Saw this memorial plaque near the train station, and thought I had to have a picture of it for an interesting story. It didn't help, however. The plaque contained some historical info about the Southeastern railway of Ukraine.
This was my second visit of Kharkiv. We visited the children's railway in the Horky park, got inside the constructivist opera theater and saw a rehearsal, and walked a bit here and there.
Saw this memorial plaque near the train station, and thought I had to have a picture of it for an interesting story. It didn't help, however. The plaque contained some historical info about the Southeastern railway of Ukraine.
Taking photos inside the Kharkiv subway was prohibited. I'm going to make a joke about content monopoly here, because there are photos of stations on their official website. Anyway, I obliged, and didn't take any pictures inside the metro.
There was a children's railway in the city park. While we were going there, people have taught me a lesson not to trust them. It was not once but twice that people gave me wrong directions to the railway, while the printed map was speaking the truth. Why ask then? Because my friend loved talking to people and thought life is better this way.
The building of the children's railway.
The station bell was absent.
There were many well-nourished jays (Garrulus glandarius) in the park. There were also many insects all over the place. There must be some connection between these facts.
We boarded a trolleybus in order to get to the one of the biggest squares ever — the Svobody square.
People standing in a queue to see sand sculptures. I was like «That silly stuff is not for me» and didn't go.
But I went there the next day, under pressure from my friends.
Wikipedia told that this monument had weighed in at 30 tonnes, only the metal part, and that it was the best monument of Taras Shevchenko in the world. I guess it is also the heaviest?
Here is a building that is not your clerical baroque that we are kind of obliged to like. This building of the Kharkiv theater of opera and ballet is a spaceship in comparison to these churches.
It was dark inside, because there were no performances scheduled for that day. The insides could be described with one word: brown.
We went to some upper floor, where it was dark. A tiny dot of light that we saw turned out to be a pinhole in a rehearsal room's door. It was not me! I had never been there before.
Three meters to the left of that hole, and we found the door into the main hall, where another rehearsal was taking place — the one of the Cherevichki opera.
The curtain with the window drawing went up, and Soloha entered the stage together with a demon of a baritone.
When we left after a few minutes, we met a very enthusiastic man who whispered at us: «You should go there! It is very interesting there!» while showing us the door from which we just came from.
The daylight appeared painful after such a retreat into darkness. People were enjoying the fountains near the opera.
There were many steps and parapets around the opera building, attracting the youngsters with the boards, BMX, or rollerblades. Some were trying to hone some basic tricks while others were drinking beer and urinating on the opera.
We went to an old street next.
A bricked up window on Chernyshevskoho street.
There were some empty and ruined buildings. Nobody squatted them.
There were many bridges, perhaps, because the rivers were not too wide. Here is the Podilskiy bridge.
One of pedestrian bridges.
A view from a pier near Lopanskiy bridge.