I went for a long, long trip to Chisinau, in Moldova. The reason was to sort out my visa, but in the end it didn't really work out. On the plus side, I was able to visit a new city and country! In addition, I now know how it feels to spend 18 hours on a train (yes, really).

I'll divide this trip into two neat parts, just because I don't want to upload more than 50 pictures in one update. It's not divided into Day 1 and Day 2, as I didn't really do much on Day 2 other than hang out with some guys from the hostel and go for lunch.

I arrived on the train at 2am, the night of Friday 2nd November. I walked into my 'kupe' - four-person cabin - and all three of the other beds were full of sleeping guys (yes, long trips in Ukraine have beds as standard). I struggled to dress my bed and climb onto the top bunk, but eventually fell asleep with the others snoring around me.

I awoke around 6am as the others in the kupe awoke themselves. We were due to cross the border around 9am but these guys decided to wake up and get chatting early. Not for me. I tried my best to sleep for the following three hours. When we hit the border going out of Ukraine, the passport people came along. The Russians and Moldovan in my kupe were obviously no issue, but they took me away to talk to someone with basic English. Why they needed to debrief me so much when leaving the country I don't know, as getting in again was much simpler.

The Moldovan border people were much different: they were in full 'militsia' dress, contrasting the khaki dress of the Ukrainians. Not only that, but just one guy went through the carriage, armed with a netbook computer with attached passport scanner. The difference in tech between the two countries surprised and impressed me. The guy was quick, to the point, and spoke reasonable English (but he didn't really need much since he was, as I said, brief). It was 10am, and I was happily inside Moldova.

I might as well take a picture of what I saw, then. Moldovan countryside. Pretty much the same as Ukrainian countryside (not that you guys'd know).






There was a long time to go yet, though, as I travelled from the north to the south of a country the size of Belgium, in a slow sleeper train. You'd think that they'd speed it up during the day as nobody's sleeping.





I think this stop is called Ungen, and we waited a while here. Still a few hours to go, though...







The swine flu's really taken this area of the world, but unlike the distorted nonsense from the Ukrainian government, the Moldovans produced this lovely little leaflet...









...in Russian and Romanian. Judging by the pictures, pretty sensible information - and do you see any masks? Exactly.










Finally, at around 8pm, I arrived at the train station in Chisinau. I changed some hryvnia into lei (money), grabbed a marshrutka towards the hostel, and got off at Mall Dova, a nicely-titled shopping centre next to it.

I went inside the huge red building first. Here is a chain you see in Kyiv, but normally written in Cyrillic. A lot of the stuff you can buy here is the same as Ukraine, with a few differences. Booze is a little pricier here, but restaurants are better value than Kyiv.





Also near the hostel is this 'boutique hotel', which is such a bizarre building that I felt compelled to take a pic of it.







And finally, in the hostel for a sandwich, a game of cards, and bed. The following morning I looked out from the balcony, and took this pic.






Time waits for no man, and I headed out for the embassy to do my business. On the way, I met some chickens.







This is the 'huge red building' I mentioned, Mall Dova. You try telling a taxi driver you want to go to 'Mall Dova'.







Perehod (that's 'subway' in Russian) which is rather dark. I took a very crowded marshrutka, got off at the embassy, and was thoroughly disappointed. Visas are never simple.






Never mind, although my entire point of coming had failed, I might as well make the most of it. I walked past a sporting arena. At least it's in Latin characters now, I don't have to translate for you lazy buggers.





A closer look. Romanian and Russian are both used. The two languages seem to have equal currency, at least in Chisinau. Romanian - sorry, 'Moldovan' - is the only official language, of course.





As I walked to the centre, I went past a library, with a statue. Well, you know me by now.










And onto the main street, Stefan cel Mare Boulevard. This street goes straight through the city, and all the nice stuff is on this street. That's not to say nothing interesting lies beyond it, of course.





But as you can see, all the big official stuff is here. And that really is big.











There was a church as well. I've been to bigger ones, but this was nice enough.










My Romanian isn't very good.








Here's a closer look at that huge building.








And a final look, as I walk on.








This, I believe, is the presidential building. Very swanky.











