I had a holiday in Georgia with my sister, including, of course Tblisi. She had wanted to go to Ukraine as well but in the end we didn’t as her visa (she is a NZ citizen) would have cost too much. We spent a couple of hours in Kyiv airport on the way to Bucharest. This is very normal European junketing these days, with those of us whose youth were spent under the fears of the Cold War in a state of astonishment still that we could take trains across Hungary, do some touristing in the Caucasus, go on a bus trip around Bucharest, which once would have been extremely difficult for ordinary citizens, and only agents in Le Carre novels did that. (Exaggeration – you could get visas and permits – but it was a hassle.)
Visiting grand European cities is an outing for a long weekend. It gives extra horror to a city like Kyiv being under attack, as if we had rolled back to 1941.
As it happened when my sister suggested going to Ukraine, I wasn’t keen as I had just read Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, and I thought the history of this place is so awful, so tragic I don’t really want to tourist around the place, with the Holodomar and the Nazi invasion such recent horrors.
That is extraordinary. Huge demos everywhere – whether it will make a blind bit of difference is something else.
KBPlayer, sort of like the women’s march?
I had a holiday in Georgia with my sister, including, of course Tblisi. She had wanted to go to Ukraine as well but in the end we didn’t as her visa (she is a NZ citizen) would have cost too much. We spent a couple of hours in Kyiv airport on the way to Bucharest. This is very normal European junketing these days, with those of us whose youth were spent under the fears of the Cold War in a state of astonishment still that we could take trains across Hungary, do some touristing in the Caucasus, go on a bus trip around Bucharest, which once would have been extremely difficult for ordinary citizens, and only agents in Le Carre novels did that. (Exaggeration – you could get visas and permits – but it was a hassle.)
Visiting grand European cities is an outing for a long weekend. It gives extra horror to a city like Kyiv being under attack, as if we had rolled back to 1941.
As it happened when my sister suggested going to Ukraine, I wasn’t keen as I had just read Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, and I thought the history of this place is so awful, so tragic I don’t really want to tourist around the place, with the Holodomar and the Nazi invasion such recent horrors.
Here’s a potted history of Kyiv.
https://unherd.com/2022/02/kyiv-will-rise-again/
I’ve done a small feeble thing of emailing my MP to put pressure on the government to relax the rules on refugees.
She’s a Liberal Democrat. Here’s the Lib Dems’ foreign affairs spokesperson’s priorities.
“The Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesperson, Layla Moran, described the queues of people “desperate to get out before it is too late.”
She said LGBTQ+ people, journalists and activists feared persecution from Russian forces.
“We must not turn our backs on the people of Ukraine in their hour of need,” she said.”
Layla Moran identifies as pan sexual. Of course. I suppose LGB and T people will face persecution – I shouldn’t mock that – but cripes.
Bloodlands is a real eye-opener.