Friday 22nd January

I am not a travel writer. I am a writer who's going somewhere. With a photographer - a Swede, called Håkan Ludwigsson. I meet him in the lobby of our Zurich hotel and say it's a really odd exercise to go somewhere just to write about the experience of going there. He nods. Getting into the taxi I notice he has 13 tons of aluminium boxes.

About two hours flying takes us to Kiev. This is going to be allright - Håkan makes me laugh. The aim of his professional training, he says, is to allow him to take pictures like an amateur. My travel reading is Roughing It by Mark Twain. Ominous choice.

Looking out the window the first impression is of mud - square brown fields - a frozen turquoise pond - houses clustering to face onto roads. The motorway lies straight and black across the landscape.

We get processed through customs. Everything is done by hand. Papers are stamped - with pressure and a wiggle before the rubber stamp is lifted. The official's pinstripe suit is two sizes too small. He blows on pages to separate them. We are in Eastern Europe.

We are met by Sasha, our organizer, Galina - to be our interpreter - and a trumpet player called Valieri - a big man about six five with a fur hat on top of that.

Outside we realize there is no way five adults, my luggage and Håkan's 13 tons are going to fit into one car. Nevertheless the trumpet player begins to pack the boot. The humans get in the car and the rest of the luggage is built around them. Incredibly we all make it. The motorway is so straight you could use it to teach perspective. As we drive, from beneath a holdall, Galina narrates a brief history of Kiev. Håkan decides he wants a photograph. From somewhere he produces a camera and aims it into the back seat.

It's a journey of about forty minutes.I ask why the bottoms of the trees are white. Galina tells me they paint fruit trees to fool insects into thinking trees are walls so they will not bother to eat them. Logical insects here.I see what I think are starlings flying above us. Millions of them. Galina says they are crows. I see crows' nests in the trees.

We check into our hotel. The rooms are clean - not colour coordinated but comfortable.The telephone is lime green - the colour kid's sweets used to be. The en-suite bathroom has oatmeal toilet paper with no perforations.

Galina says 'We are a very simple people but we will open our hearts and lives and show you everything.'

9.30 We walk down to Kreshchatik Street to have a look around.In an underground pass five or six youths have a band - sax, guitars, trumpet, bass guitar. About 200 people have gathered - about 50 of them are dancing.

We eat in The Kreshchatik. We have - wait for it - Chicken Kiev. In another room echoingly distant there is a band and dancing. Near us is a long table with a party of young people who stand up every so often to propose toasts. We are invited to join them. Many of them speak good English. This is the fourth anniversary of the founding of their company which sells paintings to businesses and banks.

SATURDAY 23rd January

9am.Sacha's introduces his wife Nadja, an architect. We set off on foot towards Kiev-Pechersk Lavra - the Cave Monastery. To be more mobile Håkan reduces his equipment to three tons. He is assisted in carrying this by Galina's 18 yr old son Deema.

On the way Håkan sees a children's playground he likes. Much amusement in the Ukrainian camp. Is this what they came to photograph ? There is a cathedral round the corner with golden domes. I notice again the dark clots in the trees. They are NOT crows nests but mistletoe.

We decide to take a tram. I ask for a translation of a written sign above the window. Galina says 'You must hold the pole or else you will fall on the floor.' For some reason I find this very funny.

The first view of Lavra is wonderful - the golden and green domes soaring above the monastery wall.

We meet Archbishop Anthony. He talks animatedly about how the monks survived the last 70 years. The Authorities thought they had closed the place forever in 1961. They were waiting for the old people to die and, with them, religion - because there was no religious education in the schools. 'But, in spite of all, the church is alive and the candle still burns here. Now there are more than 200 seminarians.' Archbishop Anthony introduces us to Father Achilla who is the abbot of the cave monastery.

Father Achilla gives us permission to photograph in the caves at Lavra. He himself leads us round the catacombs where the saints of this Church lie buried. Their mummified bodies are covered in richly woven materials sealed in glass topped coffins. In one or two cases a mummified hand is left exposed for veneration by the people. Achilla holds a lit taper between his middle fingers - his hand cupped in a delicate gesture to catch any wax.

