Pestilog

L'viv! L'viv!

Brigette and I went to L'viv last weekend. I am just now getting around to posting pics and things because I have been sleeping all week because I apparently have frikin MONO! I got the initial diagnosis on Thursday. My blood work comes back monday, but I am going to be heart-stoppingly shocked if that is not what I have. I am so pissed. I think I got it from someone in Chicago. I'm not naming names, but there is only one person I know who can claim immunity, which also means that they are a carrier and filled with evil desires to give me mono! Or something like that. Either way, I have been a cranky disaster in the apartment all week. I have no idea how the boys have put up with me. I can't even put up with me at the moment.

Ok. Whining aside for now. Brigette and I kept a journal while we were there. She helped me remember a lot of things to write down, and totally coddled me with patience and nescafe and pineapple juice on the trainride back when I was sore and pissy with tonsils like easter eggs. She's pretty swell like that.

Friday

So, our journey here was marvelous. We took a domestic train to Zahony, then got off, and bought a ticket to Tchop, the first town across the Ukranian border. This train ride took about 10 min, and was really more of a customs formality than actual travel.

We had a few hours in Tchop before we boarded another train to Lviv. Tchop is a beautiful little place. It appears to me a military town. Every other building is labeled MILITSJA something or other, and there were men (and 1 woman) in uniform everywhere.

The cashier at the train station was really, really nice to us, and helped us find tickets, line numbers, and the right tracks and cars, even after I stumbled through our itinerary in broken Ukranian for her. People here have all been phenomenally nice, actually. As we walked around Tchop, we met several people who managed to wave goodbye to us before we went back to the train station to leave.

We found all the produce markets at the center of town (which is, honestly, about 3 blocks from the outskirts of town) and watched some men unload a massive truck full of cabbage into a stall on the sidewalk. We saw boys driving horses-drawn carts that looked like rickshaws full of roofing material and piping around to different construction projects. We met several stray dogs, took pictures of some of the railroad switches, and ate some Ukrainian apricot-flavored ice cream. It was gorgeous and sunny all afternoon.

The train from Tchop to Lviv was great as well. It took about 6 hours from start to finish, but, my lord, the Carpathian mountains are just beyond beyond beautiful. Brigette and I never factored in to the equation the fact that we were coming out in the fall. We couldn’t have come at a better time, because the scenery from our train was like something out of a jigsaw puzzle. The low, rolling mountains nestled the train in a wide valley for most of the trip. Small villages with farms dotted the landscape, and brilliantly colored trees of red, gold and orange gave way to terraced fields and small stone houses, haystacks, and herders. The tracks were lined with cattle and goats through the more populated areas, sometimes roaming free, sometimes being led by a lone farmer back towards home.

Public transportation in Ukraine is some of the best I have ever encountered, not because of the quality of the cars or the efficiency of the system, but because there is a human being over looking every single step of travel. When we got on the train in Tchop, the conductor took out tickets. When we reached L’viv, he came back, stamped receipts for us in hand, and reminded us that this was our stop. What I would have done for someone like this on our Slovakia trip 2 weeks ago. In L’viv, there is a woman on every tram that sells you tickets once you board. No searching for machines and correct change, no laboring through a transaction at the cigarette counter, no wondering when to validate, if you are on the right line, or risking getting caught because all other options failed due to a massive language barrier. No, you just hop on the train, throw a bill at this lovely lady, take your change, and you’re golden. Its great.

When we got to the center of the city, we didn’t know exactly where we were going, so we wandered around for a bit, and stopped into several bars to ask for directions. I was able to get by, but totally had flashbacks to David Sedaris’ inane mumblings in Me Talk Pretty One Day.

“Excuse me, might it be the case that you would be knowing where it is found the Mitskievicz Square or George Hotel? Is it but far? There is walking? or is there a train that is of the place?”

Everyone we talked to was so patient, so friendly, and so very, very generous and helpful. One woman even walked out of her flower shop at 11:30 at night and walked us 2 blocks before pointing us down a road that would take us straight there. People here are just amazing.

By the time we got settled, we were ready to eat anything that wasn’t moving (we had nothing but crackers and juice on the trains all day, and we left Budapest at 7am). Unfortunately, even in the heart of the city, even the McDonalds were closed, which is the international signal for “game up” when it comes to scoping for food. But we ended up finding a patio bar that was still open, and each had a liter of L’vivskie Premium lager and half a dark chocolate bar for dinner.

We’re not very nourished, but fully anaesthetized and totally pumped about the free breakfast at our hotel tomorrow, which, by the way, is totally posh and only $30 a night. I love it.

We’ve only been here for a few hours, and Ukraine is already topping the list of best places I have ever been.


Saturday

We got up today to a phenomenal breakfast at the hotel. The best coffee I have had in ages, fresh bread, cheese, cherry preserves, omelette, and kiwi yogurt. Kiwi yogurt! Frikin A. I love it.

