This Country Will Steal Your Soul and Rob You Blind - Not Necessarily in that Order

So, friends of mine from the U.S. visited this week. Their visit was off to a delightful start, since one of their flights was delayed and luggage lost en route. Despite the hassel, we persevered - I gave them a brief tour of the downtown area and headed home for dinner.

This is where it gets interesting. Back in the apartment, we close the door, but, evidently, do not lock it. We move to the dining room for dinner, eat, have tea and dessert and are getting ready for bed, when one of my guests can't find her purse. She is not known for her organizational skills, so we figure it is misplaced. However, when another bag dissapears, we know we're in trouble.

Having the fortune of leaving my bag in the other room, I am the only one whose purse was not stolen. I venture out of the apartment to see if the bags were dumped, and sure enough, I find them, empty, on the 3rd floor landing of our building. We spend the rest of the evening calling credit card companies and dealing with the militia.

About 20 of them arrive, in order to fill out some forms and attempt to find our thief and although it takes ten times as many of them to do the job of a two officers, they are somewhat helpful and sympathetic. Additionally, they are suprisingly organized and even provide a scent dog who traces our robber's scent through the back courtyard onto a sidestreet. They tell us to take a look in the area the following morning, since they may have dumped our ids and other belongings, which we do, but find nothing.

We are all fairly traumatized by the event. This is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Kyiv and we are shocked that someone came into the apartment and stole our bags, while we sat in the next room!