Afterwards we pass the impressive metallic rainbow built in 1982 to commemorate and symbolise the everlasting friendship and union between Russia and the Ukraine. Ah well.....

9.00pm We walk in the dark and get our first look at St Andrew's Cathedral - a gem of the Russian Baroque. It is floodlit and seems to float on top of the hill.

SUNDAY 24th January

9am We go to the Refectory Church at Lavra. Lines of people, summoned by bells, hurry through the light blowing snow. A boy carries a loaf of bread for the monks.
Inside on a table are apples and white eggs,loaves - one with a burning taper stuck in it - and pickles, all home made things. One of the novices hopes for honey. The church is circular and the people stand or promenade. The music of the bells is repeated in the choir - six men's voices and six womens'. They hold chords for what seems an infinity.
The congregation is not just old women, there are people here of all ages. A priest with a bass voice the equal of Ezio Pinza sings a text rising in quarter tones that make the hairs on my neck rise with each grace note.
There are no microphones or loudspeakers here. The priest preaches and the people press forward to hear. There are no floodlights either but the light from the windows picks out the blue smoke of incense and the gold haloes, grapes and stars on the darkly painted walls. An afflicted girl listens to the choir with rapt attention, her eyes wide and smiling.

Håkan and I go up the bell tower to hear the bell ringing at the end of the service. It has only come back these last four years. Two novices take turns to play the great drone bell which sets the beat and the treble bells which play the melody. The large bell has a sustain which lasts for what seems like minutes. It is bitterly cold up here. But the whole tower reverberates. Tintinnabulation. You feel it in the soles of your feet, you hear it in your chest - it rings in the bones of your head. I nod my head to try to keep the rhythm. I walk about to try to keep warm in a kind of blundering dance. There is excitement and joy here and it is infectious.

12.00 am I talk briefly with Ivan Fedorovich Dratch, writer and politician. An intense man with a dark voice, looking out from behind thick spectacles. 'This last four years I've been so busy I can only write poems on my knee at dull meetings. My notebooks are crying out for me like abandoned children. Politics is like a swamp - it absorbs you, sucks you in.'

2.00 We tram and trolley bus to see St Andrew's Cathedral in daylight. It looks just as good. It begins to snow. We walk down to the Andreijewski Spusk quarter. Artists and students have their works for sale along the steep and cobbled street. There are galleries selling paintings and sculpture. We stop at the Cafe Hata for lunch.

To the indoor market in the Podol district. It is a huge building with the largest unsupported roof I have ever seen. We go to the first floor balcony and look out over the hall where the people of Kiev are selling produce. Vegetables, meat, chickens, curd cheese, yoghurt. There is a great noise of chatter. On the balcony they are selling clothes, shoes, fur hats from stalls. Private individuals stand with one or two items for sale - a hat, a pair of shoes.

We go down to take a closer look. The vegetables and fruit are of very poor quality but in January in the footprint of Chernoble maybe that's what you'd expect. Everyone engages in sampling. Point to the ham you fancy and you'll get a small sliver of it, cut off with a knife. You'll get to taste the cheese, the yoghurt, the grated cabbage in vinegar. Håkan photographs a lovely woman with apple red cheeks selling red apples. She has a great piece of mediaeval headgear - like a character from Chaucer on her way to Canterbury.

7.00pm To the Opera House to see BAYADURKA (1877) a ballet with music by Léon Minkus - an Austrian who settled in Russia. The building itself is magnificent, built 1906, and recently restored. The ballet is 19th C exotic. Near-naked-except-for-sequins girls run onto the stage. Galina says, without a trace of irony, 'These are nuns.' Later she changes her translation to priestesses. The exotic is only the ordinary set somewhere else.

MONDAY 25th January

9.00am We hire a taxi for the day and drive to the Monument to Victory in the Second World War - a huge triumphalist female with raised sword and shield. It's odd how men create wars and then use women to personify aspects of them. There is a military museum here and black statuary which depicts the Soviet peoples' victory in World War Two. Someone expresses the view that if the money spent building this gigantic series of monuments had been used for housing it would have been better spent.

