Stardate: 1/2/2008 Lviv stands for Awful Experience

Okay. Right off, I will tell you that I had high hopes for Lviv (Lvov in Russian). It is renowned for many reasons including: beautiful Polish churches, art, culture, the roots of the grassroots Ukrainian national movement, the stronghold of Ukrainian identity... There were so many reasons that I wanted to visit there. In fact, it was the city that I requested as a placement, since it was only a couple hours from the Polish border and it is a largish western Ukrainian city.

It all went south before we even got off the train from Kharkiv. We left Kharkiv at 5:30pm on January 2nd and arrived in Lviv 22 hours later after an entire night spent with some wild Armenians from Moscow....a lot of information left out here...We got our things assembled and disembarked the train in Lviv, but we really had to rush since the train was only stopping momentarily. Maddy and I didn't even have our coats, hats, scarves, gloves on in the arctic chill! Pat was busy hugging the porter goodbye and saying thank you. He was having an "overly social moment" and wouldn't listen to me at all. Finally, we got our things rolling and went down a flight of stairs with people pushing into us, holding Maddy's hand and out things falling every which way, etc.

At the bottom, I saw a luggage cart and told Pat we should use it. We put all our bags on it, then the porter shows up and told us to take everything off. Suddenly, P starts coughing and literally falls face first on the ground like a newly cut tree! He hit into a garbage can on his left and nearly took a header of the porter's cart. I didn't know what to think! I was astonished. I figured it was his asthma, and I know he'd done this before, but I had not been around for the other instances. I had to call his name several times before he came to. Then he acted like everything was fine. The porter looked as alarmed as I felt. We didn't say anything to the porter (language barrier issue, so explaining would have been more work than it was worth). We just took our things off the cart and fought the crowd to the exit.

Once in the main hall, we paused and I asked him what happened, but he literally wouldn't talk about it. He just kept saying, "I passed out," without saying what had caused it and if he was okay. At this point, I was having a panic attack.

Our apartment rental folks didn't show up to take us to the apartment as they had promised, so I asked P to take Maddy across the room to feed the pigeons (yes, they were in doors. It's Ukraine. Shrug). In a huff, he left. I eventually found the telephone numbers for the apartment people (they don't have midrange hotels in Ukraine, so you have to rent apartments for a night or two...yeah weird, huh?), and got the phone to work. I called them and they told me to take a cab. But P and Maddy had disappeared. I called their names. I telephoned him. No answer. I struggled with all the luggage and finally got to them to outside in spite of the people knocking into me and jostling the bags (one large rolly and one medium rolly, 3 large carry ons= a lot but for 3 people gone for 1 month it was the best we could do.) and my balance. P and Maddy were outside and he was smoking!!! I was furious.

I negotiated with a cabbie to take us to the apartment in Rynok Square, although it is the main square of Lviv's old town, he didn't know where it was. He had to ask other cabbies. He charged us H50 ($10), and proceeded to get stuck in traffic. P sat and complained nonstop and Maddy was agitated, too. I was almost beyond help. After one aborted, incorrect location and some directive phone calls, we arrived at Rynok Square. The cabbie parked and assisted us by wheeling 1 of our bags about 3 more blocks to the apartment itself. Then we had to climb 5 flights of construction-quality stairs to our rented apartment. Maddy was moving up the stairs like molasses in winter and I had to prompt her verbally to take each step; she said she was afraid. I was carrying about 40-50 lbs of bags, so I was physically stressed as well as mentally. We got into the apartment, and after they finished cleaning, I took a much needed shower. It was 4 or 5 pm.

At 6pm, we dressed and went to dinner in the square. Unfortunately, in Lviv, that's not as easy as it sounds. One of the cool apartment people who were cleaning as we waited, said to try a place at #14 called Kbitka, which is a Ukrainian National Freedom Fighter themed restaurant. We went a couple of doors from our building and some people exiting the restaurant said it was a great cafe, so we were excited. We went to the door, knocked, and the little "speak easy" door opened and a military-clad man with a frown said something in Ukrainian (I thought he was asking for a password because of the theme), and then he abruptly closed the door. We looked around and asked for some help from some exiting folks, the man from the street who recommended the cafe came to our aid as did some others. They said something to the sour doorman and he let us enter.

