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Published: October 1st 2008
Crowded commuter train, capital city, and the only two tourists in sight - we should have known it spelled trouble!
We began our time in Ukraine in the fortress town of Kamyanets-Podilsky, shortened by us to simply "Kam". Immediately we noticed how friendly and helpful everyone was. For example, if we deemed a hotel too expensive, they would get on the phone and try to find us a better deal elsewhere! Another example is that people would take the time to either draw a map or physically lead us to where we wanted to go. It was a nice contrast to a few other parts of Eastern Europe where we frequently ran into rude and impatient people, ready to flip their lid and start yelling at us just because we couldn't understand them!
Thank goodness the people are so helpful in Ukraine as it proved to be a surprisingly difficult country to travel in from a constantly-lost-and-helpless point of view. It is mainly due to the fact that all of the street signs are in cryllic (a.k.a. hieroglyphics) and our map is in the English equivalent, so virtually impossible to match up. In addition, being illiterate means that it
is virtually impossible to find a particular kind of business. For example, while searching for a restaurant we have mistakenly walked into photo studios, furniture stores and even offices. Once you actually do find a restaurant, if the menu is just squiggles and the staff don't speak a word of English, it makes ordering rather difficult. In India, we ran into similar issues but we could make sure it was a "pure veg" restaurant and just point to something random on the menu and it was always good. Here, after seeing things like
veal stuffed with lard and
raviolis with tomato ketchup on the menu for not so cheap a price, we don't really like taking that risk!
Our second stop in Ukraine was the capital, Kiev, a stop that almost changed the whole trip. We arrived on the overnight train and, don't ask me how, but we got off the train and failed to find the train station. I know it sounds impossible, but I'm telling you, this country is sooo difficult to navigate. We ended up on the street, walking around in circles in the rain and asking everyone we saw where the train station was. When
Beachfront, Yalta
This place seems like a cross between England's Blackpool and Los Angele's Venice Beach (but without the sun!)it was obvious that they didn't understand English, we broke into our "chugga chugga choo choo" impression. It always got a laugh, but it worked. We found the station, put our bags in storage, and set off to explore Kiev for a day before boarding another night train.
Soon, disaster was to strike. We decided to take the underground/metro. It was early morning rush hour and there were crowds everywhere. Have you seen the u-tube clip with men in white gloves employed to shove crowds of people into the carriages? Well, it was like that. We crushed in with everyone and the doors closed. I mentioned to Scott to be careful as this was prime pick-pocket territory as I hauled my shoulder bag up to my chest to hug it. Sixty seconds later we arrived at the next station and the floodgates opened, spilling a torrent of commuters onto the platform. Only when we had a little breathing space did I realize that my bag was unzipped. Frantically, I did a quick inventory: Scott's sunglasses, check; camera, check; wallet, check; money belt...GONE! After travelling in Africa, crime capital of the world, for months, I couldn't believe that this was
Scott doesn
Yalta, Crimea happening here in Kiev.
We hopped off at the next station and saw two police officers and instantly approached them, telling them what had happened and pantomiming the whole thing. They didn't understand and frankly couldn't be bothered, a strange reaction given that everyone else in the country had so far been so nice. We ended up going straight to the UK Embassy, which was pathetic (thanks, guys!) and passed us straight on to the UK Consulate across town, who were pretty nice but really not that helpful in the end. They said I could get a replacement passport but it would take six weeks to process. Six weeks?! The other alternative was to get a temporary passport which would allow me to fly only direct from Kiev to London, which was no good as my ticket goes out of Vienna, two countries away. Plus, I realized, I had lost my India visa, which had been a nightmare to obtain in the first place, and all of my US Immigration documents, the only things allowing me to re-enter the States. It was hopeless. The consulate people said they would try to figure something else out for me, but they
couldn't do anything until I had obtained a police report. They hinted that this might be difficult, and even told us that they had reports of people having the door slammed in their face when asking for a crime report - charming!
In the meantime, I got worried that maybe I had imagined the whole thing and I had just left my money belt in my small backpack in storage at the train station. Another metro ride confirmed that it was indeed not there, and that indeed the metro was a nightmare - Scott is convinced someone was in his front pocket as all of the papers were pulled half out, but he thought he had lost nothing. We later found out that that wasn't the case...
So, sworn off the metro, and with no time to walk and negotiate the confusing streets of a new city, we decided to taxi it everywhere. We first checked with the metro police as the UK consulate had advised, then got sent across town to a second police station where we were not even allowed in the building past security. Finally, we were told to go to a third police station
in the train station. All of this was communicated by asking passers by if they spoke English and if they wouldn't mind translating for us as the police spoke zero English, despite the fact that they are required to provide translators by law apparently.
Heading to our third police station of the day, we were nervous and excited. After our kind 12 year old boy translator had gone, we were left with the police man at the gate again waiting for a phone call from his boss. When it came, he said his first English word "document" and pointed to the train station on our map. Not knowing what else to do, we jumped into yet another taxi and went over there. We couldn't decide if "document" meant that that was where we could finally get a police report, or if they had found my money belt. I didn't dare let myself get too excited, but when we arrived and the officer immediately produced something wrapped in newspaper, I became really optimistic. He dramatically pulled out two different wallets from the folds of paper, each time I shook my head. Finally he pulled it out - my money belt!!!
The happy couple...plus the hooker bridesmaid!!!
She's the one in the black leather dress and high boots!!!
