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.

Taking the overnight bus towards home

[Top Gun's playing in the other room, as rain plunks down outside.

Take My Breath Away. It is strangely comforting.]

I've revised my schedule over and over but I think I finally worked out something that's logical and can stick for the last twenty days of my holiday. Traveling long term is like an art project, always a work in progress, but you have to know when to quit before it gets ugly.

Tonight I have an overnight bus to Lviv, where I plan to spend at least three nights, then will catch a train to Warsaw, where I'll have four nights. I'd gotten a Belarus visa but then got nervous about visiting Minsk (political unrest), and decided that Brest was probably the best option since it is five miles from the border of Poland and the EU and only an eighteen minute train ride. Brest will either be a day trip or just overnight couch-surfing.

After Warsaw, I head to the Masurian Lake district of Poland (three nights in fancier lodgings), then to Gdansk for five nights, then down through Torun or Poznan before heading back to Berlin, where I'll stay with my friend Ruth the night before I catch a flight back to Chicago August 10th. It's an apt send-off from Germany, leaving from the city I love most with a good friend who I met on the road.

So figuring out a schedule and the ensuing lodging reservations frees me to wander with mind and foot through the rest of my days here. It's like being in the clouds for a while, drifting from place to place, knowing soon I will be landing in the USA, dropping into the country which was home for thirty-one years.

People back home fear that I'm going to be bored or regret returning, but I feel the time is right, and I'm ready. I read somewhere that home is where people accept you. Or home is where people miss you when you are gone. In that case, I am headed home, to family, friends and my country.

This last day in Lithuania, the sky is falling again. Hopefully there's a break in the clouds so I can make it to the station without a free shower. If not, I have a raincoat and waterproof backpack, so I am prepared for anything (I hope). Next report from the Ukraine...

Remote Lithuania: The Hill of Crosses and Curonian Spit

This morning, I woke up at a moderate hour (9am-ish) with the plan to rent a bicycle and ride out to the Hill of Crosses, which is a place about 10km out of Siaulai, Lithuania. Lithuanians have been erecting crosses since about 1831 to remember loved ones and as a symbol of their resistance against occupying regimes. The Soviets bulldozed the hill three times, but the Lithuanians continued to sneak up in the night and stick crosses in the ground. Today there are over 100,000 crosses.

Three little guys in the town of Siaulai.

Much of Lithuania is non-smoking. All bars and restaurants. This park. Ferries. It makes me very happy. The same in Latvia. This is in Klaipeda in the sculpture park.

I was just in the Curonian Spit area, the town of Nida. The Curonian Spit is a sandbar extending off Kalingrad (a part of Russia). Half of it is owned by Lithuania, so you can walk down and look at Russia. You have to actually take a ferry to get to this part of Lithuania.

That's Russia- in the black in the background. Now I can prove that I have the proper foreign experience to run for president.

The town of Nida from the dunes.

I was quite happy, not many people there.

The fisherman had to mark their ships, because they were only allowed to fish in certain areas. So they used elaborately painted weather vanes as markings. It's something that was done only in this area.