Friday after work we went to Frankfurt and enjoyed the good service at Frankfurt Airport (same can of course be said about Munich Airport which has same high service level). As usual they provide decent coffee, good wireless network and newspapers (not only German newspapers but also English versions) but this time they could also offer football games from Euro 2012.
After this pit stop in Frankfurt, we continued to Kiev which was another two hours on the plane. In Kiev we took a bus to the train station, watched The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo on the iPad at the train station before taking the train to Kharkiw. We arrived to Kharkiw at 11 o’clock on Saturday and were met by an orchestra playing tunes from Soviet times. There were many people around the train station that were interested to see the fans coming to the city. On Saturday Denmark and Netherland (1-0) played in Kharkiw and we saw many Dutch people in the city but not so many Danish. In Kharkiw we were more interested to see the city but we saw the end of the game in a restaurant and was delighted to see that the Nordic people has started the tournament very well.
We are staying at a hostel a few kilometres from the city centre but a taxi ride from the centre of the city centre is only 4 euro, i.e. equal to a normal tram ticket in Zurich… In the morning we went by bus and that cost half a euro for both of us.
In the light of the transportation costs the hostel is fairly expensive. They try to earn some money during Euro 2012 and who can blaim them for that. They charge almost seven times the normal fare and 80 euro for both of us is comparable to normal Europen rates for hostels but the surroundings here does not resemble of a modern European city. The roads and houses in this part of the city are very poor excuses for roads and houses. It is of course possible to use the roads but the cars and buses often slow down to round a pot hole or drive very carefully over tram tracks etcetera. Speaking of trams, it is a wonder that the trams work considering how the tracks and the tram wagons look like. The people at ZVV maintaining the tram track network in Zurich would have nightmares for a long time if they took a closer look…