Showing posts with label Lviv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lviv. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
3:16 PM | 
Posted by
Ryś |
Bo gdzie jeszcze ludziom tak dobrze, jak tu?
Tylko we Lwowie!
This song written in the begining of 20th century has been an athem of people charmed by Lviv. Since the last weekend at least 4 more people can sign under that sentence. Lviv is charming, international, old and young, surprising, unforgettable...
Arrival
We came to Lviv without any serious obstacles on Saturday at about 12 am (GMT+2). The booked hostel presented itself surprisingly well (we paid 5 Euro per night) and the receptionist - Marichka - astonished us with her Polish language. The only problem which appeared in the begining was, that we had to climb on the 4th floor to get to our room. It seemed to be impossible to be done few hours later. We were awared that in many hostels in Lviv the hot water is available just at certain time - so it was in our hostel as well. Clean and sated we moved to the city. This time - as opposed to my last visit in the city - we had great weather and nothing could stop us from exploring this town.
First impressions? Our money was double worth as in Poland, girls were two times prettier than in our homeland, but the city was much more neglected than our domestic touristic destinations. From the visual point of view, Lviv seemed to have a bit of Cracow, Paris and Oslo at once. You can easily notice the big heritage of the city - Polish, Soviet and finally Ukrainian history stamped significantly in Lviv's architecture, urbanism and people's mentality.
I can't say that inhabitants who we met were hostile, but they weren't too much friendly as well. That can suprise if we consider, that in 3 years Lviv will be one of the EUROCup hosting cities.
Evening
Although during the day, we couldn't complain about weather, in the night it started raining. However that couldn't be a reason to not to enjoy Lviv's nightlife. We stayed in the hostel, where were coming the other guest. Really international company - Poles, Americans, Canadians, Chinese, Russians, Cubanians and Ukrainians let me feel again as on Erasmus. I won't go to details about numbers and quantities... but that night surprised us in many aspects. First of all our stupidity and immaturity - it's a shame to confess, but we did it and left all the prescious stuff - including passport with visa in the centre of the room on the shelf - fortunatelly all our hostel-mates were good people and our mistake dispense with consequences. Second - more glorious was getting to know our new city-mate - Patrick from Hong Kong, whose polish language was sometimes better than our. We just remember that the evening finished about 1 am because of two Americans who were so kind to ask receptionist to quit the party. The morning was the last surprise of that night, because we woke up without hangover and in quite good shape. As a result of our evening in that hostel appeared such a picture:
Sunday
On the last day of our visit in Lviv we premised to fullfill the touristic duties and see the key-places in Lviv. For a kick-off we run our legs to the Old Town to verify if entitling Lviv as "Three Cathedrals City" isn't an abuse. It is not. There are Latin (Rome-Catholic), Uniate (Greek-catholic) and Armenian cathedrals. What's more there are dozens of other temples which on Sunday seemed to be half-filled.
By the way - I owe you a complementation. On Saturday the Old Town was dominated not by tourists, nor by cadet corps (usually you can see many of them in every big Ukrainian town), but by the newlyweds. Whereever we went, there were many couples taking the memorial pictures with their guests and beautiful, skyborn and astonishing maids of honour. Lviv is the second place - after Belgrade - where we got an impression that Angels came to Earth. Gorgeous girls!
But to recur - later we went to Lychakiv, where among the others are located the memorials - the tribute to Polish soldiers defending Lviv in the begining of the last century.
Eventually the departure time has come and with fulled up with delicious dinner we moved to the bus station. *here I am going to skip few words dedicated to person who misinformed us that we lost quite a sum of money...
The come back
You can get the impression that every return journey from Ukraine is jinxed and I am overdrawing some situations. You can belive or not, but it really happened.
We came to the border with a coach (marshruta) at 9pm, ready to wait long in a queue for the passport control. But unbeware the border was empty - no more smugglers binded up with tapes of cigarettes - there were just few people waiting for check-in and that's why the custom officers where very pedantic with control.
It took over an hour to cross the border and when we came to the parking to take a bus we got a cold shower. The last bus went away 4 minutes ago. It was 10:10 pm and really noone wanted to take us (4 boys anyway) to Przemysl where we was our train to Wroclaw. Of course there are advantages of tightening our eastern border and strengthening the country security, but in such situation we saw just the drawbacks. Because while you stop smugglers, you stop all the business around them - not only trade, but also the means of transport (before joining Schengen Zone buses were running untill 1 am), what affected us in that moment.
We had no choice, but to walk 13 km from the border. And when in 3rd kilometer hopelessly we waved to hitch-hike, suddenly a jeep stopped. "Great!" we thought... but then the lights flashed and a masked border guard with machine gun jumped from the car. "Great" we thought again, but this time it had nothing with enthusiasm. He questioned us and wished safe noctivagation to Przemysl. "Oh, thank you very much, but maybe you could give us a lift?! " "We don't work as taxi drivers" he replied.
