Throughout this, my twelfth visit to Ukraine during the conflict, I will write a daily blog.  I try to write in the moment, capturing my thoughts, my moods, my emotions.  As I embark on these journeys, I never know quite what to expect; not daily life as we know it in the United Kingdom but daily...

We flew on time, we arrived on time at 01:30 hrs; the in-between, who knows.  Transport awakens at 04:00 hrs in Budapest so I circled arrivals seeking an empty seat for a doze; eventually, success to wake with a cricked neck and a jog for the 200E bus; twenty minutes or so to Kőbánya-Kispest...

Today’s picture shows the ‘Memorial Cubes’ in Uzzhorod. The big fella chugged away through the night, some rocking, some rolling.  I was in Wagon 8, Bed 23; small compartments with four beds; two up, two down.  Each carriage has an attendant who brings tea and coffee.  There is an extended stop in...

Green for go; up and running. But first, breakfast with the boys; gritschke, meat from last night’s barbecue and eggs.  Some morning paperwork preparing for my afternoon meeting with some of the incredible surgeons at Okhmatdyt National Children’s Hospital.  A bowl of tasty homemade soup for lunch...

Today, is to be a quiet day; domestic duties around the home. First, Dmitry and I headed off to Novus, the nearby hypermarket where I experienced a missile scare and evacuation twelve months ago; I recall the experience; the sirens, the security services, people abandoning their trollies, the...

Up for a leisurely breakfast of gritchke, eggs and meat from last night's feast. The early afternoon saw Oleg give me a lift to the city; he was heading to check his craft ale brewery and me to a meeting; he dropped me aside Arsenalna metro station; from here, I crossed the road to the Kyiv Food...

Monday Morning Blues … we awake to a miserable, soggy, wet day in Kyiv; breakfast of the usual; gritschke, meat from a recent feast, eggs and coffee. I had intended for today to be a day of walking Central Kyiv; to visit some sites and to gauge the mood; but, maybe not such a good idea today. A...

Mr. Blue Sky ... so, a beautiful autumnal day. And, after breakfast, I headed to Kyiv; alone and to see some sites and to gauge the mood. Dmitry drove me to Slavutych and the The Green Line metro to Zoloti Vorota; you take the escalator and emerge directly beside Golden Gate. The Golden Gate of...

If it’s possible to have such a thing on a journey such as this … today is the day I had most been looking forward to; not least because I have so been looking forward to meeting Serhiy Hrynenko and to reconnecting with Olena Yuzvak; two quite remarkable individuals. It was an early start,...

And, after yesterday … … … Breakfast, again; the short car ride to Slavutych, again; The Green Line Metro, again; Slavutych to Lukianivska, again; a twenty-minute walk to Okhmatdyt National Children’s Hospital, again; retracing my steps from previous times, again. I am now trusted to walk...

Ditto Thursday 19 October … in the beginning anyway. I retraced my steps to ‘The Old Building, Floor 3’.  Valeriy had already told me that he would likely be in another city and that Oleksandr and Ruslana would accompany me to Nova Poshta. I pressed the entry buzzer to the Microsurgery Ward and...

And so, the end is nigh ... my work is for this trip is done. We had a leisurely morning talking about life in Kyiv and reflecting upon the ten days that had gone before; I felt much had been achieved.  We had kept the promise I had made to Valeriy in June; we have moved forward with our new...

Time to pack and to contemplate the long road home; the return journey is always more tortuous as sufficient time must be allowed to ensure train connections; five changes in total; I was imagining a journey of such complexity back home. First breakfast, a variation of the theme but each day...

Bradshaw in paradise; a day of great rail journeys. We chugged away overnight, arriving in Uzhhorod on time at 07:54 hrs. I went to the ticket office to obtain a ticket for the short ride to Chop, the Ukrainian border town; the train was scheduled for 08:28 hrs which conveniently left just...

Esztergom is a beautiful city in northern Hungary, thirty miles north-west of the capital Budapest. Lying on the right bank of the river Danube, which forms the border with Slovakia, Esztergom was the capital of Hungary from the tenth until the mid-thirteenth century when King Béla IV of Hungary...