Blogs from Lviv, Ukraine, Europe

From the northernmost limits of the former Soviet Union to the westernmost, from the Siberian Arctic to the tranquil, warm, historical European town of Lviv, was 3.5 days of train travel and a temperature rise of more than 40°C. People came and went, the train's denizens morphing from one sort to another as surely as did the landscape through which we traveled. At Moscow I changed trains, the oil and gas workers returning from months-long stints in the north who had made up the majority of the passengers on the way south now dispersing on various trains to their respective corners of the former USSR. They were replaced by Ukrainians returning home from months-long stints in Moscow who brought with them bags full of chicken, eggs, little boxes of salt, salami, bread, tomatoes, cucumbers and vodka ... read more

The Jewish restaurant wasn’t far at all but it was hidden in the maze of small streets around Stary Rynok. It is located very close to the Arsenal building however you cannot reach it from there. We saw people passing by and taking photos of it but we were not sure if they had known about this place from somewhere and came to see it or just happened to pass by. We have not found information about this place in any of the guides we read, nor we have heard about it from the Polish guys we met (they had an advantage when it comes to sights and local places as their friend has been living in Lviv for 6 years now). Maybe just local people know about it?? Never the less, the exterior of the ... read more

The main avenues of Lyachakovskoye Cemetry are lined with impressively ornate and expensive tombs - marble statues of the deceased playing harps, dancing with angels and the like. Colourful little candles have been left around their bases by Ukrainians who come here once a year on All Souls Day to honour the dead. Move away from those pristine, brick-tiled pathways and deeper into the huge, overgrown, wooded and walled enclosure that is Lviv's largest graveyard. The tombs and the statues adorning them become less pretty, less smooth and less perfectly polished. Here you find grief distraught families, spouses and children eternalised in crumbling, moss-ridden stone, the unimportant alleyways snaking their way past while in the process of being devoured by the everpresent vegetation. The emotion on some of the statues' faces is simply mind-boggling: the hope ... read more

When on the road travelling and you have no plans, but then suddenly things do not go according to the plan of having no plans, what does one do? I know what I would do: Head to another country. And since I am not fit for working in a small farming village in Romania, and I have turned down all my suitors asking my hand in marriage, it only seems reasonable that I recover in a hostel for 5 days before packing up my rucksack and taking a rickity bus across the border of Suceava, Romania to Chernivtsi, Ukraine. At the border, the border officer looking at my passport asked me to step off the bus because he mistook my first/middle name and believed I was Vanessa Mae, the Asian violinist. In Chernivtsi, I hadn’t booked ... read more

Took a bus to Lviv. Lviv is in the Western Ukraine. The city changed hands many times throughout history, from Rich Pospolita, to Austro-Hungary, to Poland, to USSR and finally to Ukraine. Thanks to this history, the city is simply magnificent. The old town is well organized and nicely restored. Lviv is the epicenter of Ukrainian culture and art. Everyone speaks Ukrainian, as opposed to Kiev where most people speak Russian. The old town is closed to traffic and is lined with bars, restaurants and cafes. In the evenings, the the town folks walk about town. There are a number of tourists here, mostly Polish, due to its proximity to Poland. The town is even cheaper than Kiev. The beer here is fantastic. A couple of bars around the town square even sell hot beer - ... read more