Sentenced to walk at 11:30pm we entered Przemysl, but our GPS disillusionized us - there were still 6 km to the train station. We decided to stop and take some rest.
Here is place for short comment: The picture's quality is at it is, and I would never publish that, but it's significant situation and there was no time to take the second shot, because...
... then a car stopped and man speaking with such an eastern accent decided to drop us to the station. Sent from heaven or just directed by profit - he brought us to the station, where we had to wait untill 5:50 am for train to Wroclaw.
Conclusion?
We don't regret anything!
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Thursday, May 28, 2009
Ladies and Gentlemen!
I am going East again! No, no, don't get me wrong, not Baltic States anymore, but Ukraine!
When you think - Ukraine, you find large country - Russia dependent - somewhere in Asia, and if not Asia, then far European East for sure. But is it true? Does it really look like this? That's what we are going to find out. I wrote "we" on purpose, because this time I'm not going to travel alone. Since tomorrow my companions will be - well known from this blog Pawel "Lolek", but also Igi and Filip. Destination? Lviv. That's right, it's not sufficient to go just to Lviv and to judge about Ukraine, but this is just the begining of this year's trips to Ukraine (in July we'll probably go to Kryme). If anyone is willing to join us, we start the "L-WOW!" trip tomorrow at Wroclaw main station, at 10:35pm.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
5 September 2007, Wednesday
It's 6:57pm (GMT+1) and soon we are going to the railway station... Where do we go? To Lviv! Couple of minutes ago we were sitting in a car and thinking what to do tonight... Bowling? neah.. Cinema? nothing nice there... Sports? how often we can do that?.. Lviv? Lviv! So we are leaving! At 9:40pm there is a train to Przemysl, then bus to Medyka, border and again bus this time straight to Lviv!
I have heard that just travelling by this train to Przemysl can be an unforgettable adventure... But our aim is Lviv and we won't give up... Oki, I must pack.. hmm what to take?... Whatever! See ya!
5 September 2007, Wednesday's evening
Just before getting to train we made tactics to take all compartment just for us. Easy to say, hard to do… but the simple thought about 8 hours of journey among people in the night convinced us quite quickly that we must do it. Fortunately Wroclaw was the starting station of that train – and took us straight to Przemysl… Of course the journey couldn’t be without surprises. The first one was quite big, old, bald, drunk… and spoke in Russian… Yep, in the minute we reminded all the stories about thieves and criminals in the trains going on East. Scared of his luggage Frycz (8 beers in bag) – who as the only one from us was speaking Russian started talking with him, somehow letting him to know that we don’t want any guests (especially drunk and with eastern accent) in our compartment… But the man seemed to not care about our words and started his story… He was going (at least he said that) from Russia to Szczecin through Legnica (aha… connection which doesn’t exist, it assured us that he’s playing with us) to buy cars and import them to Russia… (Yep…) and of course he got to wrong train (interesting that exactly to the one which was going on East)… We got also to know about his family, and thieves from Poland… and where to hide money… and we were just wondering what will be next… Finally somehow we told him that if he’s going to Szczecin (Northern West Poland) then he has to change train… With every next minute our doubts of safety journey were bigger and bigger and then suddenly train stopped in Brzeg… Man asked if there is possibility to change train and when he got positive answer, took his bag, jumped over our legs and after a while touched down at the platform… In that way we stayed alone…
But thanks to that “meeting” we found the manner what to do to avoid any other passengers… We entered the corridor and loudly started speaking (big word ;) in Russian – we knew just few simple phrases, but again Frycz gave us big show of his language possibilities ;)
It was midnight… the train was slowly passing next stations…The windowpane started washing in the rain… To fall asleep at least for few hours we tried few swallows of something to warm up…
6 September , 2007 – Thursday
After 8 hours of boring, broken by few short naps journey we came to Przemys l… The weather was awful… it just thought me to not to believe forecasts in internet … Raining, cold and windy climate of Podkarpacie pushed us quickly to the bus which took us to the border… Tourists going to Krym quickly took all place and we went to Medyka …
Crossing border from Polish side looked quite easily… just passport control, filling some documents for Ukrainians and we are on Ukraine! But before… something seemed to be a bit strange… everyone who we were passing on border was asking us who from polish soldiers is working at the border… We had to look very strange but we really didn’t know… it was our first contact with smugglers… :-)
When we finally crossed the border and drank first Obolone – which wasn’t good thing for our empty stomachs – we entered Marszruta to Lviv. Every place in that Mashina was taken, mainly by tourists… Bus was stopping few times and nowhere noone left bus… I know that it was nothing when we compare it with buses crossing Southern America, or Japanese metro… but this one was overcrowded.. :-) We came to Lviv at about 9:30 am (GMT+2). The expression of Frycz was saying it straightly – WE MUST EAT! :-) So we did.. found some bar near station, we were so hungry that even Pirozki with questionable meat tasted like in heaven :-) Bus number 66 took us to the Opera. Our breaths were taken away… and not because architecture (although it was really impressive) but this time because of the view of beautiful girls… Really there was no ugly or bad-looking girls… every next one was more and more pretty… everyone was looking and wearing very good… If I would be advising anyone where to look for girlfriend, where to find a wife… then there are two countries… Lithuania and Ukraine … People can complain that there is poverty and lack of many goods on East , but it is real source of beautiful girls. And the liar is a person who says that the most beautiful are Polish women… :-P
