#TOTI This One Time in Kiev - Eating Raw Pig Fat Part 1 of 3

lazamedved (50)in #travel • 7 years ago (edited)

In January a year or two ago, my first experience with salo happened during my first week in Kiev.

(I put the above video together to show you the locations where this story takes place.)

City - Kyiv, Ukraine

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Zdravstvuyte!

In January a year or two ago, my first experience with salo happened during my first week in Kiev.

I got a call from a new friend of mine in the morning...

Friend

"Dobroho ranku. Do you want to come with me to the 'Salo Festival'?"

"Zvychayno (of course)."

Friend

"Ok meet me at noon at the Expo Centre of Ukraine."

"Dobre."

Of course I have no idea what salo is. But whatever. I'll learn soon.

It was the morning and I wanted to eat. I had been in Lviv a few days earlier where I ate at the same cafe called called Lvovskiye Plyatski and I saw there was one near my apartment in downtown Kiev, so I went.

Kiev Coffee Pastries Lvovskiye Plyatski (6).png

It's great care in interior design is noted. As a matter of fact there are a few small restaurant chains in Ukraine that are like this...a lot of care on the interior.

Kiev Coffee Pastries Lvovskiye Plyatski (2).png

Good coffee and pastries.

Kiev Coffee Pastries Lvovskiye Plyatski (4).png

Kiev Coffee Pastries Lvovskiye Plyatski (5).png

The final destination was far out of the center, at the Expo Center of Ukraine. So I go into Ploscha Lva Tolstoho metro station and go down the famously deep escalators. Almost for a month, every time I was at the top of one of the metro's escalators I got vertigo.

Almost all the main metro stations everywhere in the East are built very, very deep as they were built to function as bunkers also during the cold war; Kiev's were the deepest I had ever been in. I think the deepest in Europe if I’m not mistaken.

I am now out of the center in one of Kiev's more industrial/suburban areas with the typical mammoth Communist style living blocks.

The metro station I disembark at is painted in fresh bright colours. After the Maidan Square revolution in 2014 two years earlier from my visit, everything in Kiev was being painted in Ukrainian colours; from subway stations, to light posts, to street signs, to park benches. Yellow and blue everywhere.