My Accidental Visit to Kyiv, the Pandemic’s Party Capital - The New York Times

I've been to Kyiv well over a dozen times and the city has a great character and such a wide variety of experiences to offer.

The difference between a city and a person is that a city can’t love you back, but Kyiv frequently gives the impression that it is trying, in that it instantly repays whatever attention you might lavish upon it. It is a city of hidden courtyards and underpasses and bars that you come across by mistake, all of which enables a sense of personal ownership over discoveries everyone has already made. This still isn’t a reason. I can’t say why Kyiv knocked me out the way it did any more than I could objectively account for why and when I fell in love, other than to establish for the record that a feeling of instant affinity is still possible, where matters progress with a speed both astonishing and inevitable.

I've never been to a party in the forest though, or in an abandoned factory.