And here, opposite, is the parliament building. Scene of 'civil unrest' in April - that is, lots of people burning stuff and looting. That's why there's a big grey wall to stop people doing that.






The opera house. Yeah, not exactly Sydney, is it? But what's that on the left...?







It's a restaurant! The charmingly-monikered Andy's Pizza, a very nice (and very cheap) place for a meal and a drink. The meal was basic but cheap (I didn't have much lei on me) and the beer is Chisinau beer, of course. It's not bad, but Ukrainian beer is good enough for me.




Remember I said Russian was spoken a lot, but Romanian is official? Well, these guys are saying 'we want Russian to be an official language'. That's what their massive banner says. I heard them marching as I left Andy's Pizza, and ran back to the parliament building to watch them.




While I was there, I got a closer pic of said building.








Back on towards town. This is a park very close to the centre. Why there's an EU flag there I don't know, as Moldova sure ain't EU, unlike their Romanian neighbours.






The park is home to the Alley of Classics, a collection of busts of important Romanian and Moldova people. Wikipedia has a pic of every one of them, so I only took one pic.






Here's a more general view.








I really don't know what this is. Probably a bit Soviet, who knows.








Woo.








Grr, I'm a bear.











This is a fountain. I guess it works in Summer. Meh.








And who might you be?








Pushkin, of course. I guess he's important enough to have his own pedestal thing, surrounded by flowers. And he was born in Moscow, so never mind the local heroes.









It's a pretty nice park, all told. As usual, I'm sure it'd be nicer in Summer.







As the statue says, this is Stefan cel Mare, or Stephen the Great in English. Former Prince of Moldavia, this street's named after him, his picture's on all of the money, and when Romanians voted on a TV poll for the 100 greatest Romanians, he came in at numero uno. So a pretty cool dude, then. (Incidentally, Nicolae Ceausescu came in at number two on the Worst Romanians list - meaning Ion Iliescu must've been REALLY bad)





Turn around, and you can see this large square. This is, essentially, the centre of town. Regular readers will have figured out that communist cities loved to have massive squares where they could organise a load of people. Think back to Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Sevastopol... think of Red Square in Moscow and Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The commies love a big empty space to mark the centre of a city.


Here's the government building. Though I thought the other two buildings were government, so not sure what this one does.







This is the Arca Triumfala. Any fans of Paris don't need a translation. In the background is the cathedral, which I'll show you next update.






To round off this update, another shot of the Triumphal Arch, or Ark Pobyedy, or whatever.










Right, I don't want to do the whole day of Chisinau in one update, as I said, so I'll leave it at that for now. Next time you'll see lots of interesting and banal things. Should be fun.

I was quite shocked on my way home at the sight of a significant number of people covering their mouth and nose with scarves and masks. Swine flu has been declared an epidemic in Ukraine, because one person died. 220 miles away. PANIC!! Remember that this is a country that thinks standing next to an open window will harm you. From what I've read, masks do nothing to stop you getting flu, and may even be counter-productive because it gives wearers false confidence and panics everyone else. It's true: I felt genuinely ill just seeing them. I'm not worried about this whole situation, as the whole swine flu thing is nonsensical hyperbole. This happens every bloody year, why should this year be the year that 10 million die? Rant over.

Anyway, time for Lviv part two. I'm glad I've bothered to get up to this point, because I have my recent adventures in Kyiv to document, too. I thought I'd do a little thing about the political situation in Ukraine, too, given that the presidential elections are coming soon. Or, maybe I won't. Maybe nobody cares. Also, it looks like I'll have a super-fast trip to another country very soon, but more details about that when it happens.

So, onto Lviv. Our hotel was very nice for a reasonable price, and it included a straightforward breakfast of eggs and bread and stuff. So, with this start to our day, we set off on our journey around Lviv again. Unfortunately, the weather started bad - as it had been the previous night - and got worse as the day continued.

To make matters worse, as well as my girlfriend losing her phone the day before, she'd accidentally set her camera to take pictures on the highest quality setting - and by 'quality' I mean megapixels. The pictures look no better, but they take up three times more space. So, her card was full. And I think the battery was perhaps finished too. Whoops.



So, for most of these pictures, she took charge. Which is why there's a picture of a tree here, because she likes trees.