Sevastopol, Crimea I instantly searched for my passport, immigration document, and green card in that order and was relieved to find that they were all there. Even my credit card was still there. The only thing missing, predictably, was the money. The police made a big show of trying to get us to describe the criminal, but we just shrugged. We were not even aware of it, and even if we were, there is no way to recover cash. It's unfortunate as, between the US dollars, Thai baht, and Indian rupees, it amoutned to a fair old sum. We cut our losses, glad to at least have the documents back, and then headed back to the UK consulate to tell them the good news. They didn't seem surprised at all. In fact, they had earlier told me that sometimes they have two people a day come in with the same thing having happened, and more often then not the police find the documents, minus the cash. It really makes you suspicious. Given how friendly evenryone has been apart from the police, our guess is that they are in on the deal and take a cut of the money recovered. Generally, if tourists
get their documents back, they will not make too much of a fuss about the cash. It's too bad as it had given us a bad impression of the country which we loved at the beginning.
By this time is was 4pm and we hadn't had anything to eat or drink all day apart from a few crackers on the train for breakfast and a cup of water at the UK Consulate. We grabbed a quick Snickers and then headed to the Chernobyl museum to try to get something touristy in. It was a bit of a let down as nothing was in English yet again so you really didn't learn anything. Instead, we left and walked up one of the famous cobbled streets in town and ambled by the souvenir stalls. Not wanting to take the metro again, we walked all the way back to the train station, stopping at McDonalds for dinner. It wasn't really our first choice, but we just simply couldn't find any other decently priced restaurants, and of course there was the lack-of-English-menu issue!
On the night train leaving Kiev, we suddenly discovered what had been taken from Scott's pocket on the metro
- our guide book pages. Due to the book being fat and heavy, we have been tearing out pages and stapling them together so as to avoid lugging the book around everyday. It doesn't seem like abig deal, but Ukraine
with a guidebook is difficult, Ukraine
without a guidebook is virtually impossible!
We arrived in Crimea at Simferopol, and instantly hopped onto a bus to Yalta. This is the main seaside destaintion for Ukrainians and also Russians. Immediately we felt a difference in the people. There were still some very helpful friendly ones, but there was also a new set of evil grumpy ones, not willing to take the time to help us out because the language barrier made it inconveneient for them. It seemed as if it was easier for them to just continue to watch their TV show rather than sell us a ticket - very annoying!
Crimea was OK but nothing spectucular. The coastline was pretty, backed by huge cliffs, but it had been marred by crazy amounts of development. We were glad of the warmer weather though and even had our first day of sun in about two weeks. We spent a day visiting
Changing of the guard at Odessa, and look, sun!
You might notice that it was all teenagers doing the guarding. It was funny to watch as they couldn't keep a straight face, making each other (and us) laugh! Sevastopol, home of the Black Sea Fleet. It was Saturday and in one area there were about a dozen or so weddings going on. The brides were literally lining up to take their photo shots. This brings me to one thing we have noticed everywhere in Ukraine, and sporadically in other coutnries we have visited so far in Eastern Europe - the fashion sense. It seems that the slutty look is well and truly in. It is quite unnerving to walk around and see what looks like prostitutes all around you (Scott doesn't have a problem with it, he he!). Seriously, they wear short shirts, fish net stockings, and either super high stilettoes, or super high heeled knee length boots. They particularly like them to be bright red, with a matching bright red plastic leather jacket. It's not just the young people either. Women in the 50s are doing it - sooo gross!!!! We were shocked to see the bridesmaids at some of the weddings wearing their hooker dresses, too. Check out the photo - very bizarre!
We did another day trip to a little town called Bakchisaray. As our guidebook was stolen, we had no clue how to
Odessa's rather run down beach front
(Although this picture makes it look half way decent, good job computers don't transmit putrid old fish smell!) get there and no clue what we were supposed to see when we
did get there. Luckily a little internet research helped. It was famous for Khan's Temple, and the Uspensky monastery, built into the side of the cliffs. It was a scenic area and a pleasant day trip, but nothing ground-breaking.
We then had two back to back overnight trains with a day in Odessa in between. The beach front was quite scruffy and had a "has-been' feel, but parts of the town were OK.
Our last stop in Ukraine was Lviv, where we are now. We thought life would get easier as we had our guidebook again, but it didn't. The first hotel we tried took ages to find, and when we finally did find it we found it had changed owners and been refurbished and was now five times the prior price! Luckily, the friendly staff must have been used to backpackers turning up demanding cheap rooms, and they recommended another hotel to us. On the way we called into a different hotel and it was reasonable so we checked in, ready for a hot shower after two nights on overnight trains.
We then
went out to explore Lviv. Unfortunately it was raining, but we managed to do the walking tour in Lonely Planet under the shelter of my umberella. It then took several hours to figure out how to leave Lviv and get to Krakow. He trekked around to find the tourist information (useless!) and then the bus information office. Our problem was that we had heard that the overnight trains in and out of Poland, our next destination, were notorious for robbery, even going so far as to gas the compartment while you sleep so that they can rob you for everything! After what happened in Kiev, we wanted to avoid Polish trains so deicded to look into buses. The problem was that they only go at night, and we wanted to leave the next morning. Right now, it is 2:30pm. We are waiting for the train ticket information stand to open at 3pm (they are on a one hour lunch break, everything seems to close for an hour at lunch here - don't they have the concept of staff rotation?!) and we are hoping to find a nice, safe day train with no robbers on it - wish us luck!
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sheila woolley
non-member comment
you poor things!!!
It sounds like a nightmare, I'm so glad you got your papers and passport back though and that you had enough money on you to get you thru' the crisis. We had similar problems with the language barrier reading menus in Bulgaria when we were there a few years ago. It was all a case of pot luck like you say. Don't worry I'll have lots of you favourite food waiting when you get home in a weeks time!! love mum xx