We climbed down a whindy stairway with some commotion and noise mostly due to Maddy who was afraid of the stairs. The interior of the cafe was cool, because the decor was "underground resistance chic" or "Viet Cong cave maze militaristic". There were real weapons on the tables and the servers were dressed in olive green fatigues. There was even green camouflage netting on the ceiling as well as tokens of Ukrainian traditional life on the walls. We approached that looked like a hostess station, and couldn't get anyone to help us. No one would even stop to look at us. We asked a couple of different servers and they all just sidestepped us and hurried on. In Ukraine, generally, you just sit where ever you want at any open table, but when you are unsure, it is best to ask. We got one young woman to stop long enough to point to one of the several open tables and ask if we could sit there. She said, "Neyt" and walked away. We stood awkwardly for a few more minutes while more unfriendly servers came and went. We asked a couple more servers if we could sit anywhere and no one bothered to answer us. We were frustrated and embarrassed, so we left. We were complaining as we fought our way back to the surface against the tide of others streaming in and getting seats. By the time we got to the surface we thought we'd just eat any where we could find a place to sit down. I was getting a migraine from not eating, too.

We walked back by our apartment entrance toward #18 and we found what looked like a good cafe. See the 6th picture for the name. Again, we went down torturous stairs to the basement, again we found what looked like a hostess station and again, no one would help us. I mean, did we smell or something? Finally a young, dark-haired hostess talked to us, but kept saying "reservations?" and we kept saying "No, is there an open table?" She just kept saying "reservations." Pat pointed to a couple of open tables, and asking "Can we sit there?" "And how about there." The response was always, "Neyt." Finally, P was mad that she wouldn't seat us anywhere or ask us to wait, so he loudly called her a bitch! Great. I was embarrassed- no mortified. So, I quickly took off hauling Maddy out of there. Once on the streets, P and I got separated in the dark, crowded street.

Maddy and I found a pretty shabby cafe around the corner for which an old crone was pulling folks in from the street. We went down yet another flight of treacherous stairs, took off our coats, etc and got relatively comfortable. Once the server saw us, she just kind of rolled her eyes to heaven; she never once acknowledged us or came to our table. She didn't give us menus, or ask us to wait. She simply served another table by visiting them several times. We finally got recoated, an ordeal for sure, and left.

We got up to the street level and scoped out our options. I decided that I was famished enough to go anywhere. I got some more H from a bankomat (ATM) and went into another restaurant that looked kind of expensive, but nice. At first the server said there were no places; I pointed at a dirty table near the door and she said, "No." I begged her telling her (since she spoke some English) that I'd been to 3 places already and no one would feed us. She just shrugged. I was about to leave when a manager came by and asked me if I wanted to eat. I was like, "Halleluja. Yes!" She sat us at the dirty table and bussed it herself. The menu was small, but I was able to eek out some eggs with spinach, fries and lavash with chicken and cheese, so Maddy and I would be able to eat okay. I was so happy, or maybe relieved.

The restaurant was called, Pectopah-ЦУКЕРНЯ "KEHTABP" and it was located at 34 Rynok Square. The building was from the 13th or 14th century and had brick vaulted ceilings. It was comfortable, the food, although the portions were small, was delicious. During dinner, I saw on the large screen television the most tacty Russian fashion show ever. It was inspired by Urban Cowboy, which wasn't the height of fashion even when it came out. I paid about H100.00 ($20.00) and departed. We returned home and found cellphone and consequently Pat, who'd found a little pub for some soup.

So, far, Lviv and my personal experience of it were super poor. The next morning we slept in and then went back to Kentavr for lunch; Pat was impressed with the place. We walked around the old square for a bit til we got to the Pharmacy Museum, which was cool, but only one room. It was full of old jars and the implements of the pharmacy biz. It was interesting and fast.

We then went up the street to the ____ cathedral, but it was closed for lunch(?). We needed to visit the train station to purchase train tickets to Krakow for the next day, so we started searching for a taxi. We found some within 2 blocks and got to see some cool ornate buildings with sculptures of the Madonna hidden in little, random niches as well as an old, perhaps ancient blackened church. We approached one cab and asked the driver to go to the train station; he refused. He was watching television in his cab. We approached another; he refused. We tried to hail some cabs and couldn't get one, because there were 3 directly in front of us (in the 2nd cab, 2 drivers were sitting and chatting. that accounts for the 3rd cab). P was pissed; Maddy was crying from the subzero temperatures and wanting to get into a cab (not understanding why we couldn't). Out of frustration and desperation, I went back to the 1st cab and negotiated it. He wanted H60 ($12) for one way H100. ($20) for the roundtrip. It was high-highway robbery, but all the other cabbies in town seemed to be at the same game, so we relented.

