L'viv - September 2009, Part 2

When making plans to go to L'viv, Mel had asked Doug (the team leader in L'viv) how to get from the train station to the flat we were staying at. Doug told us how to find the taxi stand, and that was great.

We arrived in L'viv a little after noon on Monday. We'd gathered up all our stuff and were out the door of our coupe' and off the train fairly quick. We walked down a set of stairs, into a passageway under other train tracks, and voila! We were already out into the entrance area of the train station.

Now why - tell me WHY - does the Kiev train station make you go up AND down stairs (or vice versa - down AND up stairs) to get to your correct train? The system in L'viv is wonderful - one set of stairs, period, up or down, not both. All these thousands and thousands of people getting on and off trains with bags and more bags and boxes and other stuff. Old ladies carrying heavy things up and/or down stairs just to get to the train where you have to climb up very steep steps to get on to the train. Why not just make it simpler? Like platforms at train level? And if there must be stairs - just ONE set, and not two that have to be negotiated?

Or, to continue this rant I find myself on - why schedule two trains to arrive at one station at the same time, from opposite directions, on two different tracks with a platform inbetween that train A unloads on to, while train B unloads on to the platform directly in front of the train station. Thus train A people must climb down out of train A with all of their baggage, walk down the platform until they find the correct wagon on train B that has opened it's doors and put out it's steps so you can now climb up off the platform onto train B, walk across train B to the other door (yes, I know it's just 4 or 5 steps, but that is NOT the point here!) and then climb down, with all of your heavy luggage and stuff once more, so you can go find a taxi or your driver or your person who is waiting to welcome you? Why do they make you walk THROUGH a second train? Tell me why they do this?? And yes, the train from L'viv was train A and the train from Kiev was train B this morning and we did the mountain goat/Ukrainian train trek down and up and down again with all of our stuff, along with a couple hundred or more other people today. Of course, it's funny - all these people getting off of one train, out of maybe 8 or 10 wagons (maybe more, I didn't count), all funneled into one doorway on the train opposite. Up and over, up and over - and old babushka - if you push me one more time or try and cut inbetween Mel and me one more time - I may just step on your foot. I've already had it with the young woman who came and stood so close to me that she actually set her heavy purse/bag on top of my purse so I could bear the weight of both. I just "accidently" bumped her aside with my very ample hip. The nerve some people have! I think I'm developing a national attitude - one I deplored when we first got here. Shove, push, shove, you are in my way, get out of my way. sigh

You know, when I thought about writing this post, I in no way had a rant in mind. Hmmm. Guess it was in there, just waiting to come out. I like riding the trains - I just get tired of the stupidness and rudeness at times.

Enough! Enough! On to other things!! Please! That was then - this is now!

We walked out of the wonderful makes sense L'viv train station, turned right and walked over to the taxi stand. Just as the people in front of us finished their discussion about where and how much a taxi would be for them, Mel's cell rang, so we stepped back and he answered it. It was Doug saying he was on his way to pick us up. Yea!

Doug took us to the building we stayed in before. He had reserved a room for us on the 4th floor. Now the first time we stayed there we stayed on the 2nd floor and really liked the flat. It was very Ukrainian, only slightly modernized, and that was fine with us. We don't need a lot - just a bed that will hold us both, a table, something to heat water with, a couple chairs. That flat had even more, just older stuff. The flat this time was on the 4th floor, as I already stated. Now, our flat here in Kherson is on the 3rd floor - 42 steps up from the outside level. The 4th floor flat there in L'viv (just one floor higher) was 88 steps up from the outside level. Come to think of it, this may be the beginning of my rant about the train station - we did a LOT of stair climbing, walking UP hills and down hills, and more stairs this week! :-) I was very pleasantly surprised to find that if I hadn't been out walking all over L'viv, I could do those 88 stairs without stopping. However, at the end of the day, when my legs were tired, my feet hurt and I was in desperate need of a certain room in that flat - well, I had to stop each time and take a few breaths on the 3rd floor.

