About sighseeing und travelling in soviet trains

I have been staying about 5 days in Kiev, more than in any other city on my trip and I didnt visit all the churches and museums that seem to be worth it...But I visited all the statues in memory of some war or some legend or any soviet or national heroe or event...It seems as if in all former soviet countries they really love this kind of statues for every thing. I don't really understand why they have so much of them and not all ar that nice, but still in Kiev I felt like I absolutetly had to visit them, especially the one you see on the picture. It is a statue in the honor of the mythological founders of Kiev and the first russian empire, the Kiever Rus. I was searching this statue more than two hours, walking along the huge Dnepr river and asking people where I could find it. And you know why I absolutely had to see it? Just because its picture was on one of our russian-language exercises that our dear teacher Yurovski gave us last year in University, when we were reading about old russian history...See what a interested student I am! :-)
Anyway, beside of the statues I also visited the Kiever Lavra a huge monastery complex, including many interesting churches and museums. I spent there a whole day. Anyway, time went by very fast and finally it was 1. of sept. and my russian visas validity started! So I bought a ticket to the nighttrain Kiev-Moskva... This night train was really modern one, but still it differs from westeuropean ones. It is a pretty complicated thing to get a train ticket in Ukraine or Russia, you need to ask early enough and you need passport and so one...but once you got it, the trains are just much cosier than ours. So even in this modern ukrainian night train there where carpets with flowers and we got tea in this lovely old-fashioned cups. I had a funny neighbour that night, guy from Moscow, who had travelled to Kiev just for one day, for a date with a girl he met in a chatroom...They definitely have an other understanding of Distance than we have... 22 hours in a train just to spend 8 hours together with an unknown girl! ...