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Published: June 25th 2010
We truly thought that the overnight train from Brasov to Suceava would be so much better and easier to sleep on than a bus but sadly we were mistaken. I am sure that if it wasn’t for two old gypsy ladies we would have been fine. We were settled into our cabin with one other guy, he couldn’t speak English but offered J a swig of his beer, J declined nicely!! It was really hot so we had the window and the door to the cabin open. We were getting comfy and ready to sleep when two old ladies got on and took their seats by the window in our cabin. They proceeded to make themselves at home and not consider us and what we wanted they just shut the window and the door to the cabin to stop any source of fresh air and comfort that we had. They then ate biscuits and chatted to the other guy so loudly for about two hours whilst they could see we were trying to get some shut eye. The beer guy moved cabins to sleep and so the ladies decided to use all the free seats and spread themselves out and lie
down, so J and I were squished up against the door to the room. I think J was about to kill them when in the early hours of the morning they started chatting and laughing really loudly again. Lets just say they weren’t nice Nanas but a couple of old gypsy witches. Tired and unsure where we were we jumped in a cab which took us to the bus station. There was only one bus a day to Chernivsti and this wasn’t until 1pm and it was only 8am so we decided to take the advice we had read on the internet and head to the fruit and vegetable market where you have to spot mini buses with Ukrainian number plates and they will take you across the border for a little bit extra than the bus. As we walked towards the car park I spotted a guy looking at us with our bags so I just asked and he was the fella we were looking for. We bought some supplies from the market, probably the best plum filled croissants I have ever tasted and we got on our way. This is when we first got to experience the crazy
Ukrainian driving. We passed through customs with no problems, Js dodgy internet invitation worked. On the ride to Chernivsti we passed through some small villages and then came to the outskirts of Chernivsti where people obviously have money as they had the coolest houses with turrets, I would love to build one like it in Oz. We hadn’t booked a hostel or hotel so we decided to use the Lonely Planet and headed to a hotel not too far from the bus station. We decided to walk it but discovered a 15 minute walk is about all we can manage without nearly dying with our huge bags full of souvenirs and religious statues!! The Lonely Planet hadn’t given the hotel a very good review saying that the staff were unhelpful but we thought we would see for ourselves and maybe this was true when the book was written but it was a really plush hotel and the staff spoke English and couldn’t be more helpful. We again were very tired but headed into town to get some lunch and explore the sites. We decided to go to a restaurant featured in our not so great bible the Lonely Planet, but
this time it couldn’t be more correct. The food was really good it was a bit more expensive but we splashed out and I got a really good couscous salad and J Burritos. Not very Ukrainian I know but we were craving something light not like the heavy hearty Ukrainian food. Chernivsti was a really nice surprise and good introduction to Ukraine, it is very leafy and has really nice old buildings and was very quiet considering it was a Saturday. We headed to a church that the lonely planet had written about but unfortunately we couldn’t find it even though we followed the map and searched the area they said it was. We gave up and walked to the university, it was an amazing building. It kind of looked like lego, with pretty coloured tiles and lego towers. We tried to have a look around inside but a security guard who couldn’t speak English stopped us and we gathered we weren’t welcome so we just took some pictures from outside. We walked back to town it was so very hot we took refuge in an internet café. J looked up the whereabouts of the church as he was determined
to see it and found that the lonely planet had put it in the wrong place on the map. So we headed off with the correct directions and found the twisted St Nicholas Cathedral, I’m not sure it was worth all the searching as it was a replica not even the original. We were hot and tired so decided to call it a day and walked back to hotel via the supermarket to get some bits for dinner as we couldn’t be bothered to go out again. We bought some bread, cheese, salami and tomatoes at this very strange kind of supermarket where each section was a separate shop in one building. We also got some drinks and I was so happy when I found Beer Mix. They have lots of different cans of beer mixed with flavours like raspberry, cherry, lemon, orange and grapefruit. They are so good and low in alcohol a proper good girly drink. You would think beer mixed with orange would not be very nice but it was kind of like putting Fanta in your beer and it was good. We decided to have our little picnic in our room and discovered the tomato’s were
so bad and inedible, you don’t get to pick them up and choose them so the woman had obviously seen we were foreign and chosen the gross ones, the salami was out of date by two weeks and the cheese was very strange and dry. We really didn’t manage to get the feast we were looking for. We had a slice of bread with vegemite but J just couldn’t bring himself just to have that for dinner so he went on the hunt for some proper food. He seemed to have been gone a long time when he stumbled back through the hotel room door with a pizza and what he thought was a beer. The pizza was rather strange but he had done very well considering the menu was all in Cyrillic and what he thought was a person selling beer on the street from a keg was actually the local drink Kvac a soft drink made from the yeast of the dark bread. Whilst he was on his adventure he had also gone into a shop to get some water and managed to bend over and look into the fridge and knocked off a big plate of cakes
