A taste of Ukraine: Lviv

The city feels like Prague with way less tourists. I have heard that so many places are called, "The Next Prague," but so far none of them matched up with the title. I have not heard that Lviv is The Next Prague but I think perhaps it is.

Quiet, calm, cafes. Colorful, intricate buildings. Cheap, tasty food. Coffee. Underground bars. A massive cemetary. Former USSR, but feels quite Western.

The Transport To Lviv: I took the overnight bus. I was a bit nervous and could not eat the whole day. I packed an Ativan, earplugs, eyemask, music, etc and hoped for the best. They said the bus was full and I got an aisle seat, so I figured I'd be up most of the night. Instead, the bus had a lot of empty seats, I'd been given a window anyway, and I slept more hours than I do in a hostel. Yaya!

It was damn cold on the bus as there was some crazy A/C freak in charge of the controls so I put everything on that I could find in my bag, including my trusty handsocks, and wool slippers I'd bought in Lithuania.

Just in case I wanted to remember the time.

The Polish border. We arrived at 5:30 and did not pass through the Ukranian side until almost 4 hours later. I was pretty patient, but that was a long time.

Arrival in Lviv... we sat in the coffee shop in Rynok Square. Coffees are about 1 Euro.

There were bride everywhere in princess dresses and with so much make up their mothers would not recognise them. Most looked to be around 20 years old, and the size I was in about 4th grade.

Cabinet Cafe where I had a coffee with rum, coca-cola, ice cream and cinnamon. It was good.

The Ukrainian stamp is orange. I wonder if it is after the Orange Revolution?

There was a band playing here -- a great spot for people watching until they took a break and I was starting to fear lung cancer from the second hand smoke.

Dinner. Yum. The Vino was good.

I bought these sunglasses and I think they will match my car. Yay.

The view from my hostel balcony where I sit and drink coffee in the morning. That's Rynok Square.

I like this car.

University.

Visit Lviv! It's lovely.

When the Bulgarian border patrol decides to take apart the train, and other fun times...

Two days ago, I planned to take the 18:00 bus from Sarajevo to Nis, Serbia. I set out for the bus station at 4:15, got there at 5:30 to discover the bus wasn't going. It wouldn't leave until the next night. I checked my options and decided to take the 22:00 bus to Belgrade, where I didn't want to go. I slept the whole night, but woke up a lot due to border crossings and whatnot. At 6:00 we arrived to Belgrade. I tried to find a bus or train to the Serbia border where I'd planned to cross into Bulgaria to a hiking town, but there was only a train leaving at 15:30 and was arriving at 11PM into the town. Not a good idea for a single female traveler, and knowing Serbian trains, I would've arrived at 1AM or so. So I checked the schedules and decided to reroute myself to Sofia, Bulgaria and then decide what to do.

The train left at 7:50 and was supposed to arrive at 14:47. I could have walked or hitchhiked faster and with less harm to my personal health, because I smoked an equivalent of 10 packs of cigarettes in second-hand smoke. But never mind that, the train was overcrowded and people were standing. Then the Serbian border people took about an hour to search our train, and the same with the Bulgarians, who actually rode with us for a while and started to take panels off the the inside of the train. They came into our compartment and patted down the woman who had gotten on just before the Bulgarian border but did not find anything. **However, once they left, she jumped up and pulled out her hidden smuggled cigarettes and other things. So they had the right person, they just did not try hard enough...

Also I'd only had 4 small carrots, a yogurt, 2 chocolate pieces and 7 pretzel sticks the whole day. They did not sell food on the train and I didn't have the right money anyway. I hadn't planned on a 27 hour trip.

Anyway. We arrived in Sofia about 7PM. So I had to stay the night. I called Hostel Mostel where I'd stayed last time. They had a bed. The Bulgarian biologists who I shared a compartment with helped me find the tram, and gave me 1 Leva to buy a ticket inside and asked, "Do you need someone to go with you?" I said, no, then many thanks and hopped aboard.

I missed my stop by one stop and it was quite a distance but I wasn't bothered because I needed the exercise after sitting for so long. I found the hostel and went in to register myself. The guy at the counter said, "I hope you have a reservation because we are full." I said I'd called. He said he had no record and acted like I was an idiot. So he called his boss and then said they were only waiting for Pablo. I realised I'd called their hostel in a different town and told him what I'd done. He looked at me again like I was a hopeless moron. I said, "Do you have another suggestion?" He said, "Hostel Sofia." I asked where they were and he showed me on the map. I asked if he could call them before I walked there. He said, "Our phone does not work." I said, "Ok, I'll just take your map then."(It was a photocopied map.) He said, "No, we are running short, you cannot have it." And was done with me.

I started walking to the other hostel, Lonely Planet in hand, a bit confused and exhausted. An Irish voice behind me, "Do you need help?" He pointed out the way and nearly walked me to the hostel. I was standing in front of it, but it was hard to see, just a black metal gate with Hostel Sofia on the front, the first hostel in Sofia. I rang the buzzer and the door unlocked. The stairs were dodgy and dim and I went up two flights to a door answered by a rotund man in shorts about 70 years old. He showed me a bed in a 9 bed room, and pointed to the empty ones (two top bunks). Three guys were in the room, and one said, "Would you rather have a bottom bunk? You can have one of ours, we don't mind." I said ok, since I was pretty tired and unsure about getting down from the top in the middle of the night if I had to pee. They were from Israel, and I was impressed with their kindness.