P and M took off and I went to explore. I walked toward the blackened church and walked around it, but I couldn't find the entrance. I took some photos though and noticed others were trying in vain to find the entrance. I next went toward a large, black, blockish statue of a man in a long cloak carrying a book in his extended hand. There were several book sellers with their wares arranged on low tables or on cloths laid on the ground surrounding the statue. All the books were in Russian or Ukrainian, but their were some real Nazi and Soviet memorabilia like pins and money and stuff. I bought a Ukrainian nationalist pin for Antonina for H5.

I then walked back toward Rynok square and found the Lviv History Museum, which was fascinating. They had the silver keys to the city, silver and gold church and synagogue items and an old tapestry in poor condition.

At the next building (I don't know if this was the same or a different museum), there was another museum. In this 4 floor museum, there were all kinds of relics of 20th century Ukraine: military uniforms, gulag victims' photos, artwork (embroidered handkerchiefs, etc), clothing, freedom fighters biographies, photos, stories, etc. All of this was intermixed with Soviet and Cossack-referenced items. I was the most moved by the images of the freedom fighters sent to gulags in Siberia or Kazakhstan and I was the most surprised by the images of Viet Cong-like underground bunkers used by the resistance. There were funny cartoons of Stalin and horrific images of murdered Ukrainian nationalists and Holodomor victims (The Great Hunger or Starving). There were photos of surviving freedom fighters at reunions in 1996, 2003, 2006; the numbers were must diminished with time.

I left there and went around the square to take photos of the 4 mythological statues that guard the 4 corners of Rynok Square (Stare Rynok) : Diana, Apollo, Neptune and Aphrodite. They were well sculpted in the Greek classical style. Thank God they weren't Soviet Realism-Yuck!

I was getting cold and tired, but I wasn't willing to give up the ghost yet, so I purchased some liquids to get us through the night and headed toward an old church (Latin Church) and a chapel at the corner near Neptune. The chapel seemed to be dedicated to St. George, but I found out later that it's called Boim Chapel. It had a bas-relief of St. George killing a dragon on one side. The chapel was almost completely black and the front facade of this small building was elaborately carved stone. At the pinnacle of the church, was a small golden sculpture of Christ in the "Thinker" position. Holy spikes radiated from his head.

Following the sculptures around the Latin Church, I found the entrance and it was open! Having been in Eastern Orthodox churches and Muslim mosques recently, I had a strange feeling of going home and being comfortable and welcomed in this Catholic church. I easily found the holy water and made the sign of the cross and entered the church. The church wasn't huge, nor was it small. It was so elaborate with paintings and sculptures and gold that I was a bit overwhelmed. The ceiling was particularly beautiful with scenes of Christ's birth against a vivid blue background. There were few "Ukrainian" influences (it was definitely more Polish), but there were some of the stylized flowers decorating walls and arches. I was so stressed with P and M for the last 2 days that I took a seat-almost threw myself into a seat-kneeled down and prayed for patience and help. I felt tons better afterward.

I spent about 30 minutes there, and started feeling guilty that P and M might be locked out of the apartment (I had the key), so I left. On my way around the other side of the church on a wall, I saw a sculpture of John Paul II with flowers under and candles lit beneath it. Little I know at the time how much like Poland this instance was to be.

P and M returned from the train station frazzled and tired. They'd had hell at the overcrowded station from a pissed off international train ticket clerk who gave them the run around for 2 hours. We had a quiet night in the orange apartment watching movies and eating quasi-Greek gyros.

Our train out of Lviv hell was at 7am the next day. We paid our apartment people H300 ($60) prior to leaving. She called us a cab and we got to the train station for H20 ($4)!. The station was packed and completely disorganized. We had to pay to enter a room in order to try to find a seat, but there were none. The few places to buy food were packed to the gills with immobile lines. We played soccer with Maddy in a tiny kids play area. Finally, it was time to board our train. We found the train, but couldn't find the right car-they weren't marked. We were sent to 3 different cars, and almost missed it. We got on-in the wrong car-just as it was leaving. We had to haul our stuff through 2 cars, wait and go back to our starting point to finally find our spot. Car attendants kept sending us back and forth to the wrong cars! We shared the car with some Russian guy, nonetheless we curled up in the filthy, coal dusty wagon-lit and slept. The train arrived 2 hours later than we expected (they literally changed wheels in order to go between Ukrainian and Polish rails since they are a different diameter in Europe as opposed to Russian/Belarus/Ukraine). We were glad, glad to finally arrive in Poland!!!