Headless chicken in Kiev

My last few trips had seen me fall for the effortless charms of Lisbon, vibrancy of Berlin, and progressiveness of Sweden's Gotlands island, and I was looking forward to going somewhere that would make me happy to come home. Kiev seemed perfect. I imagined a bleak city of depressed people and endless grey tower blocks, sure to make me love my home city again.

At first sights my stereotype held true: the post-Soviet bureaucracy was immense (having waited an hour at immigration and collected my luggage, I then had to pass it through a scanner before being released); the traffic barbaric (speed limits routinely ignored and often doubled, and under-taking was as popular as over-taking); and the tower blocks enormous, everywhere, and extremely ugly.

But as I strolled the quiet streets I saw beyond the depressing facade and began to notice the quiet contentment of those around me. Ukraine is a vast and very proud country, and Kiev is in many ways a beautiful and impressive city. The centre of town is surrounded by parks and an enormous river, the Dniestr, runs through the city, dotted with green islands. And it's dotted with a number of magnificent Orthodox churches.

The scale of Kiev and the intense nationalism, combined with the lack of English speakers and use of the Cyrillic alphabet, made it an awesome and daunting host.

I was only there for three nights, in order to plan a new project with our Ukrainian and Moldovan partners - which consumed my first day, lasting 12 hours - and to meet with potential stakeholders (a schedule of six meetings on my second day). This required quite a bit of travelling around Kiev, and I can safely say it is the hardest city to navigate I have ever visited.

The main challenge is that it's almost impossible to know where you are, either on the metro or on foot, because all signs are only in Cyrillic. In addition the distances between places are deceptively great, and almost nobody that I asked could speak any English. I am normally punctual, but in Kiev I arrived for every meeting late, dishevelled and exhausted.

Though I must admit part of the delay was due to me marvelling at the stunning Metro stations, the most stunning of which is Teatrina, famed for it's intricate mosaics...

... and imposing Lenin bust

Luckily I did meet one Ukrainian who spoke English. Like a disconcertingly high proportion of Ukrainian women, Olga was beautiful, though she was unusual because she speaks not only English, but perfect Spanish, which she was teaching to local businessmen. She described the widespread political apathy she and much of the country felt, following the broken promises of 2004's much heralded Orange Revolution. Everyone I spoke to repeated that nothing had changed: politics was still corrupt and in the thrall of business interests.

Whilst surprised at the political disaffection - like many naive westerners I too had believed the hype promoted by our media in 2004 - I was also pleasantly surprised by how friendly people were. Ukrainians are known for smiling rarely, and this my experience, but on the whole the people I asked for help (which I was forced to do often) went to great lengths to assist me, despite us not being able to speak a single word of a common language. I was much relieved when, arriving at my final meeting of my final day, I was greeted with a colleague's birthday banquet and a never ending glass of Ukrainian vodka. Many toasts were made, and my hosts were extremely kind. I have never drunk so much in an office before.

So in a strange way I also fell in love with Kiev. I started to feel an affinity with the people of Kiev, and their proud culture. I also revelled in the fact I got so lost, as not only was it challenging and exciting, but it also made me realise and rely on the kindness of strangers, which is often the most life-affirming lesson of travel.

Ukraine will host the European football championships in 2012, and I suspect that the metro stations will finally be translated into Latin script. It will be a great shame.

Gotlands - Vikings leading the way

In the middle of the Baltic Sea lies a large island, which this week especially may be one of the most progressive places on earth. Connected to the mainland by a creaking propellered cigar tube, Gotlands belongs to Sweden, and is famed for being the warmest part of the country, as well as hosting an annual political festival, Almedalens.

Combining all the political party conferences, Almedalens is a week long bastion of open political debate and discussion on topics as wide ranging as climate change, inner-city poverty and the future of Kosovo. Political leaders stroll the cobbled streets of Gotland's medieval capital, Visby, in chinos and polo necks, ever ready to respond to greetings and polite questions from their citizens. Security is barely to be seen.

I was there with colleagues to launch an informal network of civil society leaders covering 'northern Europe': the countries around the Baltic sea, plus Belarus, Russia and Iceland. We were hosted by the Governor of the island in her beautiful residence, a homage to tasteful artwork, modest opulance and pastel colours.