I think the reason she likes Lviv is because of the 'atmosphere' that the old buildings and such provide.










This illustrates quite clearly the inclement weather.








Mmm, lovely. We spent a while here, taking more pictures.








But they all look like this. Bleak.








Shame this door's out of focus. Let's step inside.











She wouldn't stop going into these old buildings with rickety staircases.







More rubble that constitutes the streets of Lviv.











Agh, scary dog!








This can't be normal...








Beret.











Kyiv doesn't look like this. Mostly.








Not very Soviet.








She liked this building so much...











...she took a closer look at the flowers.








Trams are quite common here, much more than Kyiv, mainly because they don't have a Metro system, I guess.










Monument time. This is a monument to the people who suffered during WW2: Ukrainians, Poles, and (cough) Jews. Notice how the Jew bit is all dark, wonder why... Nobody likes them, do they?






The main part of the monument. Cool.








And here's the detail mentioned before, but in English.








Somebody's having a wedding. Woo. After this, we journeyed north to look through the less glamorous side of Lviv, and sadly took no pictures (you ain't missing much, trust me). We circled around and ended up back in the centre and had coffee.





By this point the rain started to fall pretty badly, and walking around the city became less fun as our shoes slowly filled with water. This is Mr Ivan Franko.






And here he is up close. I didn't care about the rain: I had a brolly, and I wasn't gonna miss such a big, stylish Soviet monument.










This is just to illustrate the weather.








After this we went and sat in several cafés, which wasn't really what we wanted, but we couldn't think what to do in such nasty weather. Eventually I discovered that waxwork exhibit that I showed you in Zhytomyr (go back and find the pics). It's a travelling exhibit, you see. That cheered us up a bit, but the weekend kind of ended on a downer, as the weather stopped us really enjoying the city at its best.

I'm told Lviv is 'the London of Ukraine' because it always rains, so maybe we weren't unlucky, exactly. Nevertheless, I think that on the whole it was worth going, but perhaps having been to so many wonderful cities around Europe has made me hard to impress. I still love travelling, anyway.

So, that's all my travels up to now. Aside from my aforementioned upcoming foreign excursion, I just have my local stuff to clear out. I'll do that when I get round to it, which may be very soon. Hopefully I won't die from the lurgy before my next post.

Here we go: Lviv. There are an awful lot of pics, so I'll do the first day now, then the shorter second day later.

On the evening of Friday 9th October, my girlfriend and I caught a train bound for the west. It was the first time I'd been on a Ukrainian train, and I expected it to be noisy and uncomfortable, and thus difficult to sleep. This was a night train, after all, as the journey takes between 6 and 10 hours (night trains obviously are at the slower end of that, probably because you don't care about distance when you're sleeping, and if they went too fast you might wake up).

It was actually a very nice train - maybe we got lucky. There are different types of tickets for trains. The one we got put us in a cabin of four people: us two, plus another young couple. This is a little more expensive than the main alternative: loads of people in an open carriage, each with their own bed. It's probably the best option if you're travelling alone, I suppose, but I imagine it's not easy to sleep, a bit like some hostels I've been in. Except, they move.

As this photo suggests, we arrived at Lviv train station very early on the Saturday. It was still pretty dark outside, and I had no map. I had no idea where we were in the city, but we grabbed the tram with all the other people who got the night train. Once in central Lviv, everything was closed. Well, except McDonald's, which was packed.



We got breakfast at McDonald's (which took a while with all the people asking for coffee). After that, it was time to get to the hotel and figure things out. I took some pics on the way, too. Traffic's a bit quieter than Kyiv.





This is the opera house, I think. We didn't go inside.








This is just a square. Nothing special, but it gives you a bit of flavour for the town, I suppose.







There was a ton of building work going on with the roads at the time. Here's a dog, sitting on some stuff.







Our hotel was lovely. It was in this little courtyard (behind the camera).







Ah, beautiful Lviv. Like I said, roadworks.








Er, a LOT of roadworks.








This is a nice building. Lviv was one of the biggest cities that wasn't too affected by the Soviet regime. They were never too fond of the Soviets, either. I guess being at the arse end of the Soviet empire meant they felt closer to Europe. It used to be part of Poland, amongst other places.




