Nikolaev Business Hotel Mykolayiv

... Billy showed up at the hostel; he did a west-east European gig with his parents. Told me about Croatia-he loved it as much as I did.

Planning my trip now to Istanbul. The only glitch is getting thru Moldovia without going thru the renegade region. It's just expensive is all, the border guards expect bribe money. so....just avoid that border crossing and go the long way round.

... place on foot. And, the map I bought at the train station only has Ukranian names with Cryllic spelling. Now, I start to get a challange of traveling, like good old S.A. in my beginning days.

It seems like the people here are pretty nasty acting. I went to the info at train station, no English, no maps, and was pretty rude to me. Old grump woman. Do they want Western tourists or not? I then stopped at a cafe at the train station ...

... by a peace core volunteer.


Soon we were eating lunch with an entire group of peace core
volunteers. They were a blast to listen to. Ross and I finally
discovered why windows were always closed. Apparently Ukrainians have a
superstition that cross breezes cause lock jaw and hence in the summer
you must roast on public transportation. Ross and I also commented that
although we would both be soaking with sweat ...

... One option here is to tap away at the corners of all the individual packs and then squirrel them into your naturally bulky winter clothing: the objective being to round and smooth the otherwise square objects so you pass a patdown search. So a genuine traveller at the border is a curiosity to all and sundry, while for me it was like being immersed in a large, pointless, but quite comical game. There was no other traveller with luggage there besides Elise, also from the Lviv hostel ...

... drink vodka. He pulled out a 1.5 litre bottle, and the five of us started drinking, By the end, it was just the three Aussies, and we were all pretty ****** !!! Because of the too much vodka the night before, I didn't move until 11ish. We took a walk over to the Armenian Cathedral. The murals inside were pretty impressive. Afterwards, we took a walk up to Castle Hill. There use to be a castle, but now its just a hill with a lookout. On one side is ...

... and all flat surfaces. In addition to places of worship, we visited a small craft market, the town arsenal, and ended our tour on top of Castle Hill, with panoramas of the whole area. In the late afternoon, we enjoyed sachertorte at one of Lviv's many little cafes. We also visited Lychakivsky cemetery, which I'm sure sounds quite boring, but wasn't. The final resting place of over 400,000 souls, it is overflowing with beautiful tombstones and monuments to ...

ok, so here are the pointers from the title. lviv - means lion in ukrainian, thats what the city is name after, but really it is some dude son, not the animal horilka - ukrainian for vodka, not that often that u sometimes have 2 shots with breakfast and 5+ shots with dinner. i have learned that when toasting, the 3 toast is to love, the 5th to parents, there was something about a 10th one, but i dont ...

... easy, not being able to read anything, and communication was difficult, but that challenge made it all the more fun. Furthermore, the locals I met were great people. As we got a ride to the bus station in a taxi, I hoped that I would get a chance to come back. One thing I knew for certain was that Ukraine warranted further exploration. There were just six people on the bus as it pulled out of Lviv's bus station, and we both thought that meant it would be a quick, hassle free trip over the border...

... my one and an half stay there). In the late afternoon, I walked up to the Old Castle Hill northeast of the Center. Almost all the people hanging out there are locals. I did not see any group of tourist-like people around. Interestingly, I found I was the only Asian person wherever I went (ran into only another Asian, also a tourist I think, outside of a church), but nobody even took a second look at me. On top of the Hill, a cross and a Ukrainian flag sit high up there ...

... I am in Lviv, where it rains almost daily. They say Lviv is Ukraine's "bladder." I'm attending Ukrainian courses at Catholic University for the next two weeks. They are exciting for me because I am learning the vocab to talk about things that will really help my town: AIDS, first aid courses, gender roles, handicapped accessibility, and telephone and transport systems. I am feeling empowered about secondary projects I will be able to promote in my town ...