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Kyiv's New Train
Station
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Kyiv's New Train
Station
September 2, 2001
Dear Friends and Family,
On the four-day Independence Day weekend, we took advantage of wonderful weather and became tourists again. We were seeing the completion of a number of civic re-construction projects that had torn up the city for months and I have to admit, we were impressed. The construction on Kreshchatuk was largely done. Victory Square was completed including a new garden in the road and a new, more logical, traffic pattern. But the best reconstruction we found was at our main train station.
This "remont" (the Russian for "repair" which is now firmly in our lexicon) of the train station ("voxal") has been going on for at least a year. A couple weeks ago, this construction had caused us considerable grief as we struggled to get to our Lviv train. Since that was just a single trip, we were lucky. There are thousands of people who pass through this station every day and they have been suffering for months. Now that the Independence Day deadline had come and gone, we were curious to know what had really been accomplished.
We were amazed.
First off, we took a regular bus right up to the front of the train station. The entrance road was finished. The new copper roof on the old building shown in the morning sun. The place was a beehive of activity - as it always is I think. Trains are the main transportation in Ukraine and this is the largest station in the country. Inside, the main lobby has been completely restored and modernized. There's even an escalator. Now this may not sound like a big deal to you, but climbing the old stairs with all our luggage has been a challenge we're glad to see gone.
Downstairs, there's one large hall with 40 or so ticket booths. Nothing exceptional perhaps but nice. And even as busy as it was, the lines were not too bad - a real bonus for long-suffering train customers. On the other side of the main hall, there's a nice coffee bar and a ticket room for "special cases" such as children or elderly or foreigners. Very nice.
Upstairs are two elegant waiting areas. One, the blue one, is free and quite elegant with decoration worthy of an old capital and seating unlike anything to be found in today's sterile airports. On the other side, the red waiting room charges 1 hryvna 50 kopecks (about 25 cents US) and is even more comfortable. Eventually there will be a bar, but even now it was a wonderful place to sit and read.
By now we were completely taken by the new "voxal". But we'd only seen half. We walked across the waiting room that runs over the top of all the main tracks and saw it too was nicely remodeled with the same high-backed chairs we'd already seen. Here there were crowds as people rested between trains but the quality of the surroundings actually put smiles on travelers' faces. To anyone who has spent much time here, the idea of smiles in public is pretty remarkable.
On the other end of the bridge, we found "another voxal", one we didn't even know existed! I suppose it's just a second entrance to the trains but it was a different world. Ultra modern inside and out, this side also has ticket booths and waiting rooms with everything as comfortable and convenient as the old side.
Just beyond the new station is a new (old?) church. It's so new it hasn't hit the local English guides so I'm not sure what the history is except that it's Orthodox, small, popular and contains some sort of religious relic - or at least that's what I think the Ukrainian sign said.
On our way out, we looked through yet "another train station", next to the main station. This is actually the oldest Kyiv station and now it serves the local trains and the underground Metro. On this particular day, we discovered just how crowded the Metro can be as hundreds of people poured through a small passage in the old station to the single escalator that goes down to the underground platform. But even this reminder that not all the infrastructure has been fixed could tarnish our impression of the new facilities above us. Maybe we'll come this way again on a real journey.
Stay tuned for other stories as we try to actively finish our Kyiv stay. So much to do, so little time.
John and Marianne.
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Put on website Septemebr 2, 2001.
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