Ukraine and Budapest

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Ukraine
In Kiev, many people spoke mostly Russian, and Roman found only a few people who speak pure Ukrainian. Most of the signage is in Ukrainian.
When we left Kiev, we travelled overnight to Ivan Frankivesk, which is a large town in Western Ukraine that has a large industrial centre. We didn’t stay, but got a taxi-bus to Kolomyia. We stayed overnight in a guest house run by a nice family. We had very spacious rooms and were very close to town. Anna, our local guide took us on a tour of the town, and Roman was very interested to see where his father worked. He did find an old courthouse on the last day, though we are not positive that it’s the right one - we’ll have to check with his mum. We visited the wood craft and weaving museum and then a pysanka museum (decorated egg) which had millions of examples of eggs of the different regions. In the evening we made and ate vareniky( potato stuffed pasta which is boiled). I must admit that when we finished the vareniky, I was expecting the rest of the meal to arrive - and it didn’t!! Peasant fare indeed!! After this, we got to do our own pysanky and have the photos to prove it! Not too expert of course!
The following day we drove to a small village of Shushory in the Carpathians, and stayed with the local teacher who put us all up in her large house ( well with some of us staying in rooms outside the house - a granny flat type of thing.) She was a superb cook and the dinner and breakfast she provided was fit for a footy team - there was so much food, and variety, that it put the previous guest house to shame.
We were then taken for a guided walk up to the summer cow meadows - about 600 metres higher, 3 ½ km further up the mountains. It was quite hard going at times, though we stopped now and then to see the local herbs and pick blackberries which were still abundant. We finally made it to the cow herd’s little hut for a lunch of bread, and cheeses made by the cowherd. He makes 3 varieties - a white sweet cheese, a more salty cheese with lots of little holes, and a crumbly fetta style that looked a little like grated parmesan which was more salty again. With a plastering of fresh butter you dipped the bread into the grated parmesan like cheese - mmmm yummy!. Going down was much easier, and we were down again in no time. So we had to celebrate with the local beer which doesn’t have any preservatives so it doesn’t keep for more than 2 weeks. It was very tasty, as was the local made kvas, a type of kola made with fruit. The local village is quite poor, seemingly frozen in time, with just a few old cars belching black smoke and horse and carts still to be seen and old buses and trucks doing the rounds.
Early the next day, we visited an embroidery market in Kolomyia. Many women stood around with their sale items over their arms and one approached and asked them for the price of an item. I bought a small table runner - can’t help myself!!
On our way to Lviv by train and though it’s only 4 hours, we had compartments like those for the overnight train trips. The toilets were absolutely rank - an experience to avoid if possible. Also, I was very surprised to see many public toilets such as at the Train Station which contained squat toilets.
Lviv
Lovely city endeavouring to restore itself to its former glory through restoration programs of one sort or another and with the aid of various countries. We were given a guided city walk by a lovely lady called Diana who showed us all sorts of sights. Very European feel about the place - lots of young people - I suppose also due to the fact that there are lots of universities here. Ukrainian spoken everywhere in contrast to the east.
The train ride from Lviv to Budapest was atrocious. We shared a three-person cabin with Katherine, our tour leader, who was sick as a dog - full of cold. Triple cabins are worse than quadruple cabins because we were sleeping in three tiers not double bunks. So when the middle person wanted to go to be - this meant we all had to. We did have a wash basin, but we also had to use it as our table. Toilets as usual were rank!!!!!!!!! We walked our luggage to the hotel…. Roman says it was several kms, but it really wasn’t so bad… maybe a ½ km.

Budapest
Beautiful city with fab weather for our 2 days stay. We went straight into a bike tour of the city once we found the bike hire place - we did have 2 attempts so walked quite a ways beforehand. The bike tour was great, especially as we saved our feet. Terrific way to see Budapest. Final dinner was at the Oliva Restaurant where we had large helpings and tried the local wines for the first time this trip. The rest of the trip we have been drinking the local beer, which has always been tasty, but has given me a headache though not Roman..Walked home through crowds of people enjoying their Saturday night in the city, passed a free concert opposite the opera house. Dinner was 37,000 F for 8 people (translated to florints). Today we visited Buda and took some bus and tram rides of the city plus walked a whole heap. We leave tomorrow for Hanover.
And so ends another adventure… and the beginning of a new one!! Hello to Jana!!

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