The owner offered me tea. I said ok. He said, "Black or Herbal?" I chose herbal. He returned with a large cup with a lemon slice floating on top. I sat on the couch happy to be there. He thought I was from NZ because he'd heard me talking to the Israeli guys. I said I was American. He lit up and said his daughter lived in America. In Oregon. In Portland. I said, "I have to show you something and pulled out my OR driver's license and said I was from Portland too!

He came back with a picture of his daughter and the American from the Peace Corps who she'd married. She'd worked in marketing for a NZ company (Icebreaker) and now works in design for Nike. Small world... Next the old man came back with a bowl containing four freshly washed apricots. He sat with me on the couch and played Bulgarian music on the TV for me, and said he'd been a professional musician when he was younger. He left and returned with very old pictures, from around 1968, with him playing guitar in a band and pictures of his wife (who I think is dead) who he called "my love." She looked just like his daughter.

I was thinking as I sat there how happy I was just to be sitting on a couch in someone's home in Bulgaria. I really enjoyed it. It was not the place I would have picked to stay, but it was just what I needed.

This morning I went to get cash after TWO espressos at my hostel. (Yes, he had a real espresso machine.) And then the buzzer was not working so I was locked out. I had to go to a floral shop where a lady customer helped me and the shop let me make a call to the hostel. But then the old hostel man did not understand what was wrong so the customer lady helped me again (though her english was not so good either) and the old man let me in, and we fixed the buzzer together. So everything was good.

In the bad, there is always good. This little hostel was a good reminder of a lot of things, and my one night there was worth the pains of yesterday... it was a reminder of the good in humanity and what is important in life... and sometimes that is just sitting on the couch watching bad music with apricots and a person who does not speak the same word language, but still can be understood.

Revelation: I’m a bus whore.

Yes, it’s true. I get on a bus, any bus, anytime, anywhere and I’m gloriously happy. Ridiculously happy. I’m even happy waiting for the bus. At the bus stop on the side of the road or in a busy station or under a tree. Anywhere, anytime, I am there and I am happy.

Once I board, the delirium usually continues, even with a intermittent sore ass and knees that are bruised the following day from being wedged against the seat in front of me- a hazard of traveling in countries full of short people. Though the island Fijians are large in all ways (many women are both bigger and taller than me), so this doesn’t make sense really. I can tell a lot from a country on the bus. When I ride a local bus, surrounded by people on their way home or to a wedding or whatnot and I’m the only white person, I feel so alive.

After four days, three nights on Nananu-I-Ra island off the northern tip of Viti Levu (the largest Fiji Island- there are more than 360 total), I started to feel claustrophoic on such a small island filled mostly with Australians. I was starving for local interaction, so I caught the boat back to land and then a bus to Suva, (pop 390,000) the largest city in Fiji and the also the largest in the Pacific Islands.

At the bus stop, I met a local Brahman Indian-Fijian boy in his early 20’s who had lived in Wellington for a while. He was wearing a black t-shirt with “Edmonton” embroidered on it. I asked if he’d been to Edmonton. He said, “No, but I’m moving there on the 30th of May.” He was moving with his sister and brother-in-law to run a takeway business in Banff. He pointed out his sugarcane farm on the hill behind us. I asked what his mom and dad thought. He said, “That’s my mom,” pointing to the lady in glasses and a yellow sari across from us who’d been smiling all along. “She has to stay six more months for the harvest and then maybe she and my younger brother will come. My dad passed away four years ago.”

After about an hour‘s wait, the bus finally arrived. It was the express bus but it still took over three hours to get to Suva. Some roads were dirt and several bridges we drove over were small wooden plank things, just wide enough for one vehicle and no guard railing.

I sat next to Linny and her mom. They were coming home from her cousin’s wedding. Linny was born March 14th, 1971 in Fiji. She had a 22 year old son. She pointed out the village where she grew up (pop 100) and then the village that she was “married to.” She was married eight years ago. She and her mom both had small afros. Linny wore a red polo and denim skirt and carried a pink lettered handbag, Her mom reminded me of a black Grandma Agnes. It was the facial expression. She was a lady of purpose, but had tan Fossil gemstone-rimmed sunglasses that matched her tan patterned dress. After a few hours on the bus, one of the mom’s brothers got on. Shortly after that, they were waving out the window to one of her sisters who was in a van on the side of the road. It’s a small island.

Linny and her mom got off a few stops before me. As did the Indian boy and his mom. His mom patted me on the shoulder as she walked down the aisle and waved from the side of the road as we drove off.

The bus came into Suva from above and at first sight, it reminded me of Auckland. A harbour town, ocean all around. We pulled into the bus station and I struggled to get my pack off the bus as the driver made a snide comment about it. (He is the only not-nice person I have encountered.) After I practically fell out the door of the bus, I stopped to get myself loaded up. Two Fijian men tried to help me haul my stuff in a wheelbarrow but I declined saying I was just getting on another bus. They kept asking questions and told me I was beautiful. Then I realized I was a blonde girl in a sea of dark. I’d forgotten the extra sort of help you get in that situation.

I wandered off, asking a local girl, “Where is the bus to Sawani?” She pointed. I said, “Ok, over there?” I must’ve looked confused, because then she said, “I’ll take you.” “Are you going that way?” I asked. “No, but it’s ok.” I got led quite a ways and dropped at my bus. I said, “Thank you” and she was off, wishing me a good trip,

So Fiji… it’s different. Interesting. Not remote. Full of it’s own culture and life. I have three more days of exploring before I set foot on the plane back to North America. Prepare the red carpet, I’m coming home!