"Hotel Kyiv". My girlfriend said she stayed there, partly because it's messed up. Charming.







Back to the opera. It was Ukraine v England that evening, so there was a Fan Zone (sponsored by beer maker Chernihivske) in this square.






Like I said...








National Museum. Didn't go in here, either, which was a shame.








I think this is some kind of church or something. Girlfriend was disappointed that they'd renovated it (she's been here before).










And now, the central square. Similar to Krakow or Prague, I suppose, but the building in the middle is a bit bigger and more permanent than in the other two. This is one of four (I think there are four) statues based on Greek legends (I think...).





Here's the aforementioned building. We'd go up where the flag is later.











The same building from the side.








Church.











Interesting monument. The missus hates it.








See if you can find the dog.








A nice little alcove which houses a lovely café. Unfortunately, it was at this point when my girlfriend discovered she'd lost her phone. We never recovered it. That put a bit of a downer on proceedings.





I see a lot of conkers, but other than that I don't really understand what the point of this is.







After going through an archway to see a church, we encountered this courtyard. Lots of 'character' here.







And this is the church I just mentioned. Rather small.











Little book market. Amusingly the man in the centre had a road atlas for Britain from a couple of years ago. He explained to us what it was, but I kinda figured it out by myself.






Next to the book market, a curious little bunch of ruins. Your guess is as good as mine.







Monument to somebody. I don't know why I take pictures of these things. Maybe Wikipedia can use them.







Next to the central square. There's certainly a Prague/Krakow feel to this place, very different to Kyiv.







So, time to climb the tower in the square. It was a long and tiring climb up many steps, but we got to see this fascinating clock mechanism.






And lo, another high place to add to my collection.








TV tower. We could've visited it, but it's up a big hill... and the weather got worse on Sunday.







Look, a horse!








You can see a square in the distance.








We were shocked by a loud bell that went off at some point. This is the culprit. Very loud.







After climbing down the stairs, it was after 5pm, so things were closing. We encountered another building with real 'character'.







And what appear to be more ruins.








Don't think we went in this church here.











The missus was fascinated by this little thing, so I took a pic of it.








'King Danilo', or so it says. Don't know who he is, of course. C'mon, I'd be letting you down if I actually knew something about a monument, right?






It appears to be a café in a coach. Strange. But nice.








We were in search of a restaurant. Not a café with some food, not McDonald's, but a restaurant. It was almost impossible to find such a thing. I took a picture of this square while we searched. Eventually we found a lovely restaurant that was expensive for Lviv, but reasonable for Kyiv. So, I was satisfied. Great food, too.




And so, the night drew in, and the crowds arrived in the rain for Ukraine v England.







My phone is not good at all at night, but I figured I had to show you something of what happened there.







There were a lot of people.








We, on the other hand, sat under cover to squint at a far away TV along with quite a few others, as you see here. For those who don't know, Ukraine won, so everyone was happy. England had already qualified, so I didn't really mind that much.





Okay, that's enough. We went to bed after the match, as it had been a long day. I'll get back to you with Day 2 of our Lviv trip in due course.

It seems that the only times that I find myself doing this blog is when I'm out of the flat, I don't have net access, but I do have my laptop and time to kill. Maybe things will change in the future, but as it stands, I'm writing this in a small café that deals in pizzas and sandwiches.

On 27th August, just after my return to Ukraine, I went to Chernihiv. It's a relatively small town north-east of Kyiv, but I've wanted to go before mainly because of its proximity. It seems bigger than Zhytomyr and Bila Tserkva, and has a lot more in the way of chain shops and the like. Nevertheless, when we went there, it all seemed rather quiet...

This is the town square. Soviet towns are notable for having such huge empty squares, and this one is especially large. Not much to fill it, though.






There was a music festival being set up there, though (courtesy of a mobile phone company), so it was a bit noisy throughout the day. I guess this must be the town hall.






Bila Tserkva has its park, Zhytomyr has its space museum, and Chernihiv is notable for its churches. You can see a large one in the distance here. But there are nice flowers in the foreground.






There are also monuments to different people along this route. This man has a bird on his head.










And this is a monument to Chernobyl, specifically the 'liquidators' who worked to secure the plant after it exploded.







