ESCKAZ.com have arrived....
Well it feels like a week already but this is probably just because of the night flight, landing at 4.10 a.m., not getting into the hotel room until around 7 a.m. and then sleeping for about 3.278 seconds due to the excitement of it all. This is due course has led to needing an afternoon lie-down before heading out this evening
But before all that we did spend some time today thinking about those that are following after us and list some useful information for you here;
Getting from the airport.
We cheated and took a cab. A nice one too. All of €30 but being met in arrivals, and sort of chauffeur driven to you hotel at 4.45 in the morning, with blacked out windows made us feel like proper Eastern Oligarchs. For about 29 seconds.
There are other ways of getting from the airport and Andy Mikheev’s extensive coverage on http://esckaz.com/2017/event.htm should give you all the information that you need to find at least some way of getting from the airport into town
The Weather
Amazing so far - bring shorts and t-shirts and don’t blame us if you get sunburnt
The Service with a Smile
Those of you who came in 2005 will remember this as one of the highlights of that time, it has not changed, but I will say that so many more people speak English now, maybe a legacy of the football in 2012. Another legacy of the football here is a stunning new airport. Forgot to mention that above.
The Area around the Arena
Well it’s not the prettiest place in Kyiv if we are being honest. There is construction work all around and very busy main highways running past it, which made for a very dusty and smelly experience to say the least. But once you got past that and down to where the arena is the traffic noise seems to abate a bit and it was quite a pleasant little area…..but think more Copenhagen Dockyard rather than Vienna City Scape.
The real issue though today, was the accreditation drama. Now I know some of you reading this will not have accreditation but it may well reflect on other organisational issues, such as passes to Euroclub. Anyway the upshot of today was that “No one knows when you may be able to collect accreditation - it maybe 30th April or even 1st May - Sorry” You can imagine our response to that. We will try again tomorrow but as they searched for us on the system and could not even find us there we do not hold out much hope of there not being a huge drama over it tomorrow. When most people will be trying to collect accreditations.
Anyway for a quick look around our local area for the next 16 days or so click the link video;
And some photos are here
Getting around
Well we tried both walking and metro today, and while the metro was super easy to take in the end, it was super busy and as we only really have to do one stop to get to the arena, I guess we will be walking most days to the IEC and back.
If you are wondering how to ride the metro as far as I can tell it works like this. Put 20 UAH note in boxes on the wall, get 5 tokens back and use one token per journey. Simples. But I guess it’s more complicated than that in the end. Still we managed to do it and with only sub-Moscow-Metro levels of stress
However the area around the Metro stop serving the arena needs some thought. It’s an exceptionally busy junction and not easy to locate the Arena area as you leave the station, but basically, come out of the station, turn right, down to the road, turn left and cross at first junction, the double back on yourself, go under the bridge, turn left and follow the road until you come to the arena. A short video clip is here; but also to add people will be using the McDonalds metro entrance only till 5 May - on that day the other entrance opens back after reconstruction near Turist hotel
So anyway Welcome to Kyiv and enjoy your stay - we will - even if we sense a 2005 vibe all over again :-)