The Road Less Traveled

In the morning, Michael (the Peace Corps volunteer I visited in Lutsk) walked to the main road, flagged a taxi, and brought it back around to the apartment entrance. (I didn’t think my suitcase, which had already suffered a major wheel injury, would survive 200 m on a muddy, wet path).  I took the 30-hr ride to the bus station, and walked up to a bus that had a sign that it was going to Lviv.  It was starting to pull away from the stop, but thankfully the driver pulled over.  Instead of putting my luggage under the bus, he wedged it between the last and next-to-last row of seats.  I climbed over the suitcase and sat in the corner like a kid in a fortress made of luggage. It didn’t feel like enough of a buffer, though, from the three leather-skinned men sitting next to me with a near-empty bottle of Lvivske beer in one man’s hand. (Did I mention it was 8 am?) Eventually, they got off and three generations of villagers (grandma, daughter, granddaughter) squeezed into their place.

The bus drove past forests and fields of yellow flowers that were reminiscent of the town of Trachtimbrod from “Everything is Illuminated”.  I later realized I liked the views here so much because I didn’t see any big smokestacks. 

Around 11:30, we pulled into the station and I caught a taxi (45 hr, bargained down from 50), to Hotel George.  On the way, the driver voluntarily gave me a lecture (after I told him I had lived in Kharkiv) about how in Lviv they only had communism for 40 years, so they speak more Ukrainian and have a more correct nationalism. In Kharkiv they had communism for 70 years and had so much “propohanda” (propaganda) “They don’t even love themselves. They don’t love Ukraine. It’s like an American not loving America.”  I even retold what he had said and I repeated it to make sure I understood correctly.  I don’t agree that people in the East “hate Ukraine” or “hate themselves.”  But I didn’t dare argue the point with him. As a researcher I was too busy making notes in my head that a taxi driver would say such things, and say it to a foreigner. 

At the hotel, it turned out neither my inquiry directly through the Hotel Web site, nor exchanges of emails with Lviv Ecotour, had converted into an actual reservation at the hotel. They had the type of room I wanted (a single with a private bath for 420 hr), but only for one night not two.  I could have chosen a cheaper room with a shared bath, a more expensive room (over 600 hr), or stayed one night and moved to another room. As in Dnipropetrovsk, the clerk suggested I pay for one night and think about it.  I took that suggestion.

I settled into the spacious, bright room with a huge door and high ceilings, had a morning snack, did a little laundry, checked my email with a free wi-fi trial, and headed out into the city.  I walked on Prospect Svobody (Freedom Boulevard) to the opera house and bought tickets for a ballet.  I don’t think it was a famous one, but it was only 30 hr (about $3.50) an mainly I wanted to see the opera house and sit in it for a little while.

It was cold and rainy and I hadn’t had any caffeine yet, so after the opera house I started walking in the direction of the hotel to find some coffee or go back to bed.  I stumbled on a restaurant-coffee bar called Praha (Prague), which offered Czech dishes in a room whose walls were covered with several stain glass reliefs.  The cappuccino was excellent, as was the grilled pork with a creamy mushroom-pepper sauce I ordered. Those two items plus a bottle of Borzhomi mineral water cost less than $9, and that was in a restaurant with a tablecloth.

After lunch, I wandered around the city center. I stopped in one Catholic and one Orthodox cathedral that I remembered from previous visits to Lviv.  They were both as beautiful as ever. I walked around Plosha Rynok, and this time I stopped in a museum of ethnography.  If I understood the Ukrainian correctly, in the late 1800s the museum started collecting furniture and other objects from the 16^th century.  After the first World War, these objects ended up in “private collections” (or hidden away).  Then in the 1970s a fund was established (either to recover these objects or buy new ones, I’m not sure).  The furniture and Vienna china that was there was lovely, as was the folk art from a man who painted in the 1980s and 1990s and died last August.  After the museum, I walked through the Lviv crafts market, and felt bad that I had bought so much in Chisinau. 

Around 2 p.m., I decided it was time for dessert.  I found my way to Veronika, a restaurant-bakery I remembered from previous trips (though I didn’t remember where it was).  It was even better than I remember. I must have stared at the case for 10 minutes before I finally chose 100 grams of a roulette with yellow cake, butter cream, chocolate cream, and a surprising, thin layer of orange.  It was only 10 gryvnias, too.  I wish I had ordered tea instead of a latte; not only was the latte 27 hryvnias, I finished it too quickly. I would have much rather sipped tea and enjoyed the ambience.

With all the food gone and no reason to stay,  I settled my bill and walked back the hotel, which it turned out was right up the street from Veronika.  I rested a bit and got ready for my night at the opera.  The inside was lovely; many people were having their pictures taken on the steps inside.  I walked up to the 3^rd floor balcony entrance. A man stopped me, and I showed my ticket. He said something and the only word I understood was “наченается” (beginning). I started to walk to the down the hall and he stopped me again. Somehow I understood I had to go down (maybe I had gone one level too high)? but the stairs only led to the very bottom.  I asked another worker, and she pointed to the door leading up. I said (in Russian) that I had already been there and the man said to come down. “Again she said the phrase with “наченается” and pointed me into the first level of seating. I looked for my seat, but the numbers only went to 23, and I had 29. Again I said to her I don’t understand. Finally she said, “любое место” and I understood—take whatever seat you want. 

The show looked like a cross between “Adam and Eve” and “Terminator: The Rise of the Machines.” 
At least the music was good, one male dancer had 6-pack abs, and the ladies were on their toes more than I ever could be.  I later understood from the show that the title, “створчення світу”, probably means “Creation of the World.” I was too cheap to buy a 10 hryvnia program to find out more. 

