First impressions of the Ukraine

Kamyanets- Podilsky fortress, Ukraine
Originally uploaded by rtw2007.

We’re now in Lviv, in North Western Ukraine. It has a turbulent history and has been ruled buy Germans, Poles and Russians amongst others over the years but is now settled as the most ‘European’ of Ukrainian cities. We arrived reasonably late last night after a long drive. We are staying in the same hotel as Ewan McGregor stayed in when his did his ‘Long Way Round’ trip (we read the book and watched the – very good - TV series before our trip). Unfortunately we were unable to park our van in the lobby as he did with his motorbike, but we can at least drink in the jaded 70s appeal of a Soviet era hotel: psychedelic carpets; gold lame bedspreads; ostentatious yet faded stairways; and strange customers creaking their way up and down the corridors at all hours, to and from the communal chlorine soaked bathrooms.

We arrived in the Ukraine on Monday and had a long, stressful day. The border crossing, although slow, was reasonably straightforward – greatly aided by a younger customs officer who was very keen to practice her English on us. Unfortunately, though, we were unable to buy compulsory road insurance at the border as we had expected (and the customs people didn’t seem in the slightest bit concerned that we didn’t have it). This meant a rather nerve-wracking, uninsured drive to the first large town, making no less than seven stops along the way to seek directions from a series of helpful locals (none of whom spoke English). One local directed us to a hairdresser, which we could only assume was because she had taken one look at my hair and decided that must be what we were after. In fact, it turned out that the insurance office was next to the hairdressers and thankfully was able to provide us with what we needed.

All this navigation is made more difficult as we are back in the worlds of both the Cyrillic alphabet and also tiny (or mainly non-existent) signs for street names. Anyway, suitably insured we then drove 5km in the wrong direction as Michael had misread the map; followed the bizarre instructions of a police man to just ‘go for it’ the wrong way down a one way street (he looked very exasperated when we tried to suggest that we were a little concerned about driving into the oncoming stream of trams, cars and trolley buses and told us to get on with it); drove back to town and eventually headed in the correct direction.

By this point we were both knackered, stressed and in need of a good rest. After a couple of false hopes we eventually found a nice friendly motel with accommodating staff who agreed, via international sign language, to let us park and sleep round the back, whilst providing surprisingly tasty food and very cheap beer (25 pence for half a litre). They even had a dirty video juke box on the bar but we managed to resist, not wanting to corrupt their view of the British.

The next day we were up early to visit the local fortress as Khotyn, which was fantastic. Then we made the short drive up to the town of Kamyanets-Podilsky which is, like Český Krumlov, located in the middle of a tight river meander. It is a stunning location and we parked up in the old town square before enjoying an amble around the town and down to our second stunning fortress of the day, complete with rickety ramparts, spooky dungeons and poor quality waxworks. I also tried my hand at archery under the guidance of a very scary local.

Everywhere that we have been in the last couple of days has really endeared the Ukraine to us; the castles are fantastic; everything is really cheap; and the people are warm, helpful and welcoming. The only exception so far has been the police, who seem perfectly willing to flag down any vehicle, including us, whether or not they have done anything wrong. We got pulled over yesterday for seemingly absolutely nothing at all, given that we were going at snails pace and not driving like lunatics (unlike the locals) – they had clearly just decided to pull over the next car they saw as they were waving us in before we were even really in sight. Fortunately, the trick of looking completely blank; smiling; and turning on the Broadwith charm ;-) seemed to do the trick and we were eventually waved on with a handshake. Will this continue as we head to Kiev…?