Lwow – Wow!

My arrival in Lviv, (Lwow was the old Polish spelling), occurred about halfway through my journey, and it provided me with the most memorable of all my Eastern European experiences. It offered up the type of unique moments that have always whetted my appetite  for continued travel year after year.  I was able to take some of my best pictures there. I met people  who were frank about what their life was really like, and saw much that I had never witnessed before. Getting to Lviv, however, was a complete nightmare. The only comfortable way to enter Ukraine, from what I can see, is to fly in. I chose to take the bus from Krakow, instead. The trip took most of the day primarily because we sat at the Polish-Ukrainian border for almost three hours. The Ukraine is not part of the European Community and the Ukrainian and Polish governments want to make sure that no contraband crosses their border and that all paperwork and duties are paid for any legal imports. All my bus mates were Ukrainians with shopping bags full of sausages, candy, cell phones, clothes, kitchen appliances and other items too numerous to count. The Ukrainians maintained that these were items they had always owned and happened to take with them while on vacation to Poland. 🙂 I was told by my Ukrainian seat mate that we were lucky to pass through in only three hours. Sometimes the wait could be over seven hours long. These long waits occurred even if you drove to the border in a private car since there was usually a long line of cars and buses sitting ahead of you when you reached the border. My fellow passengers who appeared to be experienced border crossers may have abbreviated the wait considerably. They seemed to be on a first name basis with the two female inspectors who boarded the bus, and liberally gave them large chocolate bars. These were not bribes, of course, but friendly gifts to, well, friends. Some paperwork was completed, and eventually, we were on our way. After we cleared the Ukrainian border everyone on the bus exhaled a sigh of relief. Apparently friendships based on chocolate were not always certain. About a mile after the border, the bus pulled over into a gas station. On one side of the parking lot was a little shed and my bus mates began to line up in front of it. A man across the aisle from me said, “Change money here. Good rate.” I got in line with the rest and changed two hundred dollars. I wish I had changed more. The man wasn’t kidding. I got almost 20% more Ukrainian hryvnyas here than I did later in Lviv.

The Lviv bus station provided a fitting final resting place for the day’s unpleasant journey. It was dark, dismal, decaying, and depressing, in other words, it felt like where all sinners eventually end up. It also moldered away about 5 miles outside the city. A cab driver there offered to take me into Lviv for around $20.  I instinctively knew that he was charging an exorbitant price. I was sure he figured that as a ” rich”  westerner I would pay any amount just to get away from the creepy bus station as quickly as possible. I wouldn’t bite. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of taking advantage of me. I walked across a broad boulevard while he loudly said to his buddies, in English, (so I could hear him),  ” Hah, he thinks he can get into Lviv for less than $20.” Across the street were a couple of old rusted out cars with some young people standing around or sitting on the cars’ hoods. I asked one young man in his 20’s if he would take me to the Leopolis hotel for $3.00.  I thought he would turn me down or come back with a counter offer, but it must have been more than enough. He smiled and quickly hopped off his car’s hood.  He took my backpack, opened the trunk and took out a baby stroller and gave it to a young women holding a baby. He pointed to the passenger’s side seat. Off we went. The car was in bad shape. There was a hole in the floor where I could see the street’s cobblestones fly by. The car’s shocks were pretty much non-existent, and the cobblestones turned the car into huge martini shaker where I served as the gin and ice. We arrived at the Leopolis hotel and suddenly my opinion of Lviv reversed itself. The hotel looked very nice. (It turned out to be one of the best hotels in Lviv, if not THE best hotel). The relief caused by these much improved circumstances led me to appreciate how much my driver deserved, and needed, more than what we had originally agreed upon and I gave him $10. He was very happy, and my conscience was salved. Clearly a win-win situation!

The girl behind the desk seemed sincerely pleased to see me, and offered to give me a tour of the hotel after I checked in. Her English was perfect, with not the slightest bit of accent. She said the hotel had been owned by a single family for several generations. I asked her if she was part of the family since she seemed to know so much about them and the hotel. She wasn’t. She then took me into a room she described as the hotel’s library. Loaded bookshelves lined the walls with antique furniture located here and there about the room. Sitting around a table at one end of the room were several balding, middle aged men drinking wine and discussing something that made them laugh regularly.  To me they seemed to be typical Ukrainian oligarch types. My guide studied my reaction as I studied these well fed old men. I wasn’t impressed. Rather than share my opinion I looked around the room and noticed that the books on the library’s shelves looked a little to uniform. I asked her if anyone ever read these books. Without batting an eye she said, ” No, they’re not real”, and then smiled knowingly. I knew then that I could trust her to give me honest information about Lviv’s most enjoyable sights, activities, and restaurants on the one hand, and on the other, the tourist traps best avoided. Most of the places I describe below I found through her advice. When I mentioned that I had decided to fly out of Lviv to Vilnius in a few days, she also promised she would find a reliable taxi waiting for me when I did.

After unpacking I took a shower and collapsed on my bed. I slept soundly.

The next morning with my smaller camera in my pocket I sallied forth before breakfast to take a quick view of the streets around my hotel. (Sorry about the quality of these shots).  The hotel was only a block from the main square, and surprisingly enough, it was already packed with tourists. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of holiday makers were milling around. This was a far different atmosphere from the bus station. There may have been a few western tourists, but most were from Poland, Moldova, and Belarus. The Ukraine’s currency was so weak that Eastern Europeans from these countries flocked here to purchase a cheap vacation.