This is the same as the previous pic, but closer. The church looks nice, but is almost empty inside. I don't know why. Shame.







It would appear that this is a monument to Ukrainian independence. Means something like 'we fought for freedom in an independent Ukraine'. Or 'Freedom Isn't Free', if you like Team America.





My old pal Vova. This is highly unusual as it has Lenin WITH A CAP! That's a first. I have to take pics of Lenin statues wherever I go, as you know, but in Kyiv the Lenin statue was vandalised in my absence, so it's covered in scaffolding. The Ukrainian Communist Party have camped around it. Seriously.







In the midst of the market, the TV tower looms forth.











Back to the churches, and there are a few. This is a little one.








There's even a mini graveyard.








What a wonderful building, full of character. And cracks.








Further along the building.








Weird arch that leads to the TV tower. I think we went around in circles.







Pretty flowers.








This is a very old church, and as you see is a strange shape.








Statue, of... well, I can't tell now, because I wanted a silhouette shot. I know it's an important guy, though.










There's a park with three or four notable churches. This may be the one with a little museum. Not sure. No, don't think so.










Another one. Notice the priest clothes drying on the line outside.








Looking back on the previous church.











And this must be the one with the museum.








Odessa has some famous steps. These... not so much.








Ukrainians really love Taras Shevchenko. Well, the government did/does, so there's tons of stuff named after him, plus lots of statues. Here's an odd one, for two reasons: he's sitting on a (big) bench...





...and he looks very young, before he got the big beard.











Armed and ready. Nobody's gonna take this town.








Finally, a nice view of some old-looking buildings.








All in all, not the most eventful trip, but it's nice to have a day out sometimes, especially in places that I haven't been. Though, if you read this blog a lot, you'll probably have figured that out by now. Quite a bit happened between that trip and my next trip, to Lviv, but I figure I should get Lviv out of the way first before I tackle everything else I've done in Kyiv since my return.

Nottingham and Milton Keynes now - you'll have to wait for Lviv. And all the other crap that I have built up to talk about. It's a busy life at the moment, and I just can't find time to consider doing this. Now I'm sitting in a Mister Snack with time to kill, so I'll do it now.

During the period between my Eurotour and coming back to Kyiv, my two buddies (one of whom reads this blog regularly) decided that we should go somewhere for a weekend of fun. The shortlist was drawn up, and Nottingham was the winner. I'd never really been there before, so I thought it'd be the best place to go. I'll always try something new.

We stayed in a very cheap, but very good hostel (Pete wasn't pleased about it, as he has the cash to blow on a hotel). I figured a hostel was the best option as there was three of us, it was cheap, and it was relatively close to the centre of town. This is the view walking towards the centre of town.




The city centre is rather compact. I thought Nottingham was very big, but I think it's just the surrounding residential areas that make it so big. The actual city centre is not that big, really. This is a building.





And this is the town square in front of said building. As you can see, it was a Saturday, so there was stuff happening, like rides and things.






Woohoo. Not sure about the weather though.








I don't know if this is normal in Nottingham.








But it certainly made things interesting. Not that we actually had a ride or anything.







Onto the historical stuff. Here's the entrance to the castle in the city.







I think the weather was better than it appears here. This is the courtyard area, after passing through the gate.







Aw, look what they did.








And this is even more interesting: it's in the shape of cricket stumps being hit by a ball. Look carefully.







Guess what this building is. No, not a sports stadium, but the offices of the tax people. WTF?







Inside the building is a little museum dedicated to the castle, and Nottingham itself. There's a nice model.







Guess who. One key reason for the Nottingham tourist industry.











Here's a real tourist attraction: the 'Oldest Inn in England'. Several make this claim, but there's no disputing that this building is very old.






Inside it's very small and cramped, but has a wonderful atmosphere. What annoyed us was that people kept walking into this room, taking pictures, and walking out again. Have a drink, damn it! The beer was pretty good, actually.





Here's another old building, near the inn.








Chuuuuuuuurch. Incidentally, us English are such heathens that we build bars and even clubs inside old churches.







Such as this one. Don't know the name, but it has lovely windows.











