Kiev. This woman sells cigarettes, not by the pack, she sells them a piece, so you can buy three cigarettes. Because her “shop” does not have the legal minimum shopfloor space of 25 square meters, she can not obtain a license to sell cigarettes and her business is illegal. And because she does not pay taxes, she can sell cheaper. Local police don’t interfere with it however.

It is a like soft drugs in The Netherlands: it is illegal, but…

The tube you see fitted to the house is a gas pipe. Ukrainian regulation says that all gas pipes must be visible and accessible, and yellow. And there is no way around it, so you build a nice new house with a flashy design, and then, as a final touch, the plumbers come and fit the yellow gas pipe to your facade.

If you’re lucky, they match nicely with the rain gutter pipes. Rain gutter pipes run from the rain gutter to eh… well, not quite all the way to street level, some additional routing à l’improviste may be necessary.

Péage in France.

You may be forgiven to think this is some backyard alley, but it is a normal street, somewhere in the town of Novograd, 70.000 inhabitants, Ukraine.

They have electricity and some houses have gas, but there is no fresh water and no sewer system. The toilet is connected to a hole in the ground. Fresh water is pumped from a well, which is also a hole in the ground.

Seven workers looking at  Andrejevski Uzviz in Kiev. This street is on the Unesco Cultural Heritage list and I think the Kiev city planners are trying to get it back in shape before the Euro 2012 football tournament. Not sure if they will make it in time, they only have 40 working days left.

While undergoing this reconstruction, the street is still open to pedestrians. No problem to come take a look and walk around between the wheelloaders and draglines (see last photo).

Easter mass in a Catholic church in Ukraine. When the priest starts the ceremony he asks everybody to go outside in front of the church, and there he tells about the death of Jesus Christ and what it should do to us. There is an open fire that is used to light a candle. After 15 minutes everybody goes back into the church and the ceremony continues.

It all feels very different from a mass in The Netherlands where I grew up. It is more relaxed, less formal, with a priest that is standing between his churchgoers instead of at a distance.

The next day I went to an Orthodox church. Easter is one week later than Catholic Easter so this is a regular mass. These people are waiting for the Father to spray them with blessed water. The Father makes a round outside the church after mass. The Father is friendly and relaxed, takes time to talk and joke with people. No hurries, very informal, very accessible.

Lenin looks from across the street, one hundred meters away.

In one of the pictures below you see a man on the top of the stairs behind something that looks like a carillon. Actually it is a carillon, and he plays it. The chuch is still under construction, and this carillon is made from empty gas bottles with the bottom cut away. Works just fine.

A young mother showing her newborn baby in front of the altar in a Catholic church in Novograd, Ukraine. One striking difference with a church in The Netherlands is the age of the visitors. In The Netherlands Catholic churchgoers are all 50+, and my parents (91 and 97) may still call themselves Catholics and go to church occasionally, but they feel no actual connection with their local priest anymore.

Meat market in Novograd, Ukraine.

7/11 in Kiev, they call it a kiosk.

Cat in an appartment building.