Stolen

Day 519
I was the first person up in my room and packed quickly and quietly. The guy who had asked if I believed in JC very loudly said "miss, I'm sorry for last night." I whispered back that if he wanted to talk we could do so outside, but that people were sleeping and we can't talk.

After checking out I mapped out my day over breakfast.

In the city garden I possed with everyone else on a bronze chair. I have no idea why , but everyone was doing it. After taking pictures of various buildings and monuments I headed to the Western and Eastern Art Museum. We can just call it the W & E from now on.

The W & E sounded amazing. It might sound a bit familiar because on July 30 of last year Caravaggio's "Taking of the Christ," worth US $100 million, was stolen from here. Not a trace of it has been found. Miracles have happened here before though. At the end of the 18th century Katherine the Great purchased four Frans Hals paintings (he was a Dutch master). The two shops transporting them were hit by a brutal storm. One sank and the other was badly damaged. All four works were considered lost. In 1958 an art collector was perusing a market and was drawn to an ancient looking painting. The museum paid the woman who had it 9 rubles. I don't know how much that was then, but it wasn't much. Another one of the paintings was found in a museum storage room.

In 1965 both paintings were sent to Moscow fora special exhibit. St. Luke was cut from its from. When the thieves started talking to buyers they ran into an agent and were caught. The painting had been really mistreated and thought destroyed, however the experts were able to salvage it. The other tow paintings have been found as well. One was in a private collection, the other in the Getty museum in LA.

As an aside a Russian woman recently threw a cup at the Mona Lisa for not receiving French citizenship. The painting was unharmed. It is also unknown as to why she would attach a painting by an Italian painter.

I was really excited about this museum. The bottom floor held the Eastern art collection. It was good, but I wanted to see the European stuff. When I got upstairs I found out that the museum was under renovations because of the stolen painting. There wasn't much to see at all. It really sucked.

Disappointed I headed to the Archaeological Museum. I was pretty good with a small but nice Greek and Egyptian collection.

After some more wandering I had finished my to do list I went to an i-cafe to type up the entries I had written the night before. When I was done I went back to the hostel to charge my i-pod.

At 9 I asked the guy at reception to call me a cab. He asked when my bus was and when I told him 10:15. He said that I didn't need to leave until 9:30 and that he would call later. He then left, but told me that he would come back. At 9:40 he still wasn't there and I was irritated.

I managed to find a cab but the guy tried to over charge me. I told him that I only had about $7 left and he took that.

The bus was loading when I arrived. I found out a few hours later that I had gotten the right ticket after all and had missed Transdniester.

Cats!

Day 518
My train arrived around around 8 am and I had no problem finding the bus for my hostel. The friendly drivers then pointed me in the direction I needed. That didn't prevent me from getting lost though. As they say, if there's a will there's a way.

At the hostel I was greeted by a very friendly woman who showed me that instead of giving everyone a key they kept on in a lock box on the door. The combination was really easy to remember as it as the same as a very important date in American history.

A cab was then called for me so that I could go to the bus station. I needed to get a night bus ticket to Chisnau in Moldova that wouldn't pass thru the breakaway region of Transdniester. The boarder guards there are known for demanding large bribes and even confiscating electronics. Transdniester is not recognized by any other country so I don't think that it belongs on my to do list. Of course I had forgotten to ask the woman at the hostel to write down what I needed. I had also forgotten the name of the city I was going to. I ended up just writing down Moldova and hoping that I ended up in the right place.

I then had to get back to the hostel and all of the cab drivers tried to rip me off. I ended up really angry. I was tired, hungry, and irritated. To take care of at least one problem I decided to eat at the first cafe I found. One of the girls working there had spent a year living in the US and was able to give me a much better map. I was lost no longer.

After breakfast I popped into and i-cafe for a bit to book my next hostel.

My bit of culture for the day was the Fine Arts Museum. There were a lot of cats sleeping outside. They were really cute. Unfortunately pictures were not allowed and I had to write down the names of the paintings I liked.

I grabbed a kabab on the way back to the hostel. The shower was really weird, it was rather unbalanced large tub.

When I was clean it was time to face the music. I was horribly behind in the blog. I went to an Irish pub and wrote and wrote until I was all up to date. It felt really good.
Back at the hostel I chatted with some Russians until it was about 1 am. I was sort shocked that the light in the room was still on. I saw a girl reading and told her that I was going to turn off the light. She said that she was reading, I replied that it was 1 am and that there was a common room for that. I didn't see that there was another person in the room reading as well. When I got into bed the guy I hadn't seen said that he was reading. I repeated that there was a common room for that and it was one am. He then asked if I believed in Jesus. I replied that all I believed in at 1 am was sleeping.

When will people learn that the hostel room is for sleeping? Now I understand that someone will snore, someone will come back at 4 am and be drunk and loud, and that an alarm will go off at 5 am. This is all not fun, but it's staying in a hostel. Turning on lights in the middle of the night, talking while others are sleeping and have sex are not ok. Just because your staying in a hostel you don't get a free pass to behave like an asshole. Really, asking me about my religion because I want to sleep at 1 am is just asinine. I feel like I should pass around a sheet of rules or something.
At least I fell asleep quickly and those who should be stripped of their passports and sent to live in, I don't know, Dante's 4th circle of hell, didn't keep me up.

Cutters

Day 517
I was up early and attempted to shower. Like the day before the water ran out after about 3 minutes. Literally there wasn't anything coming out of the spout. I had washed my hair the day before and tried to get the rest of me in the short time I had today. I felt really gross.