on to the floor. He didn’t know what to do the ladies in the shop just looked at him and then one another and didn’t say anything. He started to pick them up and put them back on the tray. They wouldn’t let him buy the water and so with the language barrier he just put a 10 hry on the counter to cover the cost of the cakes and left swiftly not looking back. The next morning we woke up early to go to the big market in Chernivsti, this market is so huge that it has its own police station, first aid and dedicated banks. It gets 50,000 shoppers a day visiting it so we thought we should check it out as we love a good market. We caught one of the many old mini buses going there it only cost 20p each but gosh was it crammed J and I were stood near the door, I was having to crouch as I couldn’t stand up straight, it certainly was an interesting hot journey. The market was intense I have never seen one so huge even bigger than the one in Bangkok which was massive. There were stalls
for everything you may ever want or need, I managed to find a new bag as mine had broken in Romania and J got some more very cheap Virgin Mary’s to add to the collection. Again there were plenty of early morning beers for the locals and we saw some very interesting fashion statements too. After a couple of hours we headed back to Chernivsti on a not so busy mini bus we actually managed to get a seat this time. We collected our bags from the hotel and went to catch a bus to Kamyanets Podilsky.
We had read about Kamyanets Podilsky being a dramatic, stunning, breathtaking place. As we arrived on the bus I am not sure you would get that impression but as most of the places we have visited the first impression is never the correct one as you normally arrive in the tower block soviet hell holes before going to the pretty parts of town. We hadn’t again booked a hotel so we decided to choose one from the lonely planet, It was a very hot day so we decided to go for the one with a pool. We hoped in one of the
very cool old decrepit cabs and trundled our way to a pretty wooded area of town. The hotel looked ok we didn’t think to check the room or ask about the pool and just booked the night. We later discovered the room smelt like damp and the bathroom was moldy and the beloved pool wasn’t working, this was a big disappointment. We showered to cool off instead and headed to the old part of the town. The walk there was really pretty we decided to head into the forest which followed the river and could hear people swimming and having bbq’s on the shore. The river is at the bottom of a 50m canyon, with the old town standing on a sheer walled rock island. The view from the bridge crossing the canyon to the old town was awesome, people used to bungee jump from the bridge but after someone died doing it they have stopped it. We walked into the old town it was a bit eerie as was very quite and like a bit of a ghost town. We headed in the direction of the fortress and stopped at some shops and galleries, we knew it was in
this direction but couldn’t believe our eyes as we walked around the corner and saw this mighty fortress looming ahead in the distance. The legend is that when the Turkish Sultan Osman arrived to attack the town, he asked one of his generals who had built such a mighty town and they replied Allah. So the Sultan replied then let Allah himself conquer it and bid a hasty retreat. It certainly lives up to this tale. We thought we would leave visiting the fortress until the following day as it was already quite late and instead decided to get some dinner at the restaurant over looking the fortress. Luckily the waitress new a little bit of English and they had an old English menu, we later found out when we returned another day that the menu was out of date and some of the food wasn’t available and the prices were different, but we managed to order some traditional fare and it was really good. Everything J tasted gave him flash backs to all the food that his Nana used to make, especially the fact that everything is laced with dill. We could see that the sky was looking rather
black and suddenly the town was engulfed in a massive storm. We were in a great position to watch the storm and not get wet. There was such loud thunder and amazing fork lightening over the fortress. Unfortunately the cameras didn’t pick up the lightening because the sky was not dark enough, it was so crazy to see, who needs music or a show whilst they eat dinner a storm is much more fun! We managed to dodge the rain and went to another bar to watch Australia play Germany in the world cup. It was a really nice bar/restaurant attached to a hotel so we decided that we would move to this hotel the following day. Everyone was very friendly we ended up chatting to a group of people from Eastern Ukraine who were on holiday and could speak English and a guy who had come to England and had worked illegally in of all places Cheltenham and knew of Swindon. Australia got flogged and the rest of the bar were routing for Germany so this created funny banter between us and the Ukrainians. The next day we got up and packed and moved to our much more modern
