Visit to Bucha (Ukraine: wounded beauty fighting for us II)

I walked around for 8 km in Bucha on Oct 28 and did not see a restaurant where I could sit down to have a meal. This one by a park looked like a good one but it was closed with its walls and doors full of bullet holes.


According to Google Maps, a lifesaver for me in UA, it is called Bonobo gastrobar with excellent reviews. Hope the folks of this bar have survived and the owner will reopen it in the future. The following is its pre-war photo from Google Maps:


The notorious Bucha massacre committed by Rashists was the reason for me to pay a visit. Here is a recent piece on it. It is worth watching.

"I’m going crazy. I’ve already killed so many civilians.” - a Rashist.

Google Maps led me to a restaurant called CAMPA which turned out to be a tennis club. It had no guests. I saw only a security guard lying on a sofa in the lobby. I guess tennis is not a popular wartime pastime. 

I ran into two kindergarten-age girls selling hot chocolate on the roadside (UA equivalent of US kids selling lemonade?). 

We tried to talk in different languages and the communication was going nowhere. The girls seemed to enjoy this language barrier and kept laughing. 

Their laughter somehow made me want to cry though I was glad that I brought them some fun. 

A butcher in Moscow subjects millions of kids to this war trauma.

Hope the 150UAH I paid is above the price of their delicious hot chocolate. 



Apparently, a lot of restoration work has been done since the Rashist retreat in April, but there are still plenty of damages yet to be repaired.











I had the impression that heavy fighting took place on the highway to Kyiv because I saw long stretches of walls full of bullet holes when riding a bus. The holes are so dense that they almost look like a decoration pattern. I should have taken a video of them with my GoPro.

The road between Bucha and Kyiv is almost completely restored:



Bucha is actually a very pretty town with beautiful parks, houses, and new buildings. I wonder if it is like the bedroom towns in the US suburbs for people working in Kyiv.












It is very easy to get to Bucha from Kyiv - take the red line subway to its terminus Akademmistechko, then take a minibus right at the exit to its last stop. 

Ukraine: wounded beauty fighting for us

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