The show ended by 8:00 p.m.  I wasn’t hungry so I browsed shoe shops until I found a place selling shwarma. I hadn’t had it in Ukraine or Moldova yet, but now I have a new rule: Don’t buy shwarma if you can’t watch them make it. When I opened the foil, it was 80% mayonnaise, 10% chicken, and 10% pickle.  Ugh. 

The next morning I had a real bath with hot water and realized it was totally worth $20 more to have a private bathroom.  I went downstairs for the free breakfast—tea (or instant coffee), meat, cheese, tomatoes, bread, and blini with cheese and sour cream. 

By the time I finished breakfast and finished repacking, it was only 10:30. Since the weather looked better than yesterday, I decided to take one last little walk around the city.  I walked to the street where the bad shwarma shop, because there was a building up the road that looked interesting. It turned out it was a church that appeared to be closed. Nearby was a monument, most likely to communist oppression.  I walked down a parallel street and stumbled on the Lviv Art Gallery, which appears to be housed in a former palace. If I’d had more time, I totally would have paid the 5 hryvnias to walk around it.

I went back to the room, grabbed my bags, and went to the reception to drop off my key. I said in English, “I’m checking out.”  The lady at the desk said, “Passport?” That seemed like a strange question. Since when do you show your passport to check out? Then she showed me MY passport.  Apparently I had given her my passport to check in, and hadn’t gotten it back. I’d been wearing my money belt and thought I felt it next to me, but it wasn’t. That really scared me and made me realize I have to be more careful with it in the future. 

Grigore and Lena took me to the train station in Chisinau and put me on the overnight train. Somehow I lucked out—I had the entire kupe’ (a 4-bed compartment) to myself.

I was a little more nervous about this trip than past trips into Ukraine because it was my first time crossing the border into Ukraine under Ukraine’s new “visa free regime” for Americans. I knew someone who had flown to Kyiv and entered the country without a visa with no problem, but I’d heard stories about train crossings between Azerbaijan and Georgia. It was supposed to be possible to get a visa on the spot, but the person ended up having to pay a bribe to the border police above and beyond that in order to cross the border. One person refused to pay and held up the train for seven hours as a result. Kashmar! (What a nightmare!)

Fortunately, the only surprise on my trip across the border was a visit from the Transdinistrian border police; for the first time in my travels, they collected a 6-lei (50 U.S. cent) border-crossing fee. Transdnistria is an impoverished sliver of land between the Dnister River and the Ukrainian border. It was part of Moldova until 1992, when it started a war with Moldova and created its own border and its own flag. It’s also considered a good place to store or smuggle guns and other illegal goods. Eventually, it wants to be a part of the Russian Federation. I doubt that is going to happen.

In the morning, I ordered tea from the providnik (train car conductor). To me there is something poetic about sitting on a Ukrainian train, listening to the clickety-clack of the wheels on the tracks, looking out the window at the miles of snowy plains I’m passing, and drinking tea in a tall glass with a silver glassholder.

I arrived in Vinnitsya at 9:30 a.m. Normally I would have gotten off an hour and a half earlier in Zhmerinka, an east-west north-south train junction. As Grigore says jokingly, “All roads don’t lead to Rome. They lead to Zhmerinka.” However, when I checked the train times online, there was no connection from my overnight train to another train going to Khmelnytsky. My friend Tina told me there are elektrichkas (regional trains that run on electricity) that go between Zhmerinka and Khmelnytsky, but no one knew the schedule and I didn’t want to be stuck sitting in Zhmerinka for hours on end. I knew in Vinnitsya I could catch a taxi to the bus station and then catch a bus to Khmelnystky; they run at pretty regular intervals and only take two hours.

When I got off the train in Vinnitsya, I was surprised there were no taxi drivers waiting on the platform. In the past they were always there when you didn’t need them. Now that I was hauling a 50-pound bag of winter clothes, teaching materials, and gifts for friends, they were nowhere to be found. I ended up lugging the big bag down the stairs to the underground platform passage and back upstairs again to the exit. Not only did no one offer to help me, one man in passing said, “you should use the ramps”. There are special polished concrete ramps for carts with wheels, but I could not figure out how to get and keep my bag and myself on it.

Finally, at the train station exit, I found a taxi driver willing to take me across town to the bus station. I got really lucky—he took me to directly to the bus platform, and the bus took off about 5 minutes after I got on it. I was able to buy my ticket directly on the bus; I didn’t have to go to the kassa and get one.

About 40 minutes into the journey, I felt a need to go to the bathroom. There are no bathrooms on Ukrainian buses. I tried to ignore it, even when we stopped for another 20 minutes 50 yards from a gas station while the driver and assistant fixed something that was wrong with the bus engine. After we started moving again, I asked when we could stop for a bathroom break. They said not for another half an hour. After another 15 minutes, I said, “could we stop here?” He said, “5 more minutes.” Of course, In Ukraine, “5 more minutes” translates into American English as anywhere between 5 minutes and 2 hours. I felt like an idiot with my constant asking and tapping my feet like a three year old. I imagined the other passengers on the bus were getting impression that foreigners don’t know how to hold their pee. I asked myself, what happened to the girl who used to pride herself on her “biological control” in Ukraine? The girl who once took a 15-hour train ride from Kharkiv to Odessa and didn’t use the bathroom once?

When the bus finally pulled into a town bus station, I walked as fast as I could to the bus station outhouse. It was a dirty, concrete hole in the floor with no lights and no door (there was a wall for privacy from the rest of the station). Snow flurries were drifting in. On my normal bathroom rating scale, it would have received zero stars, but at that moment it was the best bathroom I’d seen in my life.