and clean hotel. We then went to visit the fortress they don’t prevent you from walking and climbing on the ruins and it is quite wild which makes it more beautiful. Ukrainian woman have this amazing ability to wear high heels in every situation, they were even climbing the fortress in at least 5inch heels. Every town we have been to has cobbled stone roads and you see the woman powering along with no trouble wearing the highest heels you have ever seen. It was like a maze climbing up and through several of the 9 towers that it has. It again was a really hot day we went to have lunch at another restaurant suggested in the lonely planet, we walked through the door and immediately got funny looks and when I asked if they had an English menu or were serving lunch they just looked at us with disgust on their faces so we walked back out and went back to the nice restaurant near the fortress and got good Borsch and salad. That afternoon we walked into the new part of the town to use the internet and get ready to move on to the next place
the following day. We decided to try the food at our hotels restaurant, we were sat outside when suddenly there was a really big wind storm and dust was flying everywhere we retreated inside in the dungeon, cave style restaurant. We had more of the traditional style hot pots, pancakes and dumplings that are so good and hearty. After this big feast we went back to our room but there was another big storm so J decided to venture out in the rain to try and take some more pictures of the storm over the fortress but the lightening had moved on which was a shame. Our room was so comfortable it was hot so we had the window open. We both woke in the night to this horrible stench in our room, it was the worst thing I have ever smelt J described it as 1000 dirty nappies on a hot sweaty bus. We honestly didn’t know what to do we didn’t know what it was and thought it was going to make us ill. We shut the window but it didn’t go away very quickly, it was so hard to go back to sleep. But finally it seemed
to disappear, the only thing we can think is that they have a septic tank and something happened to it from all the rain.
We caught the bus from Kamyanets Podilsky to Ivano Frankivsk it is only about a 200ish km drive but it took us five hours due to the bus stopping at every little village on the way picking up and dropping off people from town to town. The countryside that we drove through was really pretty everyone lives off the land and has fields of crops and animals. They let their chickens, hens, geese and even cows just graze at the side of the road. I am not sure I would be too keen with the driving and overtaking that people do on these country roads, I reckon there would have to be lots of road kill. The old babushka’s work so hard and you see them at probably 80 still working in the fields and catching the buses with lots of spring onions, cucumbers and tomatoes. My favourite game was spot the Stork, it wasn’t too hard as there were so many of them and their huge nests built on the tops of the power
Kamyanets-Podilsky Fortress
Another one of Ukraines amazing churches.poles. Our only problem was trying to get a good one that J could take a photo of. We arrived in Ivano Frankivsk late afternoon we had looked on the internet to see if we could find more hotels than suggested in the lonely planet but only two came up. We decided to go for an average one in the book but when we got there it was very modern and I think it had been refurbished since the book was written so the prices seemed to have doubled. For a town that really didn’t have any tourist attractions we felt that they were asking way too much at 50 quid a night and the room really wasn’t anything special. We had looked at the cost of hotels in the Carpathian region and they also were really expensive so we decided we would stay only one night and then make our way to Lviv. Ivano wasn’t as bad as we had expected and we enjoyed a stroll around the town and visited a couple of the massive extremely elaborate churches. We went to the internet and even that was extortionate in comparison to everywhere else in Ukraine. The outside of
the hotel was an untapped skate mecca with shiny kinked marble ledges everywhere, so J couldn’t resist having a skate even with the security guard only 20m away but he didn’t even bat an eyelid. We had dinner and then went back to our hotel. We had seen lots of people sitting outside what looked like a bar attached to one end of our hotel so we thought we would have a look. We discovered a really cool set up with a supermarket selling cold drinks and cooked chicken, rice, salad etc and then they have seating out the front. There were so many people of all ages sat outside eating chicken and drinking beer and vodka. We just had a beer and then went back to the hotel to watch which ever footie match was on. In most other countries the TV has been in English with subtitles at the bottom so we have had it good but in Ukraine they have English and American shows but they have dubbed over the voices. They don’t sometimes even bother to change the voices depending on the sex of the person speaking they just have the one person translating it. It
Kamyanets-Podilsky Fortress
Wishing Well, it reminded us of the Goonies caves and treasure. is very weird plus a lot of the time you can hear the original person speaking English so you get both voices at once. The one saving grace of the hotel was that the price included breakfast, J and I had a lie in and then went and enjoyed the nice Ukrainian feast of eggs, sausage, salad, buckwheat etc. We tried their version of black pudding but we weren’t so enamored by it. We then caught the next bus to Lviv this time it did not take so long, the bus driver didn’t seem to stop for every tom, dick or harry trying to flag it down at the side of the road.
