Spring day in town. May, 1999.

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Another Window Into Our Life In Ukraine

Saturday, May 15, 1999

Good news, bad news. The weather's rainy and cold today and forecast to stay that way for the weekend. For us that's bad because we won't spend a lot of time out exploring the parks as they return to their summer colors. But it does enable me to catch up on a couple "diaries". Nothing as interesting as Chornobyl, just a window into our life over here.

A couple Sundays ago, we were able to walk around in the Spring sunshine. After six months of Winter it was a wonderful change. Down on Kryschatuk, our "main drag", there were crowds of folks enjoying the sun and the general conviviality. This really is a very nice atmosphere where the only goal is to walk and look at people looking at other people. And talking. I suppose talking is the national pastime for many places and I'm sure it is here. This is especially true as we all emerge from Winter hibernation. Of course this doesn't apply to us as much since we can only converse in English and in crowds like this, English is still a rarity. But it's fun just to watch others jabber away &endash; and Marianne and I continue to find things to talk about too.

On the May first weekend, we both had Monday off so we wanted to get away for our big three-day break. We looked at trips "to Europe" but scheduling was difficult or impossible. It's strange how everyone still means Western Europe when they say Europe. Even here in Kyiv, a restaurant advertising "European Cuisine" means that they don't serve Ukrainian and Russian dishes. I guess Ukraine and Russia are in that continent squeezed between Europe and Asia?

Anyway, we decided to stay in Ukraine and take the night train to Lviv in Western Ukraine. We'd been told it's a charming town, "almost European". And we had wanted to experiment with the trains in any event so here was a chance.

Kyiv has just one main train station and it's quite crowded, especially in the evening because overnight trains are popular. There are trains to big cities like Moscow, Odessa and St. Petersburg as well as to all the little corners of Ukraine. These are not the high speed trains of Western Europe but they are relatively convenient, quite cheap and a treat for Americans who no longer experience train travel back home.

We booked a two-person stateroom in the "Grand Tour" car. This is actually a private car that is in the middle of the regular Lviv train. It's owned by a hotel company and it's quite deluxe. Maybe not the Orient Express but fun anyway. We ordered our beers from the steward and felt quite elegant.

(For travel fans, we've looked up the cost of the Orient Express - $2,500 per couple per day. We spent $120 for our round trip on the Grand Tour to Lviv. When we first checked this information, we found that the other drawback of the famous Orient Express was that it crossed the Danube at Novi Sad &endash; at least it did before NATO bombs eliminated the bridge. In verifying the data just now, we noticed that the Orient Express has been rerouted outside the war zone &endash; in case you want a great way to go from Paris to Istanbul.)

It's impossible to take pictures that give the feel of a train passing through Ukraine at night. It's dark. There are few lights in the farm yards or villages along the way. Electricity is still far from universal. There are not even any car headlights on the roads around the train tracks. Day or night, we saw few cars. It's easy to see that there is plenty of room for economic growth in this country.

Even though we had deluxe berths and a twelve-hour trip to try them out, sleep was not easy. The train bounced and jiggled and stopped and lurched and generally shook us up for the entire trip. Now we could understand why it took so long to go the 450 km (290 miles). Now we also understood why the train to Budapest takes 26 hours. Too bad, it's kind of fun even without sleep but after 12 hours we were ready to get off and explore Lviv.

We arrived on May 1, "Labor Day" and we watched a small gathering making speeches, presumably in honor of the day. Western Ukraine was actually part of Poland before about 1939 so it is the least-Soviet part of the country. Consequently, May Day celebrations, big in the Soviet Union, are relatively subdued in Lviv. In this part of Ukraine, everyone speaks Ukrainian as well and maybe May Day words honoring the glorious past of Soviet labor just don't translate so well. In fact, we felt this crowd was mostly the older generation, longing for the return of the system that guaranteed a job for everyone, even if the work was demeaning and the system oppressive. We heard that similar celebrations elsewhere in the country were far better attended &endash; and the speeches were in Russian.

For the next day and a half, we wandered around Lviv. Cute town. Nice Opera House &endash; temporarily closed for renovation. We went in a medieval armory museum that has been rebuilt as it was when it also served as part of the wall around Lviv. We'd have gone to more historic places and museums but there weren't many and those that we found were closed for the May Day holiday. A day and a half turned out to be about one day too long. We ended up with plenty of time to sit in cafes watching people &endash; and waiting for the return train.

On Sunday night, we climbed into our bunks and "slept" through another bouncy train ride. By now we were veterans and the bounces seemed smaller and the bunks softer. We even managed to sleep quite a bit and at 7:30 Monday morning, we were back in Kyiv. Back home.

If you're ever in Ukraine, we recommend the train trip to Lviv. We may not join you because one time probably is enough, but it is the type of "different experience" we were looking for.

Next Diary: Another train trip &endash; at the other end of the travel spectrum.

Take care. Stay healthy. Write if you wish.

John and Marianne

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Originally mailed May 15, 1999. Reformatted June 3, 2001.

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