public transport and in cafes.
9. Night taxi.
WORST
1. Heat and frost.
2. City maintenance services.
3. Bad roads.
4. Bureaucracy. Everywhere.
5. Traffic jams, especially when the president or the prime minister go to work.
6. A future air field for helicopters near Peyzazhna alley.
7. Bad service.
8. Crowded streets.
9. Beggars – they make me feel ashamed for my city.
10. Outskirts, like DVRZ or Lesnaya.
NATALIIA PROTASOVA, subscription manager
BEST
1. Green parks.
2. Cafes with summer terraces.
3. Kyiv traditional biscuit cake.
4. Architecture.
5. Botanical gardens on the Dnipro River.
6. Kyiv night life.
7. Good-looking Ukrainians.
8. Winding streets.
9. Flea markets.
10. Fruit and berries sold all over Kyiv in summer – you can even buy them in subway.
WORST
1. Kyiv underground.
2. Stray dogs.
3. Homeless people.
4. Freaks on Kreschatyk.
5. Drunk people on a Friday night.
6. Foreigners that think they can pay any girl to have sex with them.
7. Traffic jams.
8. Hot water disruptions in summer.
9. Expensive shopping.
10. Boryspil Airport.
NATALIYA HORBAN, staff writer
BEST
1. Beautiful narrow streets in the old part of Kyiv.
2. Trees everywhere.
3. Weather – we are lucky to have all four seasons.
4. Supermarkets stay open late or even throughout the night.
5. The pedestrian bridge across the Dnipro River.
6. Park Peyzazhna Alley.
7. St. Andrew’s church.
8. Botanical gardens in Pechersk district.
9. Many beautiful subway stations.
10.Cheap and easy-to-navigate subway.
WORST
1. Rude and arrogant people.
2. Ugly men.
3. Women sometimes looking like prostitutes.
4. Spit and gum on the ground.
5. Sex tourists.
6. Low tolerance for people who are different.
7. Soviet relics in the middle of the capital.
8. No facilities for disabled people.
9. Street vendors near subway that block sidewalks and create jams.
10. Men who don’t mind peeing in public whether it’s day or night.
OKSANA GRYTSENKO, staff writer
BEST
1. Ancient churches. This city is a real spiritual center of Ukraine.
2. Lots of parks, especially abandoned, like Trukhaniv Island or Park of Friendship of Nations that make you feel close to nature even in the city center.
3. Podil – rich and poor at the same time.
4. Andriyivsky slope and hills surrounding it – the most beautiful part of the city.
5. Lots of young people – this makes the city more modern than the rest of Ukraine.
6. Public transport, especially metro. It is cheap and convenient in comparison to other countries.
7. Cheap and tasty Ukrainian fast food.
8. Music on the streets.
9. Ethnic festivals, like Skrypka’s “Krayina Mriy” (The Country of Dreams).
10. 24-hour open supermarkets.
WORST
1. Dirt and rubbish.
2. Poverty.
3. Luxury cars all over the city center in the country, where most of people live under the poverty line.
4. Historic buildings in disrepair and tasteless business centers constructed in their place.
5. Homeless dogs – the danger they pose and the way people treat them.
6. Rude and unhelpful police officers.
7. Rudeness in public transport.
8. Consumerism.
9. Smoking in the queues.
10. No smiling.
MARK RACHKEVYCH, staff writer
BEST
1. Flowers; they’re everywhere. It’s a gift-giving culture and flower shops are abundantly available.
2. Femininity; the women aren’t afraid to be themselves. They can still compete with men yet retain their feminine allure.
3. Public transportation runs on time and frequently – very reliable.
4. Fresh, mostly organic food.
5. Excellent and modern dental services.
6. Vibrant art and music scene; Kyivans have an excellent sense of aesthetics.
7. Historic architectural heritage.
WORST
1. Always be on the lookout for cars. They drive on sidewalks, blow red lights and stop signs and even drive on pedestrian-only walkways.
2. Customer service; the customer is usually wrong, starting from not providing exact change to cashiers to being ignored by food servers once they take the order.
3. Cell phone etiquette and common courtesy is absent; people talk on their phones in movie theaters, at the ballet, during conferences/seminars; never excuse themselves for stepping on your feet or rudely brushing you aside when walking.
OLESIA OLESHKO, staff writer
BEST
1. Historic downtown – Andriyivsky, St. Sophia and St. Michael squares.
2. Central part of Podil district. My high school is located there so it reminds me of lots of fun and crazy things we all have done in our teens.
3. Hanging out with international community, parties.
4. Coffee shops with tables outside in summer.
5. Organic food.
6. Living close to the downtown – I can walk to work.
7. Affordable health and beauty care (you just have to know the right places.)
8. Metro – you can get to any part of the town bypassing traffic jams.
9. Sushi restaurants that work 24/7 – miso soup tastes great at 6 a.m.
10. Petrivka book market, stalls with second hand books in particular as you can find great books there for little money.
WORST
1. Feeling of being unsafe and unprotected; I and some of my friends have been robbed or had their car stolen. The police didn’t even investigate those cases.
2. Intolerance towards foreigners, essentially racism.
3. Overwhelming bureaucracy – it’s EVERYWHERE: Shevchenkovsky district tax office is the worst of them all.
4. Hardly any service in the banks. Why does it always take me an hour to wire money? Even some of the biggest Ukrainian banks do not have on-line banking, and those that have it can turn you off with a lousy customer support.