We have lunch in a converted ammunition store. It dates from the seventeen fifties, is barrel shaped and has no windows. Wonderful chandeliers and shadows. Good coffee and cutlets and hard boiled eggs followed by cakes.

A more human monument is the one commemorating the foundation of Kiev overlooking the river Dnieper. Three figures on a Viking shaped boat, brothers of legend Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv. Flocks of crows caw and swirl out over the river as if the air around them has been stirred. It begins to rain and blot the words I write so I take shelter.

Galina and I sit in the car waiting for Håkan to get the best picture. The windows mist over. The radio plays B.B. King singing the blues. In the gathering darkness Galina tells me some of the difficulties of living in the Ukraine at this time. 'Two years ago I had a very good salary. I could take a taxi, I could buy things in the shops. But now I have a better salary and it buys very little.' A kilo of butter two years ago cost the equivalent of 3.40 now it is 800. Prices are 50 times, 100 times more now. 'The deprivation must not last too long,' she says. ' The government must love their country AND have good economists.'
'But how do you cope ?' I ask.
'I have my inner life.'

TUESDAY 26th

10.00 am Babi Yar where 200,000 citizens of Kiev along with war prisoners were shot by invading Nazis and thrown into a ravine.It happened in September of 1941. There are some candle stubs and fresh flowers left at the monument. The memorial park has a symbolic ravine a little distance from the real one. Galina points out that when creating the symbolic ravine they did not want to disturb the remains of those who were to be commemorated.

Out of three pay phones I try on the street all are working. Since coins went out and coupons came in local calls are free. It stops the phones being vandalised for cash.

A boy sits playing a video game in the lobby of the Officers Club. He zaps anything that moves between the lines. Håkan begins photographing and the boy flees. We find out he is skipping school and fears any evidence on film.

First intimations of upset tummy - Håkan gives me a tablet. He's a seasoned traveller and has a tiny bag full of life saving devices, including a dropper for sterilizing a glass of water anywhere in the world. With great politeness he says to the hosts. 'It is not that your water is bad but that our stomachs are not used to it.'

We go to see the amazing house of Gorodetsky, an architect from the turn of the century who was interested in hunting. Wreathed around the top of the house are dolphins, rhinos, elephants, stags and four linked utterly smug toads. Fantastic, eccentric - a wino's nightmare - D.T's on the roof.

Opposite it the Building for the Administration of the President is shod in black marble. On closer inspection it contains flakes of translucent mica, blue mother of pearl- iridescent like butterfly wings in black stone. You must move your head to see the full effect. A building of semi precious stone. You could make a billion brooches out of it.

It is freezing cold - 0°C but there is a wind which makes it feel much lower. Håkan produces a hood for me and a pair of fingerless gloves. The man has everything - he is SO prepared. I think if you asked him for a metal tent peg, purple shoelaces, or a small grandfather clock he could produce it. He has a watch which tells the time in Tokyo on a Tuesday at twenty fathoms. He also has a calculator which tells him exactly where and when the sun will rise and set anywhere in the world. He can point at that place, not with his finger, but with a pin.

4.00pm We visit the Museum of Ukrainian Fine Arts. It is warm and there is a rewarding selection of pictures from icons to works of the recent past. Why are Museum attendants in Kiev all women ? Why do cloakrooms not charge anything ?

5.30pm Håkan photographs the neon green M of the Metro and we go down into the Golden Gate Station. Any journey costs 5 coupons, less than half a cent. It takes almost 3 minutes to descend. The communists destroyed some of the cathedrals above ground but built them down here. The platform is vaulted like a church and covered with Byzantine style mosaics, marble floors, candelabras. Amazing place.

WEDNESDAY 27th

9.30am Breakfast.I ask the waiter if the tea is hot. I like it scalding. He invites me to feel the kettle with my hand proving that it is not hot enough.

Today we visit St. Sophia's Cathedral founded in 1037 by Prince Yaroslav - it has frescoes depicting his family. For centuries the walls were whitewashed and the treasures beneath were only discovered in 1842.