We got to the bus station in Lviv but it wasn’t the main one and we seemed to be miles away from the city, we managed to work out which mini bus we needed to catch to the city centre but when it turned up already packed we were reluctant to get on with our huge bags. A nice older lady spoke a tiny bit of English and told us to get on and it would be ok so we did. It was such a squash
and more and more people kept piling on. They really don’t care about being up close and personal to each other and will cram themselves on until you can’t breath. It took about 10 minutes I was really struggling standing with my bag and couldn’t move, the lady who told us to get on got Js attention and told him it was our stop. We got off but really didn’t have a clue where we were as the street signs were in Cyrillic and the ones on our map were roman. We finally managed to work it out like a puzzle by using the alphabet section in our book. The lady had told us to get off slightly early so we had a bit of a walk to the hostel which we didn’t need after that bus journey so when we finally got to the hostel it was such a relief. The hostel was in a prime location just off the main Rynock Square, it was ok but not great for the price. We had a huge room but they asked us to wear these horrid plastic slippers when in the hostel. I’m not sure why as I think our
shoes were cleaner then their floors any way and I didn’t want someone else’s cheesy slippers. They also had a cat but luckily J didn’t seem to be allergic to it, the cat seemed to love J even though he would splash it with water and locked it out of our room but he caved in and ended up playing with it. It was pretty crazy and would jump on you as you walked into the common room and would always be up to mischief. The girl at the hostel gave us a run down of what to do in Lviv, we were there for three nights so we thought we would spend the first afternoon just chilling out and took a wander around. We headed towards an area the girl had suggested for cafes and a cheap place to eat. We stopped off at the art gallery but they were about to close so we weren’t able to go in but we bought lots of the traditional painted eggs. I really loved the fact they weren’t like all the other ones you get in the souvenir shops that are made of wood these are actual egg shell and very
delicate. We had an early dinner and went to the canteen style restaurant which is popular with the locals as it is quite cheap. We really didn’t know what we were getting we just pointed and chose some different dishes, I wanted to try the Ukrainian dumplings called varenyky I saw what I thought was them but maybe with beetroot but later found they were actually pudding and had plum filling. We have got used to pointing a lot to get our point across as of all the countries we have visited Ukraine probably has the least amount of people who can speak English, so the language barrier has been a bit of a test. It doesn’t help that the writing is so different so we can’t just try and work out what the words may mean either. We walked back towards the hostel it started to rain but we still decided to have a look around Rynock square and went to the chocolate shop where you can watch the ladies making them. The flavours were all written in Cyrillic so we just pointed like a lucky dip at what ones we wanted, I must have had a sixth sense
and chose mostly the white ones which were marzipan my favourite. The next day we got up and had the free breakfast of croissant and not too good coffee. We headed out to properly explore Lviv, our first impression was a really good one, it is such a beautiful city and really rivals Prague. The city is Unesco listed and I can really see why the buildings are really old and very untouched. In our eyes Lviv is nicer than Prague due to the huge difference in number of tourists, you feel relaxed and not hassled as you do in Prague. You don’t have any ugly soviet buildings hiding around the corner either. We decided to climb the town hall tower to get a good view over the city, it was a pretty big climb but very worth it. We climbed about 10 flights of stairs and there were again the stiletto clad girls going full steam ahead, going down has to be even harder it’s crazy. One of the main attractions in Lviv seems to be the museum cafes that are scattered through the old town. The girl at the hostel had told us that one of the main
and most interesting places to visit was at number 14 Rynock Square. We really weren’t sure what we were expecting maybe a museum but as we peered in the door a man was stood there in army clothes holding a gun. We said we were English and they asked if we knew the password, we really didn’t know what was going on. We obviously looked blank and said no and they said it was Slavo Ukrainia and let us in and gave us a shot of honey vodka, it was only 10am!! We went down stairs and discovered it was a café/restaurant in the old bunkers that the partisan army hid out in. We had a coffee and enjoyed the very interesting décor of guns, war posers and Ukrainian partisan memorabilia. We then went to the arts and craft market and bought lots of cool souvenirs for everyone. After all this hard shopping we had a really good lunch of Borsch served inside a loaf of bread. It was good but not as good as the borsch we were to taste later on at Js family’s house. Later we checked our emails and Andrew, Js cousin had emailed to say
