Kyiv, Ukraine, April 2008

I knew things would be a little difficult in Kyiv when I spotted Air Force One on the tarmac as I landed. Major roads in the city were blocked off and the police were at every junction. In Independence Square, scene of the Orange Revolution in 2004, an anti-NATO rally was in full swing. Hammer & sickle flags flew over a makeshift stage and martial music blasted into my hotel room at the other end of the square.

I felt as if I was an extra in a cold-war drama & began to double back on myself to shake off potential spies. I kept getting lost, frantically turning corners like a headless chicken. Kyiv was difficult to map mentally and I pitied those on my tail, real or imaginary. The hotel was owned by the Ministry of Defence and my room felt as if Stalin had broken in and stolen everything that wasn't brown. Twice the phone rang and yet each time I answered, there was silence.

In a way George Bush helped me out. I had to find a way around the blockages and followed the locals scaling walls and sliding down grassy banks. I saw a side of the city that was off the map and a little muddy.

I walked to Dynamo Kyiv’s stadium, sunk into a bowl and surrounded by chestnut trees. A statue to legendary coach Valery Lobanovsky sat outside, perched on the bench in an era before chalked technical areas. He looked trim in bronze but an adjacent billboard showed him in later years, bloated and blotchy. A bridge spanned the ring-road below and connected the parks on either side. Clamped to the bridge, amid the football graffiti, were thousands of padlocks; lovers initials etched or inked into the metal.

In two days, I covered a lot of ground, visiting the monasteries of Pecherska Lavra, discovering a glimpse of the intensity of Eastern Orthodox religion in the caves that ran underneath. I ate at a restaurant with an 18th century rustic theme and watched football in a modern Irish pub. On the Andriyivskyi Descent I was confused by Bulgakov’s birthplace and sobered by the Chernobyl museum in Podil with its mutated river creatures and ghost town signs. And all the time behind and in front of me, the golden domes of Kyiv’s churches.

I left Kyiv, walking up to the metro station under a night sky just beginning to blue. Aside from streetsweepers and dog walkers, I was on my own and the city looked peaceful; no barricades or police or Death to the Imperial West banners. I dived into the metro, down into the depths of the earth, through beautiful brick arches and clean-tiled caverns and followed the President of the USA back to the west.