Last night in our hotel room we were mulling over our options to get to Romania. We looked in the guide book and it was full of praise about what a wonderful place the Ukraine was and how Liev is the undiscovered Prague of the east europe. We checked and found that no visa was required and our car is covered by insurance in the Ukraine so we decided to go for it. The Border crossing was very reminiscent of crossings we made inot eastern europe in the 1970s. 4 different stations and about an hour later we were cleared into the Ukraine. The ladies doing the paperwork looked light the russian models from the night wear/ swim wear adds some years ago. They were constantly mad at us because we always gave them the wrong papers and after it was all done they sent us back because we didi not have our customs form stamped correctly. A lesser man than mark would have given up. Also there trucks lined up over 3 kms waiting to go through the process.
Then we go into the country and we realized that we had no idea of what anything said since everything is written in russian. Even in poland and hungary you can follow signs that say centrum to the main part of they city. Finally after asking directions many times and driving around aimlessly swearing we arrived at the most expensive hotel in europe. Which we gladly accepted since we were too tired to start searching again
We are making this post to document where we are in case we never find our way out of this crazy place. we are going to spend one night here and then head back to poland to try and reach rumania.
Other than that Liev is a truly beautiful city with a wonderful old town that has not been over developed nor destroyed in the war. It also has they say the most beautiful cemetary in Europe, so if we don't make it back this will be a good place to end our journey. It is full of churches and very beautiful buildings. Mark has resisted the tempatation to buy the nazi souvenirs they sell here. He was espescially taken by an original gestapo hat but came to his senses.
2 comments:
you just need to find a good guide like in "everything is illuminated." and find one with a dog named sammy davis junior, jr.
don't buy any nazi souvenirs!!
ps) that last comment was by me, sarah, not jeremy.
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