Not that long ago I took some time off to visit Eastern Europe. I spent one week traveling through Ukraine, a country with beautiful cities, a vibrant culture, and a fascinating history.
Most of the time I spent visiting two of the main cities: Lviv, in the west of the country, and the capital Kiev (Kyiv). As I was traveling alone and had a lot of time, I chose not to plan or schedule my trip. I wanted to experience city exploring in a different way, so I decided to go along with the idea a friend once gave me: I would go on the street and keep following the next person that came across me wearing something red.
I started my trip in Lviv, an ancient city that was a part of various European empires throughout its history. Impressive, rundown buildings, old cars and the characteristic architecture transported me to a bygone era.
The first place my anonymous (local) city guides brought me was the beautiful building of the Faculty of Economy. After that, I was brought to a charming residential district with lovely authentic looking people. I was completely amazed by the captivating magic of the streets in each and every corner of Lviv.
At some point, one of my guides jumped into a bus, so I had to do the same without really knowing where I was being carried to. Catching a bus in Ukraine was definitely an exciting experience. The vehicle was packed, I had hand other people the money for my ticket who would manage to give it to the driver, and I had to shout “Stop!” to exit the bus when I saw someone outside wearing red.
A few days later, I took a train to the capital. Kiev is more populated, modern, and diverse - a metropolis with a very different feeling. It is located along the Dnieper River.
It didn´t take long until I found my first Kiev guide. Walking through some various district and changing guides I reached St. Andrew’s Church, a major baroque church on top of a hill and one of the main landmarks of the city. While most of the churches in Lviv were yellow or brown, this one shone in a striking blue. I entered to get an impression of how an orthodox church looks like from the inside.
After walking through the surrounding historic neighbourhood of Podil, seeing the river port, a remnant from Soviet times, I once again found myself being lead to the public transports. My guide took me to the subway, definitely a must-see in Kiev. Like Moscow, Kiev metro stations used to serve as shelters during war and were dug very, very deep to protect against bombs.
The metro took me to Obolon, a suburb of Kiev. I could see that the standard of living was lower compared to the city centre. People here seemed to live more humbly and buildings looked completely different. I stumbled upon some street markets, saw playgrounds filled with kids and met lovely Olya, an old woman with whom I exchanged a few words using my poor Russian skills.
After some coincidences thanks to my unknown guides, I met local people that brought me to a few bars (I can highly recommend Crafterz) and then took me to a super cool club called River Port. I made this list showing a few other bars that I liked in Kiev. That night I met Ksenia, a woman that shared one of my passions: photography. The next day we met for a photo session in a garage house in the south of the city and had a whole lot of fun!
Thanks to my little experiment, I was able to discover hidden places I would have never found, got a more real impression of the places I visited, met amazing people and did totally unexpected but cool things. All that was thanks to the people in red I decided to follow. I like to think that we Local Guides are in the same role as the people in red but in a conscious way. We should be all over the place, easy to find and able to give anyone the best (secret) recommendations.