Sunday I flew to Kiev.  The last time I’d stayed at the Holiday Inn, a thoroughly American Tourister experience.  This time I stayed at Hotel Greguar (connected to the patisserie Gregoire), a Ukranian apartment-hotel.  There was only one elevator and most of the time I found myself walking up five flights of stairs, but the room was huge and had a washing machine!  Sunday night I had dinner with Yuriy and his wife Sasha.  He’s a superstar developer no longer working on Avid stuff, but it was delightful to see him and hear his observations on Ukraine and Agile.

Monday thru Thursday I went in to the office, and worked in a three-person cubicle at the desk of an engineer on vacation.  Developers there come in late and leave late, which facilitates communication with California at the end of the day.  I met lots of people I’d only ever known through email and Skype, and had fun as well as getting quite a bit done.

The street the hotel was on had several restaurants.  I went to a Georgian one (Khachapuri and Wine), two Ukranian ones (Compote and Petrus), and a salad place.  But the most interesting was a little bar called Taranka, which serves dried fish and Ukranian craft beer, which go together very well.

Friday I flew to Budapest, dropped the stuff at the hotel, and walked to the train station to meet Ray, arriving from Romania (and an unplanned stop in Vienna.)