Following the meetings our hostess held a gathering of Swedish civil society leaders in her spacious garden. Of the many charming people there, the most interesting was a guy in a baseball cap wearing a sandwich board declaring his ability to rap in five languages (Swedish, English, Persian, Spanish and Portuguese), on receipt of a donation. We discussed hip hop and social activism, before he gave me a display of his impressive lyrical talents (in English).

Sweden is of course famous for its enlightened social model and beautiful blond people. But it's also quite pious. I spoke with many young and attractive volunteers of a large tee-totallers' association, referred to as a 'temperance organisation'. They have 48,000 members, each of whom have taken the vow not to drink alcohol. I was stunned to hear of the movement's popularity, though upon reflection realised that this highlighted my origins in a binge-drinking culture. Alcohol is responsible for the majority of violence in rich countries, and yet in the UK there are no recognised popular movements against it, whilst there are for similar common scourges such as fatty foods or CO2. I toyed with the idea of not drinking for a while myself, but before I'd made up my mind someone had bought me a beer.

My second revelation came in the unlikely form of Max Hamburgare, Sweden's answer to McDonalds. It was clean and tastefully decorated; its smiling staff suffered none of the chronic acne typical of their British counterparts; bean salads and fruit were given equal prominence to chips on the menu; and most impressively of all, each choice of burger clearly showed how much CO2 it was responsible for. I went for a 'green burger', which weighed in at a modest 0.2 grams; Carlo tucked into the standard beef burger, costing a whopping 1.6 grams of the evil stuff. Probably equal to one hundredth of a second of my flight home.

Berlin - best of all?

Having declared my love for Lisbon just a few weeks ago, I have been unfaithful already. I was in Berlin earlier this week, and it now challenges fantastic Lisbon for my affections.

It was only a 36 hour trip, but while I was there I had the unmistakable feeling that Germans are indeed a master race. Everywhere I looked the people seemed to be healthier, more beautiful, more intelligent, more relaxed, and more efficient. A homeless man tried to sell a magazine in the metro, and not only was he impeccably polite, but his canine sidekick was so well trained as to trot up and down the carriages offering the magazine to passengers from within a plastic folder in its mouth.

After the organised chaos of London, Berlin felt incredibly civilised. The streets are wide, and the cycle lanes enormous; the roads are never busy and traffic cruises along at an amiable pace. While London blindly aims to become the new Manhatten, Berlin's blend of beautiful old and tasteful new architecture is generally low-rise, and there is an abundance of green space, especially right in the centre of town next to the parliament. For a metropolis of two million it feels as sedate and welcoming as a small town, whilst also being one of the most vibrant cities in the world.

I was there to run a couple of meetings, and not wanting to waste a charities money stayed in suitably squalid accommodation, managing to find one of the city's few ugly buildings to call home for a night. The sewage pipes in our enormous hostel shook violently every time a neighbour put them to use, and the blinds fell apart when opened. It was next door to the North Korean embassy, and aside from the towering fence around one of them, the two buildings looked identical. As I went with a colleague to get food we saw the North Korean diplomats' young children playing in the embassy compound, stretching their arms through the impenetrable fence in what looked like a tragic bid to escape.

The meetings we held went alright, though we soon realised that the Germans are a touch audience. Long the industrial powerhouse of Europe, with enormous trade surplus, they are not used to relying on outsiders. (While the war and especially the Wall are still recent memories, the Marshall Plan seems well and truly forgotten.) So our offer to strengthening their civil society through pan-European collaboration was met with a cool 'so what'. But there were some glimmers of hope and we'll keep plugging away.

Some visitors to Berlin may think that the Wall remains an unhealthy obsession for Berliners. Every map of the city has it marked in a fat red line, and an initiative to mark the footprint of the wall is almost complete. I was reminded of the video's on sale in beautiful Dubrovnik, showing the city's pounding by 'Yugoslav' artillery.

But it could also be seen as a brave attempt to acknowledge the past. The scars of the city's division are still apparent: much of the no man's land separating the two sides remains wasteland, while the starkly contrasting housing on both sides is clearly evident.

This contrast has given rise to an interesting social phenomenon, where the poorer eastern part of the city has attracted a predictable mix of bohemians and artists, making it the coolest part of the city, though now increasingly populated by 'yuppies pretending to be poor'. Apparently they're making the place boring: Starbucks et al are moving in and the interesting galleries and parties are harder to find.