5. Cruel treatment of stray animals – people prefer to have them killed
6. People always seem to be in a bad mood. Nobody smiles. 7. Crazy drivers. You never know if you make it to the other side of the street alive.
8. Trash, ice, and dirty snow that no one cleans in winter.
9. Lack of affordable Chinese/Mexican/Thai eateries.
10. Boryspil airport taxi mafia.
PETER BYRNE, staff writer
BEST
1. Vydubychi Monastery and the botanical gardens.
2. Petrivka book market where you can buy any book in any language, pick-up pirated software and movies before they are released.
3. Old Kyiv on the right bank along Reytarska Street, Volodymyrsky Park next to the Foreign Ministry and St. Sophia Square, from Park Slava, Spivoche Pole to the World War II eternal flame.
4. A little Georgian restaurant near Bulvar Vatutina. Won’t give the name, because too many people would spoil it.
5. The boardwalk along the Dnipro River in Obolonsky district.
6. Maryinskiy Park.
WORST
1. Garbage collection system sucks.
2. Roaming packs of very hungry, sick dogs at 5:30 a.m.
3. Traffic jams.
4. Independence Square post-renovation.
5. The zoo.
YULIYA POPOVA, lifestyle editor
BEST
1. Architecture, historical face of Kyiv. To be more precise: House with Chimeras, St Andrew’s Descent, Khreshatyk, Yaroslaviv Val, Prorizna.
2. Beautiful metro stations.
3. The Dnipro River that cuts the city in half.
4. Chestnut trees and fruit trees in residential quarters that you can pick in summer without anyone yelling at you.
5. Hills.
6. Old-fashioned stone pavements.
7. Women wearing heels whatever the weather.
8. Street markets – I never buy anything there, but they remind me of my childhood.
9. Pirogovo open-air museum.
10. Syrniki (cottage cheese cakes) everywhere: from pricey restaurants to fast food chains.
WORST
1. Verkhovna Rada.
2. Fat policemen on the streets that take bribes and never protect you.
3. Men with bad hygiene and looks whatever the weather.
4. The Hyatt on the beautiful St Sophia Square.
5. Potholes.
6. Soviet architecture on the outskirts.
7. People that never smile and wear black clothes.
8. Lack of affordable restaurants with good food and service.
9. No quality bars with live music.
10. Smoking everywhere.
SVITLANA TUCHYNSKA, staff writer
BEST
1. Atmosphere of old streets and old buildings downtown.
2. The beautiful Dnipro River and its many islands.
3. A lot of parks and forests around the city.
4. Some people are educated and have interesting hobbies.
5. Many women are beautiful and some of them are quite intelligent at the same time.
6. Books: they are cheap and good.
7. Food markets, villagers selling organic food.
8. Arrival of low-cost airlines.
9. More people from more countries come to live, work, study or just visit.
10. Many supermarkets are open 24/7.
WORST
1. Dirty. People litter everywhere.
2. Expensive: clothes, cars and apartments.
3. Food in restaurants and cafes is bad and expensive.
4. Service is horrible everywhere.
5. Nobody smiles.
6. Everyone is wearing dark clothes, especially in winter.
7. Horrible public transport.
8. No space for bicycles.
9. Most of buildings, especially in residential districts, are grey and depressing.
10. Many people are narrow-minded, don’t know languages, and are ignorant of other cultures.
YULIYA PANCHUK, marketing and communications manager
BEST
1. Green city.
2. For locals, no matter where they go, it’s always a pleasure to return home.
3. The city’s growing: construction of new homes, business centers, entertainment centers, new supermarkets, bridges, roads, new metro stations.
4. Euro 2012.
5. Kyiv is taking steps to become a European city.
6. Mariyinsky Park.
7. The streets in the center, excluding Kreshchatyk. Among my favorites: Lypky, Golden Gate, Andriyivsky Spusk, Podil.
8. The smell of spring blossoms and chestnuts.
9. Ice cream “Lakomka”
10. Tsarskoe Selo district.
WORST:
1. Gray-looking and unsmiling people on the streets.
2. Rudeness.
3. Kyiv city transport – too crammed.
4. Bureaucracy and “Soviet-style” thinking in government.
5. Call-centers and banks.
6. Mud and slush – winter in general.
7. Attitude of foreign embassies towards Ukrainians.
YURIY ONYSHKIV, staff writer
BEST
1. Nice parks in summertime. Dnipro River embankment.
2. Podil area.
3. Nice indoor skating rinks.
4. Ukrainian fast food chains.
5. Street markets for groceries.
6. Getting somewhere by subway.
7. Museums.
8. Shopping malls.
9. Funicular.
WORST
1. Bad weather at the end of fall and in beginning of spring.
2. Cars driving and parking on the sidewalks.
3. People drinking beer near kiosks in the morning.
4. People littering.
5. Hot water turn-offs in summer time.
6. Rude “marshrutka” drivers – at peak hours it’s hard to get on and get off a minibus.
7. People discussing their personal life on cell phones in public transportation.
8. Awful service.
9. Real estate agents – most of them do not do much, but always want to get a lot.
10. High prices.
See also: Best of Kyiv 2010
See also: “What we love and don’t love about Kyiv.”
