Gadling

Hi Raul,

Thanks for reading. Don't know what to say as to the surly shopkeepers; perhaps I did have a run of bad luck, by I stand by it as, if nothing else, simply my experience. I would, however, stake some money that if you plink 10 people down in Kiev, a few will encounter some. Anyway, the main point I was making is to give equal weight to the flip side of a place. Reading the AP article, people turning up in Kiev are likely to say 'huh'? Did I take it too far in the other direction? Perhaps - again, I can only write about my own experience there, and you can tell that I had to ultimately pick between a positive or negative impression of the place, I'd choose negative. But that doesn't mean it's not an interesting place, as I say.

Actually, it's Kiev, not Kyiv, in English. For some reason, we've taken to calling the city by its Russian name (Kiev) rather than its Ukrainian one (Kyiv). You'll notice the habit of English-speaking media habit of calling places by their English names. So, in newspaper datelines it's always Cologne, not Koeln, Prague, not Praha (in Czech) or Prag (in German), Kiev, not Kyiv, etc.

Take care!