Thursday, continued

I spent about 7 hours just wandering through Sofia, poking into little shops and spending a bit of time in art museums. The national gallery had an exhibit of a famous Bulgarian painter whose work I didn't like very much--lots of idealized peasant women. He did have one short period in the 1920's when he traveled to Sicily and Istanbul and got away from home. The paintings he did during that brief period were interesting.

 "Syracuse"; painting by Vladimir Dimitrov-Maystora

My flight to NYC had an 18 hour layover in Kiev so I hustled in to a downtown hostel to spend the night.

Kiev from my hostel

Even in this brief visit it's clear that Kiev is a whole other ballgame. It's massively larger than anyplace I've been except maybe Tirana. One of the first things I saw were two guys getting ready to duke it out in front of the train station. Behind them were a row of guys selling beer out of the back of their pickup trucks. Kiev is the wild, wild West. Tolstoy Square, just down the block from the hostel, was packed with kids drinking and smoking and generally carousing.

I'm off to New York in about 30 minutes.