The room was wonderful! Moderized, light and airy, very nice. The chairs were so-so and the table was so-so, but the bed was great. I didn't take a photo of the bedroom because I didn't think to take one until just as we were leaving - and the bed was unmade. Excuses, excuses! Here is the view out the window in the bedroom, though: I'll write more about this photo in another blog. For now, let me just say - this was wonderful. It was very relaxing. We set up our laptops on the table in the evening and did email and facebook stuff. We sat and talked. We did NOT watch tv. I watched fireworks one night over the building opposite from us. But really, we didn't spend very much time there, except for sleeping. There is a lot of traffic on the streets in the immediate area, but the windows are new YevroSteel (EuroStyle) and we only heard the loud music and the chanting of the priests a couple of times for about half an hour each. Not bad. Not bad at all.

All for tonight. I have more photos to post tomorrow, but right now I've hit a wall - what with climbing all those stairs, and going through the Kiev train today on my way home, and so forth and so on, and all the excitement of having guppy babies in the house, and catching up on the news. Whew! And tomorrow - laundry, and cooking, and changing the sheets, and getting ready for Sunday. Such an exhausting life! ha ha! Maybe tomorrow I won't be in such a "mood" as I've been in today. This is unusual for me...will have to ponder awhile and figure out what why....

L'viv - September 2009, Part 1

Mel was asked to go to a City Team Leaders meeting in L'viv. It was a fairly important meeting, but a decision needed to be made about whether he would go or not. It's 20+ hours one way on the train, or a 3-4 hour marshrutka ride to Odessa and then overnight about 8 hours on the train. Either way - an overnight trip. Did Mel want to do 2 20 hour trips in a row, or did he want to go to Odessa and do two shorter overnights? Or ... did I want to go along with him and we'd take a 2 day vacation after the meeting? Ha! Was there any chance, really, of my saying, "No, I'd rather stay home and wash windows"? Mel asked Doug about a place to stay and Doug found us a flat in the same building we stayed in last year. Mel bought the tickets and Sunday after church, we headed over to the train station and went to L'viv. L'viv-Kherson train (this is actually the train we came back on today, but hey, they looked exactly alike from the outside! I think. The inside decor of the coupe' to L'viv was old, old, old. Today coming back it was just one old. The trains from Kherson to Kiev, on the other hand are new-er. :-> ).

We always buy a whole coupe' so we have extra room and this time of year that is no problem - there were a lot of empty berths on the train over there. Having the whole coupe' gives Mel the opportunity to raise the top bunk above his, secure it up and then he can sit upright rather than hunched over or lying down the whole time. We leave the one above me down and put all our luggage up there rather than on the floor (when the heater is on, the luggage next to the heater gets really hot).

Clickity clackity down the tracks we went. First to Nikolaev, then north, then west to L'viv. The tracks from Nikolaev north are amazingly bad. I did some embroidery for awhile, but when we got to the really rough part I decided I really didn't want any blood stains left on what I was making, caused by poking my fingers instead of the cloth! It's kind of funny, actually, to lie down on the bunk and just jiggle and bounce over that rough section for a few hours. Too bad it doesn't jiggle and bounce any pounds off at the same time... Walking down the hall to the toilet is fun, too, especially when you are trying to pass someone and the train suddenly throws you right into the person, squishing them up against the handrail. Oops - sorry! The toilet - well, let's just say it's better to wait until that rough section ends, if at all possible.

It was nice watching the fields go by, looking into people's gardens and seeing lots of pumpkins and cabbages either ready to be harvested, or lying there already harvested, just waiting to be picked up and stored away for winter. Fields of corn, ready for harvest or already harvested and shocked. Hundreds - no, thousands of geese between here and L'viv and the closer to L'viv, the more there were. It was really easy to see the white ones against the emerald green grasses, more difficult to see the gray ones against the darker roads. There were geese by the dozens in gaggles kilometer after kilometer. And some ducks, too, but they were much harder to see unless they were actually swimming in the ponds, streams and slimy pools by the tracks. (click on this thumbnail to see a photo I found on the web of geese in Ukraine) Goats by the tens and dozens, and cattle by the tens and dozens as well. Did not see any sheep at all that I can remember, though. Ravens and crows - lots of ravens and crows. A few dogs here and there, a couple horses pulling wooden wagons with car tire wheels, several cowgrannies and cowgrampies (heh heh) standing around watching over their herds and flocks (altho I don't think goats come in flocks - Sue will have to tell me what a herd/flock of goats is really called - a band??). This is one of the nice things about such a long train ride - it is not all in the dark, but there is afternoon viewing of the countryside and morning viewing as well, with bouncy clickity-clackity sleep inbetween. Lots to see when the tracks aren't lined by trees and bushes!