that his friend who lived in Lviv would be keen to meet up so we organised a time and place and went to meet him. Marian was really cool and speaks very good English, he was really happy to show us around. We visited lots of the cool cafes they are all in the tall old buildings and have lots of different rooms up to the roof where they have a roof top bar. One was based on the theme of the oil lamp as it was invented in Ukraine, another had different themed levels with a car on its roof. After a beer stop and some snacks, Ukraine has a whole section of the menu dedicated to snacks that go well with beer. These can be croutons with a dip, cheese selection, salty meat, fish or cheese, swirly bread sticks, pigs ears, I could go on and on. We then took a walk to the High Castle Hill, it is a ruined stone fortress with amazing views all over the city. It is a very popular place for couples and newly weds to have a kiss and cuddle!! Obviously after all this walking in the sun we needed another
Kamyanets-Podilsky Fortress
High heels and cobblestones. rest at one of the many cool cafés. We met up with some more of Marians friends and went to Robert Doms Beer House, this is the brewery in the city and it has a restaurant, bar and live music venue in its old beer cellars. It was really cool and we even got to see an awesome band play whilst we were there. The following day we walked to Lychakivske Cemetery, a very gothic overgrown amazing place with very over the top and elaborate graves. It is crazy how much money people have to create such huge graves, it isn’t a dull place as the Ukrainians love brightly coloured fake flowers and smother the graves in them. Everyone is very religious in Ukraine even the teenagers go to church and everytime they walk past a church or Virgin Mary statue they make the sign of the cross. The money spent on the huge amount of churches is crazy they are so elaborate and extreme so much gold and ornate decoration and painted ceilings. The churches in Ukraine have been the best we have seen even beating the ones in Spain. That afternoon J went for a skate at Lviv’s
Kamyanets-Podilsky
Playing the National instrument, the Bandura. These guys were actualy triplets. first and only skate park which was one year old. It was very simple but a good start for Ukraine’s skateboarding culture. The skaters were all very welcoming and friendly and several of them spoke English really well and after a good session they bought J a nice but warm beer. He destroyed his cheapo fake vans slip-on shoes so sought advice from the local skaters and went to a shop with a sale selling skate shoes. That evening we went to the oil lamp café for dinner, we got chatting to a couple of girls who heard us speaking English and had just passed their English exam so were happy to put it into practice. They were really nice and were eating a beer snack that we thought was crackling but it was actually pigs ears, we had a try and they were surprisingly good.
Saturday morning we packed and meet Andrew, Marian, Uliana and Micha and went for coffee. It was really awesome for J to finally meet Andrew after months of emails and planning. Andrew also has really good English so this made it so much easier but the poor guy became our interpreter, aka “the
Kamyanets-Podilsky
View from the fortress. tongue” as we like to call him!! We didn’t stay long in Lviv as we needed to catch the bus to Chervonohrad where Andrews family live. We managed to have a good chat and catch up on the bus when we got to Chervonohrad we went straight to Andrews grandparents house and got to meet one half of the extended family. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly they had very little if no English but Andrew was a star and he managed to interpret everything so well. By the end of the day he knew everything about us and more as he was answering all their questions. It has been such a long time since Js Nan and Aunt Helen visited that there was lots to catch up on. We ate a huge Ukrainian feast of yummy sandwiches, meat, borsch, salad, chicken, cabbage rolls and cake, plus the very important vodka!! It is true what you hear about Ukrainians they do love vodka. They drink it straight, the tradition is to toast before drinking, at least three per meal and then eat a good amount of food after every shot as to not let it affect you too badly. After
all this food we hopped in Andrews Aunts car and we drove 3 hours to Hlybivka in the Ivano Frankivsk, sub Carpathian region. His driving was certainly a prime example of the locals and he drove very fast we experienced some crazy overtaking at one point there were three cars side by side in two lanes. It works and everyone seems to think of it as normal and just move out of the way when someone is overtaking at high speeds. J and I were the only ones with our seatbelts on and we still held on tightly!! Hlybivka is proper Ukraine, it is a small village in the countryside where Js Nan was born and her family still live on the same property. We pulled up to the house and everyone came out to see us, several people came across from working on the fields. It was so amazing to meet everyone. Generations of family all gathered together and were united for the first time. Once again everyone was so welcoming and friendly, poor Andrew had to answer the same questions about us all over again. The Ukrainian women really know how to create a feast and this is