This case was put to me as an example of the importance of social capital by a German intellectual I met in Lisbon two weeks prior. He explained governments narrow-mindedly turf out squatters because they think more money can be made from property in other ways, ignoring the social capital that squatters may bring to an area. The former New York Mayor Ed Koch tapped into this when he said that he only needed the artists in Brooklyn until they could no longer afford to live there.

But despite the encroaching gentrification and the sprouting of a dull and generic western city-scape in areas such as Potzdamer Platz, Berlin remains intensely vibrant, independent and, dare I say it, 'edgy'. However I'm reliably informed that, while it's indisputably a great place, it's nowhere near as dynamic as Hamburg, Munich, or Freiburg. I have a host of potential mistresses awaiting.

Montenegro - redux

Just spent another five days in Montenegro - the surreal, three-year-old micro state between Croatia and Albania - running civil society development events, and it's been an interesting few days.

I flew out on my birthday, along with three senior colleagues. I managed to shake them off in order to chat with a beautiful Aussie woman on our flight. Turned out she works on private yachts as a chef, cooking for the super-rich and their guests on luxury boats. She'd just finished five months cruising the Bahamas and was about to spend another five among the Greek islands. 'Sounds incredible' I said. 'It is', she replied. 'Must pay badly', I said. 'Actually it pays really well, plus there's no tax and no living costs', she replied... I considered changing career.

The hotel were we stayed, and the events were held, is an enormous Spanish-run all-inclusive resort, of the kind one would expect to find (but probably hope to avoid) in somewhere like Torremolinos. It's got an incredible location, in the corner of a stunning bay, ringed by high mountains and right on the beach. But the place had a prison-ish vibe: it has three buildings referred to blocks A, B and C; we were shackled in irremovable plastic bracelets as we checked in to prove our mighty full-package status and claim our free drinks (in plastic cups); and we had to eat when and what we were told. The food was atrocious re-heated buffet style. The chips tasked like cold cardboard and the stews were clearly drawn from the back of the fridge with a mop before being microwaved.

The music was also torturous. They'd clearly got the DJ from Guantanamo Bay. There were just four CDs to choose from in the main pool/bar area that formed the resorts centrepiece the least bad was a Michael Jackson compilation. But not the good stuff. Tunes like 'Earthsong', which I must have heard four or five times during my first afternoon. When I asked the bartender what he was playing at, he replied that he too would not choose such bile, but it was hotel policy to give the elderly and tone-deaf customers what they wanted: nice, pleasant, inoffensive love songs.

The most amusing thing about the place was the sorry looking staff's uniforms: bright yellow waistcoats with blue and white shirts, and a blue bow tie with the company's horrible yellow star logo on each drooping side. I could see the staff cringe as they wore this cross between Butlins and smurfland outfit, and I cringed with them. And sniggered a bit.

Of course I wasn't there to moan about the food or laugh at the uniforms, but to develop civil society in order to hasten the country's accession to the EU. Easy. Well although that's the sort of grandiose claims we were forced to make when writing the project application, in reality we had much more modest ambitions: to train 20 or so NGO leaders in how to make their organisations more sustainable, and then to hold a conference gathering people from NGOs, government, and the European Commission.

It all went surprisingly well. And although we had to work in a windowless conference suite while the sun shone over an area of stunning natural beauty outside, it was made much more pleasant by the fact that Montenegrins are famously relaxed (i.e. lazy) and refuse to work after 3pm, giving us all the best part of the afternoon to enjoy the sun and the cocktails we could order by waving our stupid bracelets at the friendly but absurdly dressed waiters.

After the second day I went to speak to a group of participants who were well into their third cocktails of the afternoon, and one of them tipsily asked me my age. '26' I replied. 'Oh, I thought you were 18 [giggles all round]'. (I heard from our local partner later on that a few participants thought I was too young to be running the event, tempting me into a complex). I smiled serenely (and soberly), and walked away. But later in the day I got my revenge as the teaser - who turned out to be just 20 - asked her friend to tell me to take her for a moonlit walk. I politely declined, using the speech I had to give the next day as an excuse.

The speech started with me explaining what my organisation does, but before doing so I clarified to the audience that although I may not look it, I was old enough to drink alcohol, so if they saw me doing so after the conference they needn't worry. After all it is a young country - what were they complaining about?

Balkan roadshow - Montenegro (2/6)

Following freezing, polluted Belgrade, our roadshow took us to the much more palatable Montenegro. Smaller than East Anglia and with a population equal to Sheffield, this surreal micro-state would be a forgotten backwater were it not for it's stunning Adriatic coast and comfortable Mediterranean climate.

