Dnipropetrovsk

After my smoky night I was glad to leave this motel and see some of Zaporijia’s sights. I think the motel owners were glad to see me go. Some establishments just don’t like their motorcycle guests I suppose. Not sure if my dusty bags and filthy motorcycle suit had anything to do with it.
I had a rendez-vous with my couchsurfing hosts planned in the afternoon. I would be staying with a family in Dnipropetrovsk and I was supposed to meet them in the afternoon. Plenty of time take it easy, but then again, I did not want to arrive too late.
I did some driving around in Zaporijia but not a whole lot of things to get too overly excited about. It just seemed like a big Ukranian city with broad lanes and everything spread out like crazy not making it ideal for strolling around, so I kept it to driving.

There is however one thing that I wasn’t expecting. I had read somewhere that in the 70ies that this city was known in the world to house one of the wonders of the world at that time. Indeed, this place is the home to a large dam, so large at the time that it blew any other dam out of the water (figure of speech) and was considered to be a major engineering wonder. And I am proud to say that I have driven across this engineering feat. There was also a big Lenin statue on one of the edges of the dam, but I forgot to stop. I was more interested in the artificial beach on the other side.

Now, as impressive as this dam is (well, I guess it has lost some of its coolness appeal over the years), it was very hard to get a good vantage point to take a nice picture of it.

After getting what appeared to me the best possible picture of the dam I set off towards my next destination, Dnipropetrovsk.
Again, this is not a city that will be on many tourists lists of places to visit. But for me it was a great opportunity to break up the ride to Kiev and you must always diverge from the beaten track once in a while. The city was also home to some buildings that I had seen in an architecture book that I wanted to check out in person.

Upon arriving I was greeted by the Dnipro river.

There are some new developments occuring in the city, which has mostly been an industrial city.

I arrived in time at my couchsurfing hosts but was struggling a bit finding their exact apartment. They were living in one of the big apartment blocks on the outskirts of the city who look all very similar and can only be identified by a big number on one of the building’s walls. I was at the right building but was unsure which exact door would lead to the correct apartment and what doorbell to ring. After a quick phone call I was greeted by the man of the family and he led me inside. It was a very small flat but I was immediately told to make myself at home. The lady of the house had prepared some delicious food that I had to eat for lunch. Their english was basic but we made use of modern technology to communicate. They had a tablet computer and google translate was doing overtime. The oldest of their two sons, age 12 also spoke some english which helped a lot as well.

In the evening we all went for a walk alongside the Dnipro river that slices through the city. There was a nice sunset that evening.

The next day I could join the dad on some of his work tasks. He was running an interior design business and today it was payday. One of his big clients had to pay and we were trying to get a hold of this client in order for the money exchange. I was expecting a signature and a bank transfer, but no, stacks of cash were exchanged.
We also visited one of the apartments in a new office building which was being decorated by my hosts’ company.