what we had. So much food and even more vodka, the chatting and laughter went on until 2am when we all stared to fade after such a long day. Nobody was in a rush to get up apart from poor old Stefan who was out with the cows at an early hour. Ukrainian breakfast is pretty much the same as all other meals so we filled our stomachs, the boys with Vodka too and then went for a walk around the property. We met all the family animals and then went to a 100 year old house which still has the picture of the people who owned it hanging above the window. They had lots of “Cousin It” looking haystacks and lots of crops to feed the family and sell at the market. They make their own cheese from the cows and also sell this and the milk at the market. That afternoon we went to visit the graves of the deceased Zubyk family including Js great grandmother. We then went to visit a property owned by a rich Ukrainian man who works in Russia but owns a big wooden ranch style house made of natural materials, and with deer,
Wobbly bike, Ivano Frankivsk
If you could ride the bike past the beer you win it. goats, sheep and a lake on the land. Everyone was in awe and loved looking in every nook and cranny. Js family were so nice even though there was a big language barrier he really connected with his Nans brothers Stefan and Vasyl (Bill) and also Stefan’s son Michael. Michael has such a big character, he was so interested in our lives, the way of life and about Australia. We had another big feast and more drinks before bidding a very sad farewell and got back in the car for another hair raising trip back to Chervonohrad, this time in the rain!!!! We got back to Chervonohrad about 10pm and went to Andrew’s mum’s house, she had prepared yet another big meal. Any weight we may have lost on the trip has been put back on and more. On Monday we chilled out and got to see some of the sites of Chervonohrad and made sure we filled our bellies just a bit more before saying another very sad goodbye to everyone and catching the overnight train to Kiev. The train was much nicer than previous ones and we actually had a sleeper carriage with four beds. We settled in
and then went to the buffet car to have a bottle of wine and celebrate Andrews’s birthday as the clock struck 12am. The train wasn’t as gentle as I imagined but the rocking and shaking got me to sleep.
We arrived in Kiev at about 11am and met with Andrews’s fiancée Marina then caught the bus to Ukrainka where they live. It is about an hour from Kiev and is located on a huge flooded river (used for another hydro power station) in amongst pine forests. Andrew lives here as he works at the local massive thermal power station located in the town. There flat is situated right on the river and they have amazing views over the flood, on a good day you can just about see the land on the other side of the lake. It was quite late when we got back so we all showered ready to go and watch Andrew play in his band at a restaurant. The restaurant was really posh and as payment they got the biggest feast for us all. It was a really nice evening as we were also celebrating Andrew’s 24th birthday. Andrew is very musical and can play
the violin and guitar extremely well. Their band plays traditional Ukrainian folk songs and is made up of the violin, guitar, double bass and accordion. They were so good it was really awesome to see really good live local music. After obviously the obligatory vodka and food we came back to Ukrainka and sat at the shore of the river and the boys played and sung more songs. It was such a cool evening definitely something you wouldn’t do as a normal tourist in Ukraine.
The next day we met up with Andrews’s sister Anna in Kiev, Anna and Marina were our tour guides for the day. Kiev is on such a greater scale to Lviv, it kind of reminded us of Bangkok at first as there is also massive river (Dnipro River) flowing through the middle. The centre isn’t as pretty as Lviv but Kiev has lots of parkland surrounding it, a kind of haven from all the hustle and bustle. We walked up to the national theatre and through the Askoldova Mohyla Park. From the park you get views of some of the massive skyline of Kiev and to the beach on the river. I am not
sure I would be keen to go and sunbathe and swim in the river as it didn’t look so clean. We also visited Kievo-Pecherska Lavra a massive Monastery which attracts pilgrims from around the world. From the monastery grounds you can also see the Motherland Statue, a 62 meter titanium lady holding a sword and shield. After our big day of walking around Kiev we went to another canteen style restaurant and headed back to Ukrainka.
The following couple of days we have spent chilling out in Ukrainka writing the blog and enjoying not being on the move. Tonight we catch the train from Kiev to Krakow which takes 17 hours.
A massive thank you to our Ukrainian family and new friends, everyone has been so welcoming and generous, it has been the most amazing experience meeting Js family and we definitely plan to come back and see them all again soon.
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Helen Frys
non-member comment
True Ukrainian
WooHoo! Your a true Ukrainian now Jason, now you have had the vodka breakfast, vodka lunch and vodka tea! Thanks guys that was wonderful being filled in on your awesome trip and your one on one contact with the family. Cant wait to hear more when you get home. Luv Aunty Hell.x