Unfortunately, it's not easy to get good photos from the train. I've tried in the past and they usually turn out horrible, so ... no photos of the countryside. The windows are usually filthy, on the outside, on the inside and inbetween the outside and the inside (double-paned glass - Mel tells me that I can't make a past tense adjective, that is why "double-paned" looks so weird to me as I write it, but you know what - this is my blog and I'll make a past tense adjective AND noun if my mood so dictates. And it does! At least the glass was not double-pained. ha ha! I know, I know - it was a very short night and I'm just not really responsible for what I find hilariously funny right now...) They look fairly clean in this photo, but really, they aren't - trust me! Altho, when I think back to "the way it used to be when we first got here", they aren't as dirty as then, when you could barely see out of them. Many things have really improved a LOT.

This is Mel yesterday afternoon just before the L'viv-Kherson pulled into the L'viv train station. He had gone to buy a banana for me. This train station is very pretty, altho the front entrance is much nicer than here by the tracks.

So, there you have it - our trip to and from L'viv on the train, all mixed up together in one post. More later! About actually being in L'viv.

Oh - and when we got home today, I discovered that my blue beta fish is still alive, and my Cheyenne cat is still alive, and my plants are all still alive, and my 4 guppies are still alive and...ta da! I now have more guppies! I had no idea any were due. Cool - huh? I hope they survive the adult! There are at least 4 babies in there, all about 1/4 to 1/2 inch long.

Back in Kherson

This will be a fairly short post tonight. I am wiped out. I can't remember ever being so tired so many days in a row - jet lag has hit me with a vengeance.

Yesterday we went over to Eric and Lauren's for lunch and then we watched the final of the French Open Tennis. I actually had to stand up at one point during the final and walk around because I was going to sleep. That, and I had a bad cramp in my thigh (need more potassium - oranges and bananas, plus a lot more water - I'm a bit dehydrated).

We went over to the train station about an hour early. Our luggage was in the "kamera", or storage area, and Mel needed to get it out. We came back with a lot more than we left with again. Some of the weight is books and Sunday School materials I'll use in the fall, some is vitamins and minerals, some is a new pair of shoes and a couple or three new blouses. It adds up quickly.

Finally we got everything under the train tracks, through the passage to the platform we needed, up the stairs again, and discovered we were at the totally wrong end of the train. No fear! We just hauled it all down the platform 10 wagon lengths!

We climbed on board (yes it is a climb, you climb up 3 steps to the floor of the wagon - 3 steps that are almost perpendicular like a ladder) and dragged the bags down the length of the wagon to our coupe'. They have the sheets and towel already set out now, waiting for you get to on board. This is a new thing - in the past we had to wait until the attendant arrived, took our tickets, asked if we wanted sheets, we paid for them and then he/she brought them back sometime later. Now you pay for them when you buy the tickets. Much easier and simpler. I got my sheets out and immediately made my bunk. To be honest, I'm not sure when Mel made his. After the train started and the younger attendant had taken our tickets, he went down to the attendants coupe' and asked for a cup of coffee. I laid down and was sound asleep before he got back - I don't even remember putting my head on the pillow! I woke up briefly when the attendant brought his coffee - raised my head, saw a woman's rear end pointed toward me as she bent to put the coffee on the little table, and then I was asleep again. Whew! Another first - going to sleep immediately on the train - we weren't even out of Kiev yet!