We headed out of the hotel to wander around the city. The center square reminds me so much of Boston Common. There were families everywhere, and children driving wildly into agitated flocks of pigeons in the Power Wheels that were available for rent on one side of the courtyard in front of the opera house.

We found countless bazaars with vendors selling jewelry, clothing, embroidery, and “native” artifacts like icons and nesting dolls, and tons of soviet military paraphernalia: medals, certificates, gas masks, ID photos, jackets, patches, shoulder bars, even bayonette tips, knives, and shackles.


We saw a handful of orthodox churches in the first hour out of doors, including the famous Armenian Church, built in 1363.


This place was so beautiful and eerie on the inside. It was simple, yet impeccably wrought. Even the paintings on the walls were striking. I particularly like this one, in which a priest is being carried on his death pallet by several other clergymen, flanked on the sides by transparent, hooded figures lighting the way with candles. One of the pallbearers is looking over his shoulder, as if he sees them. We saw so many beautiful works of art in so many different churches and cathedrals during the day, but none were this frighteningly human.

We also found a book sale in front of a building that used to be an old printing press operated and funded by a church. I beleive the building is still technically on the church grounds, and there is a huge, imposing statue of a certain printer who was instrumental in the operating of the print shop and the training of other printmasters several generations ago

Here, I bought a military portrait of a soviet soldier form the 1956 invasion of Hungary. It was only 5 hrivna. On the back is a hand written note, that says "With many fond memories of our service together, to my friend Michaelo, from Vasil. 2.7.56" Fascinating.

We also found a flower market while heading back into the center. The only word that I can really use to describe it was dazzling. It was huge and packed with stalls and vendors with displays swollen with fresh mums and roses.

We ate lunch at a restaurant called Veronica on Shevchenko Boulevard. It was a really nice place with waitresses in full uniform and candles and customers dressed way fancier than us. We dropped nearly $20 on lunch (120 hrivna) which is completely unheard of, but we so enjoyed it. We had this fabulous aubergine and tomato dish (after living with Marko this long, I cant seem to call it eggplant anymore....i dunno. He yells at us about it a lot. Its like aubergine hegemony in our kitchen) as well as sour cherry varenyky, which is like a cross between peroghi and ravioli, with sour cream sauce. We also had coffee and bread and a few other things. It was so good.

In the afternoon, we had coffee at the home of Maria Baczinszkaj, a friend of Professor Lisa Crone, who taught my Ukrainian lessons in Chicago last summer. Maria, or Baba, as she prefers to be called, is a social worker, who came to Ukraine as a peace corps worker and then never really left. She and Lisa know each other from Harvard, where they studied together in the early seventies. She was delightful, gave us biscuits and coffee, talked for ages about all of her favorite museums and restaurants in L’viv, and gave me pages full of names and titles of persons and agencies whom I should contact for my thesis on HIV in western Ukraine. She was so wonderful, and it made the whole day just to get to meet someone new and spend part of the afternoon as a houseguest in a new place.

After our coffee with Baba, Brigette and I walked back up the hill towards the Armenian Church and went to a place called Dzyga, which was recommended to us by both Baba and Sasha from CEU. This place is a bar, a café, an antiquarium, and an art gallery. It’s amazing. Situated at the dead end of a ripped up cobblestone street, surrounded by paintings, stone arches, and glittering lights hanging like a blanket of stars between the buildings, the entrance feels more like the gate of a grotto than the front door to an art bar.


We meandered through the halls, openly pined for the ink paintings on the wall, and eventually settled at a table outside where we ordered a plate full of blue cheese, brown bread and several servings of mulled wine.

Yea, we took a picture of our food. Wanna fight?

While we were sitting at the bar on the street, the strangest thing happened. A large group one table over started braiding paper napkins together. Within minutes, the paper napkin chain had become a floral halo placed on the head of one of the girls at the table, parading around with mums in her hand like a bride. A guy from another table came over and acted like her groom. The whole group was drunk and loud and hilarious. People from her table brought out bread with salt spooned on top, and fed it to everyone in the bar. They had candels, had made fake rings out of foil gum wrappers, and they had a full on fake wedding in the middle of the street.

We talked to Sasha about this later. All he could say was, "Oh yea, a mock wedding. I know that Ukranians are like that, but I don't know why."

There was toasting and singing and screaming and bride capture and a long portrait sitting while everyone took hundreds of pictures on their cell phones while wiping hte tears from their eyes because they were laughing so hard. It was easily the craziest thing I have ever witnessed. And we totally didnt get it. But we were given alcohol, so in the absence of understanding, we were at the least able to participate.

We ended up going back to the hotel later than we meant because of this crazy mock-wedding thing at Dzyga. Once again, it was nearly 11 and everything was closed. So, for our second night in town, we had a dinner of beer and McDonalds french fries.

