Suputnyk Hotel Lviv

... only people I have found are the hostel people, the tourist office person and one waiter. I am sure there are others but it reflects that English is not common. Occasionally a restaurant will have a menu in English but they have no system for taking the English menu and translating it into Ukrainian for the order. Each time, it takes awhile then look at the English menu and Ukrainian one back to back to figure out what the order is. A guy next to me ...

... refuse to show us the linen we pointed to and instead would bring us a wedding theme runner. I guess twenty three is much to old not to have a ring on my finger. Haha. I did, however find a few non-wedding linens to purchase. Weddings seemed to be a big business at this market. There were entire section full of wedding dresses, brides maid dresses and other wedding paraphernalia. Ross purchased a Ukrainian belt that the sales lady had a blast tying and retying tightly around his waste ...

... the day with an excellent meal. The girls who run the hostel arranged to have some freshly made varenki brought in as I asked where I could get some good stuff. Varenki is what they call perogies in Ukraine. All I can say is Oh My God. They were so good. Best I have ever had. Just simple potato and onion filling with sour cream on the side but they were excellent. And they only cost 16 hyvarni (Ukrainian currency). Which is just under 2 Pounds and just under $4 ...

... things to do in town, Eddie has been no slouch with suggestions and - it being deep in the off season - has been almost a free tour guide. Normally a city can be pieced back together in my memory from photos taken - here there were only two. Most of the experiences were not really camera appropriate. Plus I had fallen victim to a dodgy internet cafe and viruses every memory stick and camera in the area, putting me in a decidedly anti-camera frame of mind. Not camera appropriate? Day ...

Arrival Because of the way we came, plus the fact we are now in our third time zone for the day, we finally arrived around 19:30. We had a look at the instructions to get to the hostel, and as it was only 5 tram stops away, we decided to walk. Around 20 minutes later, we were lost !!! We heard a voice speaking Australian, and he pointed us in the right direction. 30 minutes later, we had arrived at the Kosmonaut. Our new home. We went ...

... the store when it let up a little. Shopping at a corner store is even more amusing in the middle of the night. The front door has a cage across it and from there you have to point across to the shelves. I didn't realise how many languages I could say cheese in and good thing I knew the word Kolbasa. After we had those two items, it was a lot easier to get the crackers as well. A snack and a cup of tea and that was me done for the night.

... I heard something like khhhhrr and then I felt pain in my thigh. The leg was ripped up from my thigh to the knee. I bacame upset because that was my favourite green pair of trousers, however we didn`t have time to stop. We had to come to the station and buy our tickets. For the next km I was walking with scar on my thigh and leg hanging out of my knee. Girls were laughing that in trousers bought in the States I looked like a real American, but the Ukrainians didn`t get it ...

... there was something different about the place. Perhaps it was that the rynok was on an incline. Perhaps it was that the huge rathaus (town hall) in the centre made it feel like less of a town square. Perhaps it was the fact that all the writing in the shop windows was in the Cyrillic alphabet. Perhaps it was that the people seemed to be dressed in darker clothes, and many of them were wearing the Russian style hats I hadn't seen in Poland. Or, perhaps it was the protestors ...

... castle looking beautiful with the gray skies. You can't actually go in the castle we discovered, just walk around it. There was a pond below it and a bunch of fields and farm animals. We did see a miniscule portion of Ukrainian countryside, particularly after waiting for quite a while later on for the return minibus. Getting home from the autovokzal was a lot easier than getting there in the first place. We were freezing, starving and cramped up from the seats, we went home. The ...

... corridor with 6 beers he had somehow bought from somebody. he kept pushing the open beer bottle in my face (i was trying to sleep on the upper bunk) until i finally took it. then he invited me to come down and sit with him and talk on the lower bunk. there was also a gentleman from Pakistan in the compartment (who didn't speak any Ukrainian) so all the drunk guy kept repeating was that when he's in England he ...