I woke up several times during the night. Once with another cramp in my thigh - I stood there 'cursing' the heat (the old "traveling ovens" were in effect again) and wishing I had some pickle juice and a whole lot more water to drink. It finally went away, but all day long my legs have both been 'on the verge' of having another cramp. I've drinking lots of water and eating some salty food, too, and of course, an orange or two....

I was awake before 5 AM. Uh oh. Now at 8:45 tonight I'm wiped out again. I'll go to bed pretty soon. Hopefully I'll get back into a normal sleep rhythm soon.

Ukraine is putting on quite a show right now. The views from the train windows were incredibly beautiful. Spring and early summer are the best times of year to be here. Green fields, wild flowers (orange poppies, pale blue flax, a dark purple flower similar to a wild delphinium, and more flowers in yellows, whites and of course, beautiful wild pink roses!) and green deciduous trees, including Russian Olives - dozens of them. Some of the fields have already been harvested - I think that may have been hay - I'm pretty sure it is not time for the winter wheat yet. We saw oats for sure, sunflowers not blooming yet, and the very beginning of rape seed (canola oil) coming into bloom. There was winter wheat out there, and rye and buckwheat not in bloom yet. Plus many, many private gardens - onions, potatoes, squashes of different sorts, and so forth. Cows - lots and lots of cows, but not like in America - these cows are staked, not free range. Goats. Geese. Ukraine at her best, and oh so beautiful!!

So, I'm missing Colorado - no doubt about that. I will always miss Colorado! But it was a gift from God to see Ukraine so beautiful right now.

Now - time to check and see if a photo I took turned out good before my battery died.Wow - check out that blue sky! This is also the time of year for blue skies here. We even saw some thunderheads yesterday in Kiev as we were getting ready to get on the train.

Bits n Pieces

We got home yesterday morning around 10:30 am. Not sure exactly. I usually check the time and for some reason I never even thought of it yesterday. Maybe because I was just so glad to get home this time.

The train was like an oven. We have had very few trips where it was that hot, thank God. We think it's because there were a group of kids on the train and the providnitsa kept it hot for them. The kids were a group of musicians who had been in Kiev and were coming home. The tuba we saw was really banged up and not in a case, just carried around by a boy like a piece of luggage.

It was interesting listening to the kids when they got on the train. Mel and I boarded very soon after the train arrived at the station. The kids came on about 10 minutes later. Kids are kids all over the world. "I want the top bunk! Last time Paulina had the top!" Lots of wrestling and playing around, hooting and hollering, laughing, pushing, mild arguing about this or that. I understood most of it - told Mel I must now have the vocabulary of an 8 year old rather than a 2 year old. Well, in understanding - speaking I still am not all that great. :( ha ha It was actually fun listening to them. They were in the 3 coupe's to one side of us. Only one time did the male chaperon raise his voice and then he really YELLED: YURI! I wonder what Yuri was doing?? I know they were going home because one of the female chaperons was doing a commentary as we came into the Kherson station: "There are the babushkas! There is your father! I see your mother." and so on and so forth.
~*~*~*~
It was so hot on the train that I ended up with a heat induced headache in the middle of the night. I was drinking water off and on all night and only had to get up twice in the night. My pillow was actually damp at one point. Usually I sleep with my head toward the door because that is how I am most comfortable but this time I ended up changing back and forth several times. Mel put a blanket over the heat register to try and block some of the hot air and that helped. I stuffed an extra pillow down between my bunk and the wall and that also helped. Enough cold air was coming off the window (not through it but just off the cold glass) that it helped cool our heads a bit. We left the door about 1/3 open all night to help air circulation. Due to the movement of the train, the door actually shut once and when I woke up I could hardly breath due to the heat. It had to be over 100 degrees in that coupe'. Unbelievable.

I got up to go to the toilet room just before we came into a station. The door was still unlocked and I didn't know we were coming into a station. The providnitsa came and rattled the door handled and then said, "Stansia!". I hollered back that I understood, and she continued to rattle the door handle. My head was pounding and it just made me mad. I know that when the train comes into a station that if you happen to be in the toilet room you are not supposed to flush the toilet - it all goes out on the ground and who wants that right there at the station?? I was not moving fast enough for her and she got really upset.