Unfortunately we weren't here on holiday, but to work! We met many of the main players in Montenegrin civil society, including the government minister for NGO cooperation (who's tiny office was located in a shabby block of residential flats), the CEO of the biggest foundation in the country (George Soros' OSI, which last year spent just $700k here), and the people in charge of civil society issues at the EC Delegation (who were so impressed with our presentation of our work that they virtually promised to fund our activities).

Montenegrins are famous in the region for being relaxed, and laxy. We've been told that the conference we will hold here must finish by 3pm so that evveryone can have a nice lunch. Of course they will be too tired to go back to work after that, we were told, so there's no point in asking. But with a beautiful country and wonderful weather, it's hard to blame them.

We also met with our lead partner in Montenegro, who runs a powerful think tank (also housed in a modest residential block, but boasting the former PM, former Foreign Minister and current Ambassador to Washington on it's board). He is our Montenegrin partner on our major project in the region, and besides discussing that and our planned follow-up, we also held a joint presentation of our work to 25 local civil society leaders, the British and US Embassies, and the EC.

Our final official meeting of the trip was a lunch in the stunning coastal resort town of Budva, where all of the country's conferences take place. (Why just have a conference when you can combine it with a holiday?) We were invited to a lunch that was taking place as part of a high-level meeting about the future of civil society in Kosovo. After a few serious questions about what we can offer (and the useful advice that we must not treat Montenegrin organisations as if they are 'feebly minded) we were asked our most important question: would we like red whine or white wine?

So as Carlo and I make our way over the potholed roads to our next destination, we're left with an ever increasing list of contacts to follow-up on, ideas to develop, and expectant potential partners not to disappoint. We're making lots of work for ourselves here, but as we head for Kosovo - the world's youngest state, and one of its most controversial - we are encouraged by our progress so far. Our machine marches on - the next leg may be much more challenging, but for now it's two down, four to go.

Balkan roadshow - Serbia (1/6)

As our creaking overnight train to Podgorica pulled out of the station, I was relieved that our six-country Balkan roadshow has got off to a promising start. We were in Belgrade to get the low down on Serbian civil society.

It was my first time in the city that just 10 years ago was bombed by NATO. It is a fascinating place. Widely seen as the capital of the Balkans, it's a sprawling mix of grey concrete and shining towers, and boasts one of the largest Orthodox churches in the world. It still prominently displays the huge government buildings, destroyed by NATO air strikes, standing as a disfigured testament to the callous West. They are just yards from the sprawling US Embassy complex, where one can find all-American GIs running around in full gear.

As well as visiting the US Embassy, we met people at the British, Canadian, and Italian embassies, international NGOs, and Serbian organisations big and small. We were even granted an audience with the 'father of Serbian civil society' (who modestly states that he prefers to be called its 'voice').

The aim of out visit was to learn more about the exact context for Serbian civil society (which turns out to be extremely complex), raise our profile in Belgrade, and make a definite plan for our takeover of the country.

It quickly became clear that this will be a very difficult market to crack. There is a simmering resentment towards the West, and especially the US and UK, over their scapegoating of the Serbs over the wars of the mid-90s, and the recent shotgun independence of Kosovo. They have a point: the Croatians and Bosnians 'got away' with their war crimes, and Kosovo's independence marks a dramatic and dangerous precedent for international diplomacy, being the first time the international community acknowledged a unilateral succession. Many countries are deeply concerned by this, including Spain, whose Basque and Catalan regions are clamouring for independence.

Kosovo has given Serbia an unenviable choice: between its identity and its future. Milosevic built a fervent Serb nationalism with Kosovo at it's heart, and many Serbs now see it as integral to their sense of nation. However the only viable future for Serbia is in the EU, and that will not be possible without giving up its claim to Kosovo, something most Serbs see as inconceivable.

But despite the broader political grievances, our proposals to connect civil society leaders to their peers across Europe went down extremely well. We were given some very good ideas and are certain that once the dust from our whirlwind trip has settled we will write a masterplan, likely to revolve around addressing the major challenges for the sector here: sustainable funding, and improved governance.

The great and the good of Serbian civil society are eagerly awaiting our proposals, so I think we've done a good job so far. Next up, following a 3am passport check at the railway border post, will be Montenegro. One down, five to go.