The main square, called the Ploshcha Rynok is huge. It appears to encompass an area equal to four city blocks. In its center sits the Ratusha, or Town Hall. Tourists can choose from fine dining establishments serving oysters and other delicacies flown in from God knows where, to more modest restaurants, side walk cafes, and even pizza joints. My favorite spot on the square which I visited later in the day, was a modern craft beer hall that purveyed the largest selection of craft beers that I encountered anywhere on my trip. My favorite was called “Ukrainian Blonde”, a highly spiced wheat beer.

Despite being warned that “The Coffee Mine” was an over priced, tourist trap, I had to see for myself. It claimed to sell the best coffee in Lviv, and Lviv claimed to be the coffee capital of Eastern Europe. This hype was seriously undercut with the promise that underneath the Coffee Mine’s store and bistro was a mine where it sourced its coffee. There was a long line of tourists waiting to enter the tunnels below, so I passed up seeing how coffee is “mined” and bought a cappuccino in the upstairs bistro instead. It was OK. Nothing more. Nothing less. I explored the streets leading off the square, and found Lebanese, Italian, and Mexican restaurants. During the three days I was in Lviv, I ate in several and experienced no unpleasant surprises. They were what they said they were.

Just off the main square a little store sold nothing but a kind of potent cherry liquor. A large flock of people congregated outside its entrance. Curious, I shoehorned my way inside, and bought the middle priced version of what was on sale. I’m not a fan of liquors, but despite it’s being very strong and sweet, it went down rather easily. What was most remarkable about the drink was that it came in a small cut glass goblet. You were allowed, of course, to take your drink out into the street. Some people spread out and sipped their drink while shopping in nearby stores. Every 20 minutes or so one of the store’s staff took a tray out to collect empties from door stoops and tables up and down the street. I guessed that the cost of missing or broken goblets must have been built into the original cost of the drinks.

While nursing my drink in front of the store, a little boy in uniform carrying bags of cookies approached me and began speaking in Ukrainian. I figured he was selling cookies for his troop, and since I was already suffering from a sugar overload created by my drink, I tried to divert him by saying in English, ” Sorry I don’t speak Ukrainian”. Without missing a beat he said, ” Ah, you speak English. Let me tell you all about the good things scouting does for young people like me”. He then proceeded to make a 5 minute speech about all the benefits of scouting –IN ENGLISH! He couldn’t have been more than 8 years old! I was so impressed I gave him some money and told him to keep the cookies. I attribute this boy’s English speaking abilities to Ukraine’s efforts to align itself away from Russia and toward the United States. Too bad our President seems intent on undercutting those efforts.

I had been advised not to miss the Lychakiv cemetery on the outskirts of town. So I walked out to visit it the following day. It was mammoth! My first impressions were much like Dante’s when he first entered the Inferno, “I had not thought death had undone so many”. The cemetery stretched up and down hills and through shaded forests. While there were many typical grave-sites, I began to see more and more eccentric resting places as I took a closer look.

I spent several hours taking pictures and wandering through this land of death….. I probably spent much too much time there because before I had left I had sunk deeply into depression thinking about my own mortality. I thought, “Was this all that would remain of who I was? Cold stone? …. Probably not even that much. I don’t have enough money to be buried with this much panache.”
Luckily it was Sunday and the city’s Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches were all open for business. I visited the rituals of both religions that day, and the pomp and circumstance of each helped me forget myself and my place in the world, at least for a while. My favorite service was the Eastern Orthodox Mass. For the first 10 minutes all of the ceremony was hidden behind an ornate screen. You could hear the low rolling chants of the choir and smell the incense emanating from behind it, but neither the choir nor the priests were anywhere to be seen. Eventually the screen slowly opened and the altar was revealed. I suppose this ceremony represented life, death, and the relationship of god with each. Or maybe it was just clever showmanship. What ever it was, it worked. When I left I no longer focused on death but instead on the wonderful variety of the screen of Lviv life that surrounded me.

And a wonderful screen it was too!

Lviv’s buildings survived the second world war intact because the Germans and the Russians did not fight any battles in or around the city. This circumstance has allowed dozens of magnificent churches and other historical buildings to continue standing, but more importantly, it has also preserved many more garden variety buildings that people have lived in for the past 150 years.

While the city was saved from destruction during World War II, its Jewish population was not. Out of the 200,000 Jews living in Lvov in 1941, less than 900 survived the war. One of these survivors was Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi hunter. While the Germans killed most of these people, some Ukrainians assisted, particularly early in the war.

None of the city’s dark history can be seen today nor is it mentioned. Instead, Lviv exudes a lively “live for today” party atmosphere. Serious issues are held under the surface so as to discourage  tourists from thinking too much instead of spending too much. I confess that I too fell into this trap. I probably took more pictures and drank more beer than I did anywhere else on my trip.

My plane for Vilnius left at sunrise on my last day in Lviv.  When I came down from my room at 4:30 am to check out, the helpful desk clerk who had provided me with the hotel tour and so much useful information was waiting for me at the front desk. I commented that she worked really strange hours since her shift was usually in the late afternoon. She laughed and said that her boyfriend would drive me to the airport and that he was waiting outside. He too spoke excellent English though with a slight accent. He had a degree in architecture and had  moved to Poland with his parents and worked there for a while. He said he came back to Lviv because it was a lot of fun working and living there right now. I guess  working in Lviv was for Ukrainian young people a bit like American young people working in Cape Cod for the summer. I gave him all of my remaining Ukrainian currency as a tip. It wouldn’t be worth anything anywhere else, and I was sure they would both find practical and impractical uses for it.