The rest of it looks nice, too. Apologies for the poor photo, but my camera doesn't do indoors too well, as regular viewers will know.







Along with Robin Hood, here's another hero of Nottingham: Brian Clough. One of English football's greatest ever managers. This is a very recent statue.









Finally, a nice water thing in the city centre.








In order to get a job in Ukraine, I was told to get an apostille for my CELTA certificate. What it basically means is personally going to Milton Keynes and paying a substantial amount of money to a government organisation so that they can stick something to it, saying it's real. Ultimately the whole thing appears to be pointless, but hey, at least I got a day out in lovely MK! Let's check it out!

MK is a weird place. For those that don't know, it was made in the 50s as a new town, rather than 99% of British towns that evolved naturally. This means that the location of everything is carefully planned. Thus, I don't think there's a town centre as such, but it's a DREAM to drive around, ridiculously simple. Birmingham, by contrast, is a nightmare.

Anyway, onto the city. Here is a shopping centre. MK has quite a few of these.







One of the most famous things about MK is, incidentally, concrete cows. I was afraid that, as they're normally in a field somewhere, I'd miss them. But lo! They'd been loaned to this shopping centre! What luck.





Speaking of cows... don't ask me about this one. It's in another huge shopping centre with a funny name.







It's a magical place. This building has rock climbing...











...a simulator...








...and even a ski slope. Impressive. If I had the time, I might have even had a go at it, but I think I'd need a bit of teaching.







This is the centre from the outside. Big.








Yet another centre. This is MK in a nutshell, really: lots of big shopping centres, with a simple road system and very cheap parking. It's the future.






To round off this update, I had lunch at Burger King before leaving, and this cheeky bird tried to have some of my food. Well, he can bugger off. And he did.






Right, I'm getting closer to being up-to-date. I have to report on Chernihiv next (my first trip to a Ukrainian town since my return), then Lviv (my second). After that, I'll update with the miscellaneous crap I've seen and taken pics of around Kyiv. See you then.

Another long time between updates, but as I sit in an Indian restaurant in Kyiv (one of two) I thought it'd give me time to update you on my exploits. I've been very busy recently, which explains the lack of updates.

Let's start where I said I would: Manchester. On 28th June there was a special video-game-related event there, which was refreshing in that it focussed on British retro gaming more than foreign stuff (US and Japan). It makes a change for these things to remember that we have our own gaming heritage. Here's an example of some of the decor.



You could play some games, too, which was great. Though, to be honest, choosing Elite as a game to play is a rather stupid decision: it's not exactly a game you can just pick up and play in five minutes. I spent hours on this game when I played it before. And the instructions were on a full sheet of paper, so a bit tough to get to grips with at first.



More playable stuff. They just had emulators playing ZX Spectrum games with joypads, but if you weren't familiar it'd be nice. Though if you weren't familiar, why would you be there? Perhaps if you're a younger gaming fan who wasn't alive when the old computers were around.




They were divided up into rough sections. This, for example, is a couple of driving games. Burnin' Rubber, in front, was pretty good when I fixed the controls (me to the rescue, yay). The other game is Micro Machines, which me and my brother played quite a bit to relive the old days.




As nice as all this old stuff was, I did say to my brother, "This is just like your bedroom!" And he agreed.







This shot proves it. He said he should just charge admission to his bedroom.







This is a very notable British game for me, and it was cool to be able to see all these maps of a game I played a lot. It's here mainly because two of the guest speakers at the event were the Oliver Twins, who made the game. They said hello to us as we were playing a game, but I had no idea who they were. I think my brother did, however.



A closer look.








Some excellent material related to the best football game ever, Sensible Soccer. Shame I didn't have time to peruse it all: there's just too much!






You could, of course, play Sensi as well. Here I am making light work of Cardiff. Dynaaamo Kiiiev.







The decor was pretty cool, actually: huge blow-up reproductions of old game screenshots.







People were encouraged to draw their own game ideas. Note my brother's (borrowed) idea: Horace Goes Culling. I won't explain.







This is, obviously, the sport section. There were sections for newer games and more adult-oriented games (that's Grand Theft Auto, not what you're thinking of). The Oliver Twins did a presentation, showing off their new software and 3D glasses. It was interesting, but no pictures.




