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After Hannah left us for the airport in Warsaw, Clay and I headed to the bus station for our night bus across the border to Ukraine. As expected, it was a horrible journey and we didn’t get a whole lot of sleep as we were off and on the bus quite regularly and arrived into Lvov exhausted. So a train station in peak hour also filled with gypsies with 10 kids each who don’t understand how queues work was not exactly what I was after.
Thankfully I found a woman who spoke English and we managed to book first class tickets for our night train to Kiev. We definitely needed the luxury! After that, we escaped the station and set out to explore Lvov. It was a nice enough city but honestly there wasn’t a lot to see. The highlight was our trek up to Castle Hill (Zamkova Hora) where we got great views over the city. We checked out a few of the other sights like cathedrals and squares before we chilled out in the park next to the University as we waited for our train. Personally after the night bus, I was just focused on having somewhere horizontal
Lvov
Main Centre to sleep and as soon as I was on the train, I setup my bed and was asleep almost before we had left the station.
The next morning I felt like a completely different person and was in an excellent mood, at least until we got off the train and headed to the hostel. The hostel turned out to be one of the worst I had stayed at in all my travels. The owner was an idiot and when we produced our booking for a twin room, all he had were two thin mattresses on wood generously called a bunk bed in a room of 12 people. After back to back nights ‘sleeping’ while on transport, I was not impressed. And as it was a holiday weekend in Ukraine as well, all the other accommodation was booked up so we had to grin and bear it. Thankfully the rest of Kiev made up for this experience and the city as a whole definitely impressed me.
We wandered down to the tourist information centre and before we got there, we were greeted by a practise for a ‘dance battle’ between two troupes of 500 teenagers who were due to
Lvov #1
View over the town perform live on TV that night. We watched that for a bit before we went and booked our trip to Chernobyl for the following day. We then joined a free walking tour of Kiev led by a fantastic guide who was a former professional beach volleyball player. We also met some cool people on the tour, mainly two Russian girls (Evgenia and Mary) on holiday from Moscow and a Polish couple (Aleksander and Kamila) from Warsaw.
The walking tour took us round the main sites including the road between two amazing cathedrals, the Kievo-Pecherska Lavra, a golden domed cathedral and the multi-domed Dormition Cathedral, which is a reconstruction of the original where the roof collapsed of the original as citizens huddled on the roof to escape the Mongols who were sacking the city in 1240. We also visited the main square of Maydan Nezalezhnosti and finished up near the Golden Gate (Zoloti Vorota), which is a reconstruction of the original, which was originally an attempt at a copy of the famous Golden Gates of Constantinople.
At the end of the tour, we asked our guide where the good bars were and we got the best reply possible –
Lvov #2
View down the main street he would organise a pub crawl for us! So after a break for dinner, Clay and I met back with Evgenia and Mary as we headed around the pubs. We had a few drinks but tried to keep it relatively sober as we had an early start for Chernobyl the following day. We more or less succeeded.
The next morning, we met the bus and headed to Chernobyl along with a big group of others including Aleksander and Kamila from the walking tour. Our first stop was 2 hours from Kiev as we came to the checkpoint 30km from the blast zone. As we got closer to the centre, we were taken past various sights like museums and abandoned buildings – also buildings not so abandoned as about 3,000 people still live here – all to do with the army and supporting industries. Eventually we got a point where we could clearly see and get photos of the ‘shell’ the Russian army built around the reactor to prevent the escape of radiation. The guide had Geiger counters with him and they were still going fairly beserk, though nothing too dangerous from our point of view.
After this, we
had lunch with Aleksander and Kamila at the canteen – after being checked for radiation. Then we visited Prypiat, which used to be the village where the workers at the power plant and their families lived. Roughly 30,000 people lived here, but they had to pick up and abandon everything as soon as it was realised how dangerous the situation was (several days after the initial leaks!). We walked around various buildings like schools, gyms, pools, and even a half finished amusement park and it was amazing to see things that had been left practically where they had rested for the past 25 years. It was especially amazing in the school to see school books still strewn around the place.
Then to the unspoken relief of the group, we eventually went back out of the 10km zone, then the 30km zone as we headed back to Kiev. We made it back to Kiev and because of our maniac driver, we got back way before the other bus. So we were a bit disappointed that we didn’t get to catch up again with Aleksander and Kamila, but headed out for dinner. Halfway through the main course, who should walk in
to the same restaurant? Aleksander and Kamila! So they joined us for dinner as we tried delicacies like hemp beer and Clay was persuaded to try bull’s testicles by Aleksander. To his great relief, they had sold out. Believe it or not. Personally, I think Clay bribed our waiter to say that.
After dinner, we fare welled the Poles and went to meet up with Evgenia and Mary for a few more drinks. We ended up at a rather hidden Irish pub that played some very cheesy old 80’s tunes and after several shots, we were all quite merry. Eventually we said goodbye to Evgenia and Mary as well and headed back to the hostel to end our last night of the trip.
Despite plans on the final day to get out and see a couple of things, the successive late nights put paid to that and we basically just headed to the airport after a good Irish breakfast – in a pub sporting two Leeds shirts! We chilled out at the airport and it was back to London and work for me, while Clay had the fun task of setting life up in London once again. Until
Golden Gate
Near our hostel in Kiev the next holiday!
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