The church is dominated by the colossal representation in mosaic of the Virgin praying with upraised hands. Beneath, is Christ dispensing the Eucharist. Because he dispenses both bread and wine, flesh and blood, Christ appears twice. In the main cupola is Pantocrator, Christ the Ruler of All. Beneath the four evangelists are four holes - the mouths of ceramic jugs built into the wall to enhance the church's acoustic. The dark metal floor dates from the 19thC and contains both the star of David and Muslim crescents. Was this an early attempt at ecumenism ? Nobody seems to know.

I ask Galina why people in shops do not smile and she gives two reasons. They get their salary no matter how much or how little they sell. And times are hard. Having given her answer she smiles.

4.30pm Sasha and Nadja host party. This is the hospitality we were warned about. The whole meal of four or five courses takes about three and a half hours. We are introduced to Nadja's mother and daughter, Irene - a student from Moscow with perfect English. Poets/singers/ actors, Anatoli Leymesh, and his wife,Irena Karpinos play twelve string guitar and sing passionate and funny songs. Also invited is Volodymir Alexashin who runs an English language newspaper NEWS FROM UKRAINE. Many toasts, much vodka, little memory.

Leaving the party on the second floor it is pitch dark. The stair lighting has failed. I slide my feet out tentatively and begin to edge down. Not Håkan. Even for this situation he is prepared. He produces a miner's helmet type device, switches on the light on his forehead and marches down the stairs. If I ever go to hell I want Håkan to be with me.

THURSDAY 28th

Håkan photographs his breakfast before he eats it. I suppose it's better than photographing it AFTER he's eaten it.

Back to Lavra again to take pictures of the monks.
Father Achilla has given us his blessing to go anywhere in the monastery - he is joyous, enthusiastic and open. His auburn beard almost stands out straight with energy. He says the purpose of their lives is to save souls and be closer to God. To achieve this the monks lead a life of celibacy and poverty. The churches are opening again and have wide roads leading to them.

Håkan wants the portraits to have a very plain background. Fr.Achilla takes us to a huge room in the middle of renovation. The floor is covered in dust and plaster and wooden trestles. Six monks stand waiting to be photographed - lovely men - clowning a little about who will be first. They give off a kind of gentleness. Suddenly they burst into song. The singing is not solemn. They smile - it is like a round, sung for fun but beautifully done. The acoustic of this empty room fits around the music perfectly. Someone hits a wrong note and they laugh and stop. When the photography is finished they sing a hymn of Thanks that the work was well done and is now over. They walk away, the hems of their black soutanes grey with the dust of this place, singing until gradually the air returns to silence.

To the Kiev Opera House again, this time to see a national traditional opera/play 'Cossacks Across the Danube'. Tonight the lead singer is Ukraine's most famous, Anatoly Soloviyanenko. This is a big night. But in Act 2 when a trumpet plays solo for four seconds I smile. Valieri - the big man. I know him.

FRIDAY 29th

Olga Antonenko is an artist, a member of the Union of Young Painters. Her flat is filled from floor to ceiling with her work - paintings, drawings, tapestries, batiks - and, unusually, exotic dresses with painted fabrics.

She gives us tea and thin bread, dried to biscuit in the oven, to dip in home made strawberry jam. All conversation ceases as we crunch our way through a plate of this.

We arrive at the airport early to get some pictures. I shake hands with Håkan and swear we'll do this again sometime, somewhere (he is staying a few more days). If necessary I'll even help carry his aluminium boxes. I take my leave of Sasha and Galina and Valieri. There is an air of sadness, of people who have met and quickly formed relationships but have little chance of meeting again. Galina has been my voice and ears for a week. It is hard to break away. She says,'There are no words.'

In the air above the Ukraine without warning I fill up with tears because there ARE no words for this country and its people of courage. All things manifested in Galina with her large eyes and small vocabulary. The thing that made me cry most as a child was when things were not fair.

As if to emphasise the fact the smiling stewardess hands out the menu.

I sip my drink and remember Kiev for its people - its mistletoe and music. Its crows, its plainsong, its incomparable bell ringing.