See Markus, I'm catching up :P
The second city I visited in Ukraine was Lviv, which is in the western region of Ukraine. The inhabitants are really proud of their ukrainian values, traditions and the ukrainian language. That’s why many people in Lviv think that they are the actual capital of Ukraine, because the further you go east and south in Ukraine, the more people speak Russian and feel more attached to Russia.
This time I didn’t travel with Olga but with my two room mates, the russian teacher of my american room mate, and her friend with her fiancee. We decided to take the overnighttrain again, but this time we already left Thursday evening and came home Sunday morning. Therefore, I had to take Friday off.
This time I wasn’t too worried about the night in the train, which turned out to be a mistake, because I had the worst night ever. I was able to sleep for 2 hours, because the light was turned on during night, it was far too hot in the cabin, people were snoring and I was thursty. The next morning I felt totally miserable and I had to take a nap once we arrived in our rather nice appartment.
Lviv is comparable to Prague and Vienna many beautifully restored buildings, a nice opera, a very historic inner city (UNESCO world heritage) but a booooooooring night life. We were actually planning on going out the first night in Lviv, but all bars closed at 11 o’clock already and there seemed to be no parties going on. Such a pitty. It felt a little bit like back in Maastricht :P
On the way back to Kiev I slept quite well, although a very disgusting man slept only two meters next to me. His sweater was far too short, which is why his big hairy belly was highly visible at all times. His feet stank absolutely disgusting, and one had to pass his feet everytime one wanted to go to the toilet. Additionally, he drank too much alcohol before the train ride and I had to smell this dirty alcoholic stink the whole night. Especially when he turned his face in my direction I could feel his breath on my face. At 4 o’clock and at 6 o’clock in the morning he woke me up to ask me whether he could drink out of my bottle of water. Of course I’m too nice of a person to say now. I never touched this bottle again. Uargh!!!
Freitag, 11. Dezember 2009
Odessa
Just today, Markus told me that my blog is a big disappointment. I had a bad conscious for the next hours, so I decided that I really have to start informing you guys again. Soooooooo here it is: the sequel of my great great great blog. Tatatataaaaa
I guess I will start writing about the first of my two trips I made in Ukraine in the last months. My next entries will not by chronologically, but I believe that no one really minds. :P
I always wanted to visit some other ukrainian cities during my stay in Ukraine, other than Kiev. I planned on going to Odessa, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donezk, Charkiw, on the Krim and maybe even do Molodva. This, however, were my plans before I came to Kiev, because I thought I will be bored like hell, have no friends, nothing to do and nothing to see in Kiev after 1 month. However, it all turned out a little bit different and I was kind of busy all the time sightseeing, meeting friends, working, sleeping and eating. And as being a creature of habit, I do not like too many changes in my everyday life so I wanted to stay in Kiev, because this meant the smallest amount of stress for me. But I wanted to visit at least one city in Ukraine, and Olga (a firend of mine) was continously pushing me to go to Odessa.
Thus, we planned on going to Odessa during one weekend - Friday night until Monday morning. The distance between Kiev and the other ukrianian cities is quite large, therefore the only possibility to go to other cities is by plane, train or by bus. I don’t trust ukrainian planes and drunk ukrainian pilots and buses are really shitty. Therefore we decided to take an overnight train from Kiev to Odessa. Olga is fluent in Russian, which was really helpful, because with my pathetic Russian skills, I couldn’t even have bought a train ticket on my own.
By the way the ukrainian service at the station is the worst I’ve ever seen. After waiting for 20 minutes in the queue, this “service-woman” just closed the line, because it was her lunch break. And of course there was no substitute. NO! So we had to switch the line and wait again. However, my room mates told me that when they were buying train tickets once, the service woman was pissed, because my ukrainian room mate wanted to know the different prices in the first, second and third class. Supposedly, you are only allowed to ask the price for one class, because the woman told my room mates that they shouldn’t ask so many questions and closed the cashpoint and told my room mates to come back tomorrow. Hahaha.
Anyways, at one point we got the tickets and took the train on Friday night. We had tickets for the third class, which is why we only paid 14 Euros there and back. It was the first time for me in an overnighttrain, but it turned out better than I thought. Third class basically means that you don’t have cabins, where you can close a door behind you, it rather is a floor with niches, where 6 people can sleep. three pallets at the bottom and three pallets at the top. Olga and I were in a niche with a young family with a small girl, which cried all the time. Then the conducter gave everyone bedclothes so we could start making our beds. I could sleep fairly well despite my fear that someone will steal al my money and my passport and despite the fact that people were continously passing by my bed to go to the toilet.
The next morning at 9 o’clock we arrived in Odessa and Olga got us an apartment for only 20 Euros per night. I think that the land lord thought, that I’m some kind of rich Western guy, who came to Ukraine to find a wife or to find cheap sex and that Olga was my victim. Ächem.