By the by, did you know that McDonalds doesn't change the names of their food in Ukraine, they just write it in cyrillic? Its nuts. My personal favorite was the Big Tasty (Біг тасті) and the Fillet-o-Fish (філе-о-фіш). What nonesense.

Sunday

It rained all day. From the moment we stepped out the door untill we got back to Budapest, we were totally soaked to the bone. We checked out in the morning, left our bags with the hotel, and headed straight for the Ukranian ethnographic museum, down the street.

This place was interesting. The ground floor was the "folk exhibit". This is what traditional Ukranian people wear. This is what a traditional Ukranian country house looks like. This is a Ukranian moustache. Here, we got to learn all about the crazy painted eggs called pysanky that are all over Ukraine (and the origin of easter eggs by the way) that were used as sacred tokens that held magical powers.

People used to rub them over their donkeys to make them more fertile and collect them in the house in just such and such a way or else they wouldn't be ensured a good harvest. Totally the zaniest peice of cultural history that I had never run across before in my life.

The next floor up was a huge exhibition of table and cupboard clocks from central europe from the 1700s, and the floor above that was like a local art gallery. Weirdest, best museum ever.

For lunch, we went to a spot recommended to us by Wawa the day before, called Pyatza Hata. It is a cafeteria style restaurant near Franko University. Again, we wanted to try everything and dropped a ridiculous amount of money on food. I think we each paid about $4 for lunch, our trays were spilling over, and people were giving us strange, "you just got enough food for a whole family" looks.
But it was SOOOO good.

We had borsht, and kasia, and pasta, and garlicky aubergine, and buttered potatoes, and coffee, and tomato salad, and cheese, and thick bread, and cabbage salad, and dessert. Oh my word.

We started off exploring again, but soon after this, we got really cold, really cranky, and started feeling awful. At least I did. Remember, by this time, I have had the "flu" (no Jen, thats mononucleosis) for like 3 weeks now, and I am cold and achy and kind of want to die. We ended up grabbing our bags and taking the tram back to the train station where we booked out tickets back to Tchop.

Buying a ticket back was much more difficult than buying a ticket there. I mean, no one in Ukraine speaks English. No one. But at least the folks in Tchop, being in a border city, are used to people coming around with language barriers to deal with, and they treated everyone with a lot of patience and generosity. The cashiers in L'viv, on the other hand, are a much crankier folk who have to deal with drunk asses like the guy in line in front of me all day, and sometimes, the last thing they can handle is two american girls who dont know the word for third class. Plus, Brigette had only brought train times with her, not line numbers or origins or final destinations. So, it was my job to make sense of this:

and just hope to get us on the right line.
We actually had one woman yell at us and tell us to go away. She was asking me a question about our fare much to quickly for me to understand, untill she finally gave up and yelled "You don't understand? What do you mean you dont understand? How am I supposed to do anything for you if you don't even understand? Go to information. Go!" I understood that.
But we ended up getting what we needed just fine from the next cashier, whos line I picked because she looked the most like a grandmother, and so I was projecting kindness and gentleness onto her. It totally worked.

The ride from L'viv to Tchop was uneventul. We slept most of the way there. In Tchop, we went through customs a second time, at like 4 in the morning. I again had a great time withthe people in this city. The border guards were especially hilarious. One lady took one look at my American passport and said "Amerikanska. hrm. ah, [in Russian] You don't speak Russian, do you?" "nope" I said. Then she said "[in Ukrainian] and surely not Ukrainian, eh?" I answered her, "No, I speak a little Ukranian," to which she responded with a huge smile and was like "Really? How lovely, you can go on through." Funny stuff.

The train from Tchop to Zahony was definatly noteworthy. This is not just a national border, but an EU border as well, and this line is ripe with smugglers pretty much around the clock. While we were on board, we saw two guys strip the plates off the air vents in the ceiling, pull back the vinyl coverings of the inside of the car, and pack nearly 250 packs of cigarettes into the roof space. They were absolutly surgical. It was amazing. When they were done, they closed up the vents, checked that you couldn't see anything with a flashlight, wiped all their prints off the ceiling, and then moved to another car. The whole train watched this go down, and barely anyone even looked up. Everyone is just so normalized to it. When we got to Zahony, the Hungarian border guards ripped through peoples luggage, and asked us specifically about cigarettes. One sweet looking old lady had 50 packs of cigarettes hidden in her bag that were found and confiscated right away. But to my knowledge, none of the ones packed in the ceiling were ever found, despite the guards scrutinizing the vents and looking into them with lights and banging on the ceilings, listening for things rattling around. Those same cars were attached to a larger engine and several other cars heading for Budapest. We slept the whole way there, 5,000 cigarettes in tow, and didnt rouse until nearly 9am, when we pulled into Budapest on Monday morning, just in time to go to class at 11.

Labels: Brigette, photos, travel, ukraine

posted by Veruka2 @ 11:21 PM