Anyway, enough of Manchester. That's that covered. On 3rd July I went to Liverpool to get an urgently-needed passport for my Eurotour. As I'm sure you're aware, that went without any real problems, so I don't need to regale you with tales of putting my application in, then returning several hours later to collect my new passport. Instead, I'll focus on those hours in between.

As we walked towards the city centre, I passed a church. I hope a Scouser can remind me which church this is, it was a while ago, and I didn't take any notes.






I believe this is the Liver Building. I hope, anyway, after just saying that. The shot is rather poor, but I blame the rather below-par weather.






I got two buildings in one shot here. It says Atlantic Tower on that one on the left, so you'll just have to live with that. I think the other one's the same church as before.






A more expansive view. It really wasn't photography weather.








Looks like one side of the Liver Building. I think.











I read that this is much hated by architects, apparently. It's certainly eye-catching, sticking out into the harbour as it does. It houses The Beatles Story. Though you can see that yourself.






Oh... bugger. Don't know.








Likewise, though I could hazard a guess. I won't, of course.








"Ferry, cross the Mersey..."








Monument. Self-explanatory.











Another building. God, I need to pay more attention.











Now I really don't remember taking this picture.








Hmm, this one's a bit easier. There's John Lennon on the left, there. This is obviously the Cavern Pub. The Cavern Club is a few doors down, on the other side.






A closer look reveals the Wall of Fame. Not just the Fab Four played here, but also the likes of Warhorse, Freddie and the Dreamers, and even Wild Mouth. Legends.






Don't worry, we're nearly finished looking at stuff I don't know.








Schoolchildren. Oh, and a war-related monument.








Ooh, that's nice. That'll be the docklands, made famous by... er, This Morning. We went to a couple of museums there, and had a drink. It's actually quite nice, I should've taken more pictures.






Not sure what attracted me to this picture. It's a bit dull.








I know where this is, but what it is... um...








That's the third shot of this bloody church, and I still don't know what it's called. Look, I'm not a tour guide, I'm a tit with a blog.










And, for good measure, as we were driving home we made sure to check out two local landmarks. This road is very narrow.







Couldn't even leave the car for this one, though.








Well, that's your lot for now. I'll do my ultimately pointless sojourn to Milton Keynes another time, but I have a trip to Lviv scheduled for this weekend, so I'll finally have something new to write about.

It's been a long, long time, but I've finally decided it's time to do a bit of updating. I'm back in Kyiv, I'm hunting around for any scraps of work I can find, and I'm living with a wonderful woman. So, ups and downs, you might say.

Let's start where I said I would, with my visits to a few English cities. I'll split my posts up a bit, for ease of reading. First, I'll talk about my trips to Manchester and Liverpool, and show a bit of my hometown for those who don't actually live there (yes, some people read this who don't live there, actually). Then I'll document my trips to Nottingham and Milton Keynes, and finally I'll talk a bit about what's happened recently.

This is the main street in Burton-on-Trent, called, appropriately, High Street.







This is the market square, where, as you can see, you can find a little market on weekends.







There's an indoor bit too, but I didn't go there. Nice flag. Classy.








The church overlooking the market square.








This is one of the nicer parts of Burton, the garden commemorating the war. Not sure which one. Second? Er... (Pete will leave a comment about this)






When I worked in Burton town centre I often bought lunch from somewhere and ate it in this garden.







When the weather was nice, of course.








Bah, the ducks ran away as I took this pic.








This one didn't.








There's some more.








I'm now standing in what people may consider to be the central location in Burton: the junction between High Street and Station Street. This is looking down Station Street.






Turning to the right, you can see one way down High Street...








...and to the left, the other way. Charming.








Another nice part of Burton is the place where the college is, with this monument. I believe it's another war memorial. It was Armed Forces Day, as you can see, so it's a bit cluttered.






That's enough of Burton. It's not really somewhere I'd recommend visiting. There really isn't that much to do there. Why do you think I don't live there now? I'll be back very soon with my thoughts on my trip to Manchester, then after that, Liverpool (the former doesn't have any pics of the town, actually, just an exhibition on video games, so if you don't like those you'll be disappointed, especially if you're expecting to see beautiful Manchester).