It was an early start today because we had to take the electrichka, a sort of local train to go to Kiev to meet with Dan. Tatiana, Taia and Natascha all came with her, they wanted to make sure we were going to arrive in Kiev safely. How sweet of them to take care of us like this.

On the train, a couple of people were selling all kinds of goods. Apparently this is not unusual but to me it was a little bit strange. I could not imagine this sort of practice business in Switzerland.

We arrived in Kiev half hour later. It was a little bit of shock for me to see the big buildings of the city after spending so much time in little towns and villages. Again, traffic and people there reminded me how much I don't like big cities.

It was difficult to say goodbye to our news friends but I was happy to finally meet with our contact Dan after all the months of writing back and forth via Email. Dan took us to a nice little outdoor caffee where we had a delicious breakfast. It started to rain pretty heavily so we had hide under the parasole for quite a while. I could not imagine biking in this rain. So we just talked and talked getting to know our new friend. Dan is a very nice person, generous and caring. He's only one year older than me. It was nice to talk to him in English without having anyone in between to translate.

Finally it cleared up so we put our transportation plan in action. The idea was to take the electrichka to Dan's house which is situated outside of the centre, in the suburb. The plan was easy but finding out about tickets and whether or not we can take bicycles on train was not an easy thing. We eventually made it.

The exit from the train was quite an adventure though because there are only 2 minutes to get in and out of the train. The locals didn't like that 3 foreigners and 2 bicycles were blocking the doors. With the help of Dan, I was able to make it to the ground safely but Chris got attacked by 3 baboushkas who pushed him and his bike out of the door without any hesitation while a crowd of angry passengers were yelling at us. Ouf!! nobody got hurt. This was the first Ukrainian attack and hopefully the last!!

The rest of trip home was fine. We arrived at Dan's house safely and we crashed on the bed for the biggest nap.

In the evening Dan took us to the centre of Kiev and we toured the city. It was nice because Dan knows a lot about the history and culture of the place so the guided tour was quite interesting.

Then he took us to this restaurant down in a basement where a lot of foreigners and journalists are hanging out. And that's how we met Bill, a famous journalist who apparently had heard about us through the Rotary club. Now that's quite a mystery because I had wrote a letter to the Rotary club in Switzerland and had never heard anything from them so I don't know how Bill would have received any information about our trip and in English for that matter. Anyways Bill had experience with long distance biking as he told us about this trip in Canada from Vancouver to Montreal. It was nice to be able to share this biking culture with him. Dan explained to him a little bit more about our trip and Foccus and mentioned that we were going to have a press conference at the Chernobyl museum in Kiev the next day and was not sure if there was going to be any media there. So Bill and his journalist friends began to brainstorm to find out how they could get the media to come to our conference. That was nice of them.

It was getting really late and I was exhausted so we took a private car cab which is basically a private driver that does business on the side as a taxidriver. How unusual for me but I guess this is normal in Kiev. Everyone seems to have a business her, selling gum in the metro or driving foreigners home, anything to make extra cash is worth it!!

.