Now when this situation happened before, the providnik (male) told me through the door, "Don't flush until we leave!" So I didn't. Just stood there in the toilet room for 10 minutes, waiting until we were on the way again. sigh. Not the most pleasant place to stand for 10 minutes. But this woman wanted me OUT of there RIGHT NOW. Grrrrrr. It was the middle of the night and my head hurt and it was her fault in the first place because she was keeping the train wagon so ____ hot when it didn't need to be that way!

I finally opened the door just as the train actually stopped and she started hollering at me. I waved my hand at her (my head was pounding) and said, "I understand!" and walked off. She quickly locked the door and then rushed past me, shoving me (on purpose) against the rail. Vengeance is mine, saith the providnitsa! I just walked back to the coupe' and found some ibuprofen in my bag and took it. I could hear her farther up the wagon, rushing to open the outside door and get the steps down in case anyone needed on our wagon.

The sad thing? I really didn't care at all that she had to rush like that. I had had it with Ukrainian trains that are really traveling ovens with toilets from the 1800's. I laid back down on the hot bunk, closed my eyes and eventually went back to sleep for a few minutes.
~*~*~*~
Oh, it was so good to get home! A nice shower at 11:30 when the water came back on! The water pressure has to be quite low due to the low gas pressure - if the water pressure is too high then the shower is cold. But a strong warm dribble shower is great after a hot ride in a train-oven.

I did two loads of laundry yesterday and they both dried quickly. Tells me that the air is really dry, which is unusual for this time of year. I hung them on a drying rack in the living room right beside the fish pond and the sheets were still dry within 3 hours. Very unusual. I hung the towels in the same place after the sheets dried and they are dry this morning.

I had to add almost 6 liters of water to the fish pond when we got home yesterday morning. The fountain was barely working at all. I also added water to both of the other fish tanks because they needed it, too. Usually this time of year I don't need to water the plants so often, nor add water to the fish tanks (this is my first winter with a fish pond). We've had very little snow and very little rain before that, so it is dry. Too dry.
~*~*~*~
All for now. I need to go finish the last bit of my Sunday School lesson, finish my morning coffee and then get ready to leave for church. I complained about our cold flat, but I admit - I would rather have a 60 degree flat than a 100+ degree coupe'! Oh yes! It feels "just right" in here now.

Rocking and Rolling Across Ukraine

We had a great trip to Western Ukraine last week. Mel rented a full coupe for the trip up to Kiev. That means we had four bunks to ourselves. The good news is that the top bunks can be raised and latched into place against the wall and Mel can then sit up straight. Otherwise he sits bent over like he’s riding in a Lada. Not fun! The other good thing about renting the whole coupe is that we get four sleeping pads, four pillows and four wool blankets. Mel likes to use an extra pillow and I use all the extra pads and blankets to sleep on. Those train seats are hard, even if they are “padded.”

The first part of the trip – the Kherson to Kiev leg – was fairly uneventful. However, neither one of us slept very well, what with all of the rocking and occasional sudden jerks, the train speeding up and slowing down at seemingly random intervals, plus all of the train sounds and station sounds when we’d stop. To put it mildly, I was a grouch when we got off the train the next morning. After getting off the train we quickly walked down the platform, dodging taxi drivers and other travelers, pulling our suitcases behind us over the bricks. (The wheels make a really cool sound as they roll over hundreds of bricks and ‘cracks.’ When we first came to Ukraine very, very few people had pull-along suitcases and everyone always turned to watch us go by. Now they are common place and cause little, if any, interest at all – yea!) Mel quickly took the large suitcase down to the “kamera” while I stayed on the ground level outside with the smaller one. In the kamera we can store our bags for the day for just a few griven (less than two dollars). The kamera is one of those little secrets that we did not know about for several years, one of the things that are so common place to Ukrainians that they never think to tell you about them. Mel found out about the kamera while traveling with one of our guys one time and we use it quite often now. After depositing the bag and collecting his retrieval token, he met me outside and we headed for the metro (subway).