With good mood and more and more wet clothes we started our sight-seeing round… The Old Town looks really good but still in Lviv (the city which will be one of the hosts of Football Euro Championship) is lack of hotels, good roads, info in English and generally need much more changes than any other city in Poland… but we should be of good hope…
The rain was really strong – near Prospekt Svobod y we found a restaurant – Mandzuro … and although food there wasn’t good, beer tasted like everywhere else… then there was something what made us stay for few hours inside… Soon joined us friend of Storczyk – Oksana … We stayed there a bit and soon stopped raining. Oksana was our guide in Lviv… at least as soon as there wasn’t rain… After few hours spent together, couple of drunk beers and places visited we had to say good-bye to Oksana and go back to the border because after few hours (10pm GMT+1) we had train back to Wroclaw … Before we got in to our Marszruta we spent last Hrywny on shopping…
6 September, 2007 – Thursday’s night…
When we were leaving Lviv, there were 4 hours to the train… The journey from Przemysl to Lviv took about 3 hours… we had one hour extra… well we thought so… Marszruta left on time… the rain didn’t give up… very quickly came night and the bus was going in complete darkness… And although we couldn’t see.. we felt on our own that the main way to the border should be immediately repaired… The time of departure of our train was coming up but we still couldn’t see the lights of border. Finally, yes! First trucks in the queue… but wait.. why do we stop? The bus never stops behind trucks… it can go straight to the border… well not this time. Outside was cold and raining…and quite far from the border but we had just 2 hours till train’s leaving…
We were really mad when finally came to the Duty Zone… but there we could get to know better the world of smugglers… On Ukrainian side there wasn’t queue – guards let to go almost everyone… and those who they had doubts about… Could rely on support of the list of American Presidents … With big hope that we would get on time to the station we moved to Polish zone… As quickly as we came… the hopes disappeared… There were maybe 200 – 300 smugglers waiting for control… of course on argument that we are tourists and we are not smuggling anything, we got an answer that they also are tourists… ;-)
Among all these people there was one who got our special attention…Frytka - as we later got to know – completely drunk smuggler who was trying to force barriers on the border… We were thrilling from cold about an hour on the border… all the dreams about catching train we should leave in Lviv … finally control… soldier who was checking us was quite surprised when he didn’t find anything… We had to be ones of very few people last days at the border who crossed that without “any sins” . We were really relieved, finally sitting in a dry bus. But in mistake will be the one who thinks that it was the end of our ”adventures”. We were waiting for the rest of passengers, the bus was filling with people who one after one were taking off hidden boxes of cigarettes and other “souvenirs”. Man who was sitting next to me – Zygmunt had 60 of them. “Just sixty” as he said… this time was quite detailed control and he couldn’t hide more… The other was sharing sprit (from banka) with the others. The percentage of alcohol in their blood was growing up and still we didn’t leave Medyka – the driver was still waiting for passengers. Finally came the last part of people and after quarrel bus runned. Among the last smugglers was well-known Frytka who except hurling insults at everyone, tried to get off the bus when it was fasting to Przemysl … :-)
That night I have heard dozens of stories about Wroclaw – in fact three – but repeated few times ;-) We came to Przemysl after 12 am (GMT+1). Next train to Wroclaw left at…tada tada… 5:10am… shit! But the best news came just after a minute… the waiting room was closed till 3:30 am… The temperature was about 6 Celsius degrees, and on our wet clothes again appeared drops of rain… of downpour! Somewhere at the station homeless were smoking strange things.. We went to the railway guards but those just told us that in the neighborhood is a bar which should be still open… We found it near bus station, except us and lots of Ukrainians there were 3 students from Krakow. They were coming back from Romania – waiting for not-coming bus from Ukraine to Katowic e. Again a glimmer of hope appeared in our heads… when it finally came – glimmer burned off… They wanted from us 50 zl for journey with a unsure bus… It was 3am and soon we moved to waiting room at the station and bought tickets to Wroclaw. Finally we could fall asleep, at least till 5am. Przemysl left in our memories only bad signs… of rain, overcrowded ugly bars, unfriendly station, strange people and maybe I shouldn’t write about it, but also… closed toilets…
8 September 2007, Sunday
I just finished writing that text... Whatever to think after reading such relation... I must assure you that this journey left unforgettable memories... Who knows... maybe soon I would again visit our eastern neighbors? :-)
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