Travel diaries from Ukraine - #001 My very first trip to L'viv

A trip to an unknown world

Dear fellow Steemians, since some of you have shown interest in my connection to Ukraine and in the country itself, I decided to take you all on a journey through time and Europe and publish bits and pieces of the travel diary I kept on my very first journey to L'viv. I hope you enjoy reading this series as much as I enjoyed spending my first month in L'viv.

Foreword

In 2007, I went to L'viv, Ukraine for the first time. I decided to stay with a host family I hadn't met before for. They offered me free accommodation for a month in exchange for helping their daughter learn German - and I was going to learn Ukrainian. Spoiler alert: this was one of the best decisions I have ever made. It taught me to keep jumping in at the deep end and see where that takes me. It taught me that water can get a lot thicker than blood. And it changed my life for the better. I'm thrilled to go back to those early days, almost precisely eleven years after going to L'viv for the first time, and to share some of the stories with you.

Confusion at the train station

At 1:52 p.m., the train from Vienna to Budapest departed on time. In my cabin - a Hungarian mother with her child, a young Hungarian musician, and a German girl - all of whom were lovely. Three weeks and a few chats later, I arrived in Budapest with a heavy backpack. One and a half hours to find out, where the train to L'viv was going to depart from. The train station was huge and everything was written in Hungarian. Which platform might be the right one? Finally, I decided to hop on the train that read "Moscow", as that looked like the most plausible option. I eventually find the bed I had booked in advance - and, yes, I had got on the right train. Lucky me!

An unexpected acquaintance

Crimson curtains, little carpets, a little closet, and even a small table - the cabin, in which my bed (number 21) was, appeared dark but comfortable. A young Ukrainian woman, Oksana, had already unpacked her dinner. It soon turned out that her German was flawless - and that we even had a mutual friend. She paid me a cup of tea, as I didn't have any Ukrainian currency on me and we kept chatting until we fell asleep.

It helps to speak foreign languages

Waking up - well, having been woken up - at the border, the first thing I saw was snow. A lot of it! The Hungarian border patrol came and asked me questions in Russian, which I didn't understand at the time. Oksana translated for me. The Hungarian guy was nice although I didn't understand him. He smiled at me when he handed me my passport. Then the Ukrainian patrol came to check our passports again.

They lifted the train

At the border, they lifted each waggon and changed its wheels - something I had never seen before. In Ukraine, they use a different gauge so we had to be patient until all wheels were changed and we could continue our journey. At around 3 a.m. we continued our journey. And finally we could get some rest!

A different landscape

At 7.30, Oksana's and my alarm clocks went off. The train was going to arrive in L'viv very soon. While Oksana was getting changed, I was walking through the waggon's aisle, looking outside. The landscape appeared different, although at first I couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. I took a closer look: trees that had fallen in a storm hadn't been removed, old concrete pillars lined the street like guards. The houses outside the big cities were tiny and appeared to be uninhabited. It looked like nobody had lived around there for years - maybe even decades.

Meeting the family

Oksana and I decided to stay in touch and meet up in L'viv during my stay. She wanted to show me around her city. Hopping off the train, my host father and sister, people I hadn't previously met and still offered me free accommodation for nearly a whole month, were already waiting for me. They appeared to be nice. We briefly introduced ourselves, my host father took my luggage and carried it to the car - and I said goodbye to Oksana, whose boyfriend had also already just arrived to pick her up.

The entrance of L'viv's train station in February of 2007.

At home, I met my lovely host mother and the family's doberman Bara. It was love at first sight - just a few minutes after meeting Bara, she already cuddled up to me. The room and the flat were beautiful - there was even a piano in my room. I was relieved to have found such a nice family - and to finally have a decent shower.

Our beloved doberman Bara.

First impressions of L'viv

After breakfast, we exchanged gifts. Then my host sister showed me around the city. The buses going to the city centre were small, yellow, and extremely crowded. The ticket - well, you didn't get a ticket really - only cost 1 Hryvnia (a couple of cents). On the bus, I observed something surprising: whenever people got on the bus at the rear end, they would simply tap the shoulder of the person in front of them and gave them their money; the person in front would do the same with the person in front of them and so on - until the money reached the driver. Change was given in the same manner. I had never seen anything like this before. This system of honesty, trust, and cooperation amazed me.

Walking around the old town, Roma showed me the oldest church - an Armenian church dating back to the 9^th century - , an Italian palace, and a Polish cathedral. In one of the streets that looked a bit more artsy, a young woman invited us to visit her gallery, where we had a look at wonderful artwork and a nice chat with the young woman, who turned out to be the owner of the gallery.

Entrance to the Armenian church

Traces of Austria everywhere

Roma took me to a Viennese-style coffee house, where the Good Soldier Schwejk - or at least his bronze statue - was already having a coffee. Since it was a Viennese-style coffee house, I decided to have a piece of Sachertorte - the most famous Austrian variant of chocolate cake and probably the tastiest chocolate cake on a global scale. The old pictures of Vienna on the wall took the guests back to the times when L'viv was still a part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. The cake didn't taste much like Sachertorte, but it was still delicious. And of course it was interesting to see what kind of image a coffee house more than 800 kilometres away from what I called home interpreted Austrian coffee house traditions.

Schwejk had already ordered his coffee.

My first - unofficial - Ukrainian lesson

Back at my host family's flat, I showed them pictures of Austria and of my family. We ead borsht (red beet soup) and breaded and deep-fried cutlet with mashed potatoes. Much too early after the chocolate cake - so I couldn't finish dinner. My host mother kept telling me, "їж, їж" (pronounced yizh yizh), which translates to "eat, eat". Well, great - at least I had learned my first words (and learned a lot about the Ukrainian way of life).
The day after, I was going to have my first proper Ukrainian lessons. I had decided to study Ukrainian four hours per day with the help of a private teacher - for the whole month...

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