Ukraine

Zdrastvuyte!

Well the border experience was quite something. We had a couple of hours drive before we arrived at it, so we were there at around 11am, and the queue was already starting to lengthen. There was an awful lot of waiting before we were ushered in to fill out lots of forms, to be interrogated (in Ukrainian) and have the van searched several times. We had numerous stamps grudgingly placed on a slip of paper by various different officers that we were shuffled between. It was quite a strain, as there was not a common word between us, and we just had to imagine how it must be for a Ukrainian to turn up at the British border control and expect them to speak Russian. Eventually after three and a half hours we were set free on the Ukrainian side of the border into the unknown. One thing we realised was that we were not sure if we had got the right insurance for driving a car in Ukraine (no one at the border spoke any English, and they said we had everything we needed; we weren't convinced...), and we were worried about being pulled over and taken to prison. To combat this we have adopted a 'police check avoidance procedure' which involves tailing a truck as we go through a police check, so that by the time the police see us it is too late to pull us over! ha ha! You laugh, but it has worked so far!

It seems to be another step poorer than Poland, but there is obviously a lot of hard work going on, and everyone has plantations in their gardens to grow veggies. It seems that everyone in the family from the youngest to the grannies contribute to the farming of crops and looking after the cows, goats, horses or chickens! Rhona particulary loves the horses used for pulling carts and for working the land. It felt a bit like going back in time.

The roads here are consistantly bad, no good bits, not many terrible bits, but just bad everywhere, which made going a bit slow. We arrived at L'viv by late afternoon, and drove straight into town. The entire city centre is cobbled, busy with crazy drivers, and ancient electric trams and busses. The old cobbles have been all but destroyed by the cars and lorries that drive over them, and the streets have been made into a big rumble strip, which shakes our van like a hungary baby's rattle. We decided that we didn't have enough time to explore the city fully that day, so we tried to find a hotel to stay in where we could park the van securely, and tour the city's old town (which we have been looking forward to for a while, and have come a long way to see) in the morning. This always takes a long time, Friday night aswell = no spaces anywhere. Eventually we pull up outside the fancy **** 'Hotel Spudnict' with a definate creak to the rear suspension from the battering it has just received from the cobbles. A bit more expensive and out of town than we were hoping for, but it was getting late, and we were getting hungary. We really went for it for dinner as well, the food is so different here and you want to try everything, lots of pickled meats, fishes and vegetables, marinate cabbage, and lots of garlic! The cooked meats were invariably Kiev-like in style. Still it cost us hardly anything.

Breakfast was another experience with raw fish, hams, salads, pancakes (filled with meat or cottage cheese), meat fritters, but it filled us up for our long day ahead of us. We started our tour proper of L'viv with the hour walk from our hotel into town, and then headed into the old town. We took photos galore, it is so picturesque with many stunning 12th-18th Centry buildings (mainly Catholic Churches), and narrow (cobbled of course) streets. A lot of the buildings are in a state of disrepair, but as soon as you go inside of one the detail is just stunning with incredible paintings all over the cielings and walls, ornamented golden pillars and cornices, and all different periods of archetecture. The city was very important during the 12-16th centuarys, being on both the main trade route to the west, and from Byzantium (Istanbul) to the north seas. There are a lot of outdoors cafe's one in which we enjoyed a sandwich for lunch, although I think we have decided that bread is not a Ukranian speciality!

After lunch we decided to get back to the van (we were starting to miss it!) and get a couple of hundred miles done towards Kamyanets-Podilskyy which is a fortress town built on a buttress of rock in the middle of a gorge towards the Moldova border. We get lost trying to get out of L'viv, but eventually head out in the right direction. Navigation is a nightmare here, as all the signs are in the cryllic alphabet, and the maps we had were in our (normal) alphabet, meaning that none of the names tied in together. You really have to get to grips with the cryllic if you come here! We nearly reached Kamyanets-Podilskyy when we decided to pull over for bed at another beautiful spot down a dirt lane in the middle of the Ukrainian countryside.

The following morning we arose to people walking past us on their way to church in their Sunday best, and made our way to Kamyanets-Podilskyy. This city has an old town that was built on a rock island in the middle of what seems to be a convergance of deep limestone gorges. You get to it by going over one of two dizzyingly high bridges Which you can bungee jump from if you like (and we saw people rock climbing on the cliffs which looked tempting). At the end of one of the bridges, there is an enormous (and still very complete) fairytale castle which you can look around, and go through all the tunnels in the walls, and under the ground. Very cool. This place is still very un-touristified compared to L'viv (which is meant to be the undiscovered treasure of the east), which was nice, and we enjoyed walking around the old towns' squares and streets. There were more multiple weddings here. I think we forgot to say that for the whole time we were in L'viv you could not get away from Brides in meruang dresses. It could be because we visited a lot of churches, but even in the central city square there were always a good handfull at any one time having their photos done. We inadvertantly gate crashed a couple of weddings whilst we were looking around some churches just as a bride happened to start walking down the aisle. We thought we were in a wedding comedy film. Shortly after lunch we headed off for the Moldova border an hour or so away.

l'viv night: 102978
kamyanets podilsky night: 103175
moldova night: 103343

day 9: 119 miles
day 10: 197 miles
Day 11: 168 miles

Still only about 16 degrees in the day and 6 ish over night.