I'm sorry for slowing down, +2kg from Grandma's Varenyky.

I originally intended to write a blog post for every day, usually on the day or the day after. Sometimes things got pretty busy and I just didn't have the motivation or energy at the end of the day to deal with it.

Sometimes I was just really lazy and didn't want to.

Productivity really takes a backseat when you aren't shoving lisdexamphetamine down your throat every day. But I'm on holiday, so forgive me for wanting a little rest to myself

I'm going to give you a three in one

The last three days were exciting but mildly. They were not busy at all, if anything, quite slow.

It was a nice change of pace, and the reason I slowed down wasn't because of what happened in my last blog. Usually when we near the end of trips to Ukraine we run out of things to do (or more accurately, things to eat).

Then every time we get home we complain we should've ate more, because the food in the UK is so shit.

Itadakimasuuuu~

Before we arrived in Ukraine we had a list of places we wanted to go to eat. Not to sight-see, not to bask in history or current events. Just to eat, because we are fat (and the Russians bombed the Chornobyl museum I wanted to go to).

The day started with buying some pastries for Alice. She was still recovering from her piercing which was getting pretty irritated. She should try rest as much as possible. I went on a walk to Fora to get some Mushroom Rollini pastries.

I got a Mushroom Rollini and a Пиріжок - or Pirizhok. Which is like a filled bun that is fried. The filling in this case was potato.

Delicious as usual, and my wife's favourite filling.

I have so many images of cool shit in the stores but I don't want my western readers to feel too ashamed of the corporate slopcircus we call supermarkets.

So why did I say Itadakimasuuuuu~?

Because we went to a very expensive, very fancy, and very traditional Japanese restaraunt.

Wait let me look closer too.

Anyway, then the food and drinks came. Alice ordered some sushi, while I indulged a little and ate meat (sorry).

The food was, as expected, amazing. However, the prices reflected that. We ended up paying around £70 or 4,151 Hryvnia. This is a lot of money for a single meal, and I think that is why the entire place was empty apart from us.

And god damn did that make it awkward. We were served by a lovely lady (well, girl, she can't have been much older than 19 or 20), and every time she came into the tatami room we went silent and painfully waited for her job to be over. We gave her a tip of a few hundred hryvnia because I just felt awful, but then I felt awful over giving the tip because a few hundred hryvnia is nothing in £.

Hey, they even had a Japanese pisser. I didn't use it for fear of liking it too much. Do you know these things are illegal in the UK? Yep. You need a Category 5 Backflow prevention device. That means that just hooking it up to a regular pipe is terrible, and even having 2 backflow prevention valves doesn't cut it. You essentially need an entire seperate tank of water dedicated only to the bidet.

So how do they handle it in Japan and other countries? Well, they definitely don't have a tank. But also, they don't drink the water from the tap. I don't think you could pry the lovely taste of Scottish tap water from my cold dead hands, so I think we shall pass on the bidets.

Something blue, and something new

This day was not necessarily eventful, but when I think about it we actually did quite a lot of stuff, I just didn't take many pictures.

Soe first of all, I let my manager know I was safe (I forgot to let them know after the attack). How lame that I keep work in the back of my mind, even when there are things requiring a bit more of my attention in the present moment.

Anyway, first thing we did besides that is go to the mall to pick up Alice's documents. She used the opportunity while we were in Kyiv to refresh her internal passport.

Yeah you heard me right: Internal passport.

An aside, please don't read if you are into conspiracies.

In Ukraine and most other post Soviet countries, you have two kinds of passport. One is a 'domestic' passport in the form of an ID card, kinda just like a regular ID document. It is used for ID verification and other kinda stuff, I think?

Then you have the "international" passport. Which for the rest of us in the west, is just simply a passport. In a little blue book and looks like the rest of ours, with a photo ID card page.

For the longest time I have no idea why there are two different kinds of passport, but I could understand it in the Soviet Union when you had lots of different republics so needed an internal ID to go between republic, and an international passport to go to another country.

However, even then, why not just simplify it with one ID document? Put the republic or local place on the international one... though I guess it had to be standardized to international norms.

In Ukraine they are supposed to be just identity cards and not internal passports. However, they are still called internal passports because the name sticks.

Back to the mall

My parents in law were really scared of me driving in Kyiv. They thought I was a coddled little westerner and would instantly crash. When looking at the population statistics and vehicle death rate (sorry), Kyiv is on the same level of Italy. However, if I said that to my parents they would say the statistics are made up and the Italians are much safer.

I think a lot of the casualties have to do with the fact everyone drives so aggressive here. Literally like sharks. I can't drive in my British polite way letting people in or trying to fit in and be considerate because people will take advantage which then would lead to an accident. I have to claim my space and drive like I know where I am going.

Which I absolutely do not, because the car didn't have Apple Carplay so I was driving with my phone in like a weird holder shoved in the center bit of the car. So had to look down every so often.

I used "Getmancar" because the car rental people would fuck me off and just ignore me for days and then wanted absurd prices. I just wanted to drive my fam to the mall.

Wait speaking of phones, that is another reason the death rate is probably so high - Ukrainian drivers cannot keep their eyes off their fucking phones. Every time I would be driving and checking my mirrors responsibly I would see an idiot on their phone and have to create space. Having a pocket of space helps a lot here, but then people will just try to take advantage of it, or get angry at you for creating one.

For example, if you try to create a pocket by not driving next to a bus or truck turning, you will get honked and its just like "honestly whatever i am saving our lives".

The car was an automatic which made life a lot easier, it just felt like a go-cart. Manual would've been a lot harder. I think next time we are in Kyiv I'll probably rent a car for a full week.

After driving us back from the mall, I drove us and left the car at a place for sushi and cocktails.

A Spritz here and a spritz there...

After this I gave Alice my puppy eyes because I wanted to go play games. I was really craving a game of Deadlock. I have almost 1,000 hours in it, and It comes down to a couple reasons:

1. It is really well designed in terms of world and characters
2. It is free to play
3. Me and Alice are equally shit at it

For years I have been wishing we had a game we could play together where one of us wasn't giga ahead of the other in skill level, where we could start from scratch and get better together.

We tried Valorant but because of my CS pro gamer skillz I ended up having to buy new smurf accounts all the time or restrict myself by playing pistol only, even when she was like gold. That is not to say I am an amazing player or anything, because I don't consider it "good" in relation to the time (prob 7,000 hours) I spent in the game.

Anyway, Alice didn't want to play, apparently she didn't have the gaming crave. So I hit up my Ukrainian friend I made 2 weeks!!! before I came, who coincidentally also lived in the same city in a close district. How cool is that? World is a small place.

Anyway, I showed up and we played some Deadlock together and it was pretty fun, I missed playing games in person with someone, even if that person was very awkward (to be fair the place was awkward and silent almost in general apart from us).

After that, went home and slept.

A really boring day. Sub 10 pictures in my gallery, and I can't show you most of them.

Today we woke up and did nothing. Then we looked at snails. Then we went to a sushi restaurant. Then we had a coffee, and yep that's pretty much it.

The sushi was really good though, it is the best sushi you can get in Kyiv I would say, unless you like baked rolls. You must go to Sushi Master for an elite baked cheesy roll.

Because we ate so much, we had to go for a walk to let it settle and burn some of the calories off.

We were walked around a bit and found a nice coffee spot for a Cappuccino. I know, after 3pm and all. I really would not be friends with any Italians.

My little readers. I would like to finish this final day of this blog by thanking you for reading my wee thoughts over the past two weeks. There are still four days left, and at least 2 blogs. I hope you look forward to them even the tiniest amount.

I love you all!!!!