Odessa is a very very beautiful city at the black sea, although it is supposed to be even better in the summer. Olga and I planned on going to the opera on our first night, however, thanks to Yulia Timoshenko all schools, universities, cinemas and operas were closed for three weeks. So we couldn’t see La Boheme in one of the most beuatiful opera houses in the world, but had to watch the Ukrainian and Russian football match. Odessa has a very mediterranean touch. All the buildings and streets reminded me of Italy, and it looked very in comparison to Kiev for example. We also went to the beach smelled and touched the black sea and were visiting all the sights. We also went to a wax figure cabinet, which was sooooo bad. There were about 20 figures, however one could not even have guessed who each figure was supposed to represent, because the artists obviously didn’t have any talent.
If you have the chance to go to Odessa, you should definitely do it. Preferably in the summer, it is worth it. On the way back I slept really bad, because every two hours new people came into the train and were talking very loudly although it was 2 o’clock at night. Hence, I looked totally miserable on Monday morning when I went to work. Work is really fun when you haven’t slept more than 3 hours. I really hope that I will get Olga’s pictures from Odessa soon, so I can upload them on facebook.
I guess I will start writing about the first of my two trips I made in Ukraine in the last months. My next entries will not by chronologically, but I believe that no one really minds. :P
I always wanted to visit some other ukrainian cities during my stay in Ukraine, other than Kiev. I planned on going to Odessa, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donezk, Charkiw, on the Krim and maybe even do Molodva. This, however, were my plans before I came to Kiev, because I thought I will be bored like hell, have no friends, nothing to do and nothing to see in Kiev after 1 month. However, it all turned out a little bit different and I was kind of busy all the time sightseeing, meeting friends, working, sleeping and eating. And as being a creature of habit, I do not like too many changes in my everyday life so I wanted to stay in Kiev, because this meant the smallest amount of stress for me. But I wanted to visit at least one city in Ukraine, and Olga (a firend of mine) was continously pushing me to go to Odessa.
Thus, we planned on going to Odessa during one weekend - Friday night until Monday morning. The distance between Kiev and the other ukrianian cities is quite large, therefore the only possibility to go to other cities is by plane, train or by bus. I don’t trust ukrainian planes and drunk ukrainian pilots and buses are really shitty. Therefore we decided to take an overnight train from Kiev to Odessa. Olga is fluent in Russian, which was really helpful, because with my pathetic Russian skills, I couldn’t even have bought a train ticket on my own.
By the way the ukrainian service at the station is the worst I’ve ever seen. After waiting for 20 minutes in the queue, this “service-woman” just closed the line, because it was her lunch break. And of course there was no substitute. NO! So we had to switch the line and wait again. However, my room mates told me that when they were buying train tickets once, the service woman was pissed, because my ukrainian room mate wanted to know the different prices in the first, second and third class. Supposedly, you are only allowed to ask the price for one class, because the woman told my room mates that they shouldn’t ask so many questions and closed the cashpoint and told my room mates to come back tomorrow. Hahaha.
Anyways, at one point we got the tickets and took the train on Friday night. We had tickets for the third class, which is why we only paid 14 Euros there and back. It was the first time for me in an overnighttrain, but it turned out better than I thought. Third class basically means that you don’t have cabins, where you can close a door behind you, it rather is a floor with niches, where 6 people can sleep. three pallets at the bottom and three pallets at the top. Olga and I were in a niche with a young family with a small girl, which cried all the time. Then the conducter gave everyone bedclothes so we could start making our beds. I could sleep fairly well despite my fear that someone will steal al my money and my passport and despite the fact that people were continously passing by my bed to go to the toilet.
The next morning at 9 o’clock we arrived in Odessa and Olga got us an apartment for only 20 Euros per night. I think that the land lord thought, that I’m some kind of rich Western guy, who came to Ukraine to find a wife or to find cheap sex and that Olga was my victim. Ächem.
Odessa is a very very beautiful city at the black sea, although it is supposed to be even better in the summer. Olga and I planned on going to the opera on our first night, however, thanks to Yulia Timoshenko all schools, universities, cinemas and operas were closed for three weeks. So we couldn’t see La Boheme in one of the most beuatiful opera houses in the world, but had to watch the Ukrainian and Russian football match. Odessa has a very mediterranean touch. All the buildings and streets reminded me of Italy, and it looked very in comparison to Kiev for example. We also went to the beach smelled and touched the black sea and were visiting all the sights. We also went to a wax figure cabinet, which was sooooo bad. There were about 20 figures, however one could not even have guessed who each figure was supposed to represent, because the artists obviously didn’t have any talent.
If you have the chance to go to Odessa, you should definitely do it. Preferably in the summer, it is worth it. On the way back I slept really bad, because every two hours new people came into the train and were talking very loudly although it was 2 o’clock at night. Hence, I looked totally miserable on Monday morning when I went to work. Work is really fun when you haven’t slept more than 3 hours. I really hope that I will get Olga’s pictures from Odessa soon, so I can upload them on facebook.
Abonnieren
Posts (Atom)