I’m not sure what was going on at the metro, but there must have been 150 men standing around outside of it. A few soldiers or militsia were scattered through the crowd. The only women were obviously headed inside the metro station. The funny-to-me thing was – Mel didn’t notice that the crowd was almost 100% men! We pushed and shoved our way along with the rest of the metro crowd through the two unlocked entrance doors (of a possible three), past the long lines at the token machines, through the token gates and onto the escalator. Down, down, down underground we went. Every time I’m on one of these escalators in the metro now I think of my sister, Heidie. She came to visit us a few years ago and we took her on a tourist trip through Kiev, including the metro. One of her questions: Why are all of the people on the escalators either leaning forward or leaning back? It was a joke – made from the optical illusion caused by the steepness of the descent/ascent of the escalators. Fortunately, the train we got was not very crowded. (I had a panic attack in the metro one time during rush hour. The trains were all packed and I could not force myself to get on one. Instead, I stood at the edge of the tracks, my face buried in the front of Mel’s coat, sobbing while he held and comforted me. I’ve discovered that if we are just patient, usually within 15 minutes a less crowded train will come along and I can get on.) The good news is that it’s a direct shot from the train station metro entrance to the station we needed to get to the home of one of our team mate families. From that metro station we walked the mile or so to their house. J was there and greeted us with breakfast and the offer of a bed, if we needed one. And yes – I needed one! After we ate, J left for work, Mel picked up a book on Norway to read and I went to bed and slept for about an hour. I felt much better then … actually not mad at the whole wide world any more!

Mel and I left soon after T got home. We knew she needed to pack for the family and we wanted to get to the city center again and get a cup of coffee. While in the mall under Independence Square (the square made famous during the Orange Revolution – where hundreds of thousands of people protested during the last elections and forced a change), we went into a bookstore and I browsed the books in English section. Bought The Wind in the Willows and King Solomon’s Mines, neither of which I had read before. As the afternoon grew late, we headed for the train station. We stopped at a big supermarket across the street from the station and bought food for the next two meals. Then – back to the station to wait for the rest of the Kiev team and the train to Western Ukraine!

The train trip to Western Ukraine was almost 15 hours long. I quickly discovered that the train tracks between Kiev and Kherson are actually in good shape. A lot of work has been done on them over the last 5 or 6 years and it shows when compared to other routes. The wagons themselves (including the state of the toilet rooms) are also a lot nicer on the Kiev-Kherson train. The trip from Kiev toward Mukachevo was loud and very rough in places, with a lot of ‘rockin’ and rolling’ down the tracks. The great thing however , was that we were with several of our teammates this time. Most of these people we see only two or three times a year at most, and sometimes we don’t see the kids at all. So it was great to be able to spend time talking and catching up a little while we sat and drank coffee or walked up and down the rocking train to the different coupes before bedtime. I had brought my tatting along and spent quite a bit of time tatting as well. Fortunately, both Mel and I slept better that night than we had the night before, even with the rougher ride.

As we were traveling, someone checked the schedule posted in the hall and discovered that we had a whole 2 minutes to get everyone off the train the next morning! All the luggage, all the kids, all the adults – through a very narrow hall, past an open very hot water heater, out one door, down 5 very steep steps and onto the platform – along with any other passengers in our wagon who might also be getting off the train at that stop! C was traveling in our coupe with us and he and Mel “made a plan.” We conferred with E and J and the next morning it worked great. Mel and C on the platform first with their baggage and me to watch everything, the kids and mothers off next, and finally all of the baggage handed off and passed from one person to another out of the way. Someone timed us and it took less than a minute to accomplish – about 58 seconds! Good teamwork, guys!

The bus to the sanitory was waiting for us, but we needed to wait for the train from Odessa to arrive, too, about an hour later. I had to laugh – everyone in the train station knew where the Americans were at, getting off the two trains. They were the only ones with piles of luggage and the only ones cheering because they made if off in time. We Americans tend to be a cheerful group and very self-congratulatory.



Train station where we got off in Western Ukraine.
Note: on top of pole to the right of the station is a stork's nest.