My ipod, camera, and alarm clock all have the time on them. I try to keep them in sync but somehow they all had different times on them. I ended up going with the earliest one and was out of my hotel room by 10 am.

At the bus station the line was horrendous and took forever. You would have thought it was rocket science. How long does it take to state your destination, the date, time and number of people traveling and if you have any luggage? I don't even speak the stupid language and I manage it in under a minute! My NYC attitude came out as well. Two girls who were 3 people in front of me were chatting and didn't notice a middle aged woman and a woman younger than me trying to cut in front of them. Thank goodness one of them spoke just a bit of English and understood me when I said something to them. Everyone was looking at me like I was nuts, but the girls were irritated too and yelled at them. The middle aged woman left right away but the younger one tried to argue that she was only one person. It was one of those things that you could understand even not knowing the language. I shot back that I was only one person as well and that I had been waiting for 40 minutes with a 13 kilo bag on my back and that there was no way in hell that she would be getting in front of me. I may have also added that if she tried I would shove my bag so far up her ass that it would come out of her ears. I said this very fast and I doubt anyone understood me, no one seemed to react to it anyway. The nice girls yelled at her again and she went away. I thanked them and it was soon my turn.

When I was buying my ticket the woman kept asking me things and unlike when I normally give answers she just kept not understanding me. Luckily a man in line behind me translated enough for me to answer correctly. Perhaps she was the reason the line was so long!

The bus ride was only two hours and soon I was back in Simferopl with nothing to do. I headed to the internet cafe but it soon shut down for about an hour. Luckily they let me hang out there so I didn't have to move my stuff. When it started up again I just messed around even though I was meant to work on the blog.

Once on the train a nice man helped me get my bed roll down from the top bunk, I didn't really need the help, but it turned out that he wanted to practice his English. He told me that he was headed to Odessa to have a meeting with his owner, I think he meant boss. After about an hour I told him that I was going to go to sleep.

Around midnight a man got on the train who had the bed opposite me. He actually sounded like a horse when he snored. Needless to say, I didn't sleep so well.

Again

Day 516
I wasn't tired but I couldn't get myself out of bed early enough to go to Yalta for the day. The silence was just too nice.

Anyone who had been reading this blog for some time knows that I don't really care for the beach, especially ones filled with older men in Speedos. I really had no idea what to do with myself. I had come here mostly to say that I had been in this area.

I ended up have a long and yummy traditional Ukrainian meal for lunch and writing a bit. I then went to the internet cafe to waste some time. I also called my mom and chatted for over an hour.

When I could not longer entertain myself online I just went back to my hotel and chilled out with some sparkling local wine and my ipod. I fell asleep quite early the night.

Crimea River

Day 515
The train arrived in Simferopol, the Crimea, at 4:30 am. I had thought that this was the last stop so I had put my bag underneath the bottom bunk. I felt really bad when I had to wake up the nice woman who had made my bed to get my bag out.

I then went and tried to buy my exit train ticket. First I had to wait about 30 minutes for the woman to get off break. When I gave her the city name and dated I wanted she wouldn't sell it to me and went thru some long speech instead. When I didn't understand the bitch just shrugged her shoulders, she couldn't even be bothered to point or give me a window number. Severely irritated I found the information window. The nice woman there walked me to the office I needed, it was actually out of the train station and didn't open until 7 am. I had two hours to kill. I sat in the McDonald's until it opened. I was the second person in line and had my ticket in minutes.

I then had to wait in a rather long but quick moving line for a bus ticket to Sudak, my Crimean destination. While in line a taxi driver tried to convince me that the ticket cost $50 and that if I went with him it would be $40. I laughed in his face. I wasn't in the mood for this. In the end the ticket was just over $3. After another 20 minute wait I was finally on the bus. I was really exhausted and thought that I would be able to sleep. It was just far too bouncy and I stayed awake for the whole 2 hour ride.

It used to be quite normal in smaller towns with limited accommodation options for older women, mostly widow's, to rent out a room or two for a few dollars. I hadn't done this and was looking forward to it and went with the first old woman who approached me. It turned out to be an actual hotel and not a house. I was a bit disappointed, but at least I had my own room for once.

At this point I was so tired that I basically collapsed into bed for a couple of hours. When I came to I was ravenous and went in search of food. The first place I found was a communist style buffet. the line was long but the people were friendly and I ended up with a really good lunch.

I then wandered down to the beach front. It was really like any typical beach town. The whole thing seemed rather corny compared to the American version. Plus, there wasn't anyone selling funnel cakes. There were, however, lots of people selling wine out of barrels. The Crimea used to be the play ground of the Russian Czar's, some pretty good wine comes from here.

I walked until I found a rather nice castle that I was too lazy to walk up the hill to get a closer look at. Instead I screwed around in the Internet cafe for some time before visiting the supermarket for some of that yummy wine and dinner. That evening I didn't get too far into my bottle, I was tired and it knocked me out almost right away

Train, Train, Train

Day 514
I was up early and packed my bags and charged my ipod while I made my lunch. I am quite the multi tasker! Around 11 am I headed to the train station.

I got lucky this time and ended up in a section with three very nice ladies. One even made my bed for me. I spend the rest of the day reading and sleeping. At one stop, like in Russia, there were tons of of people selling cheesy stuffed animals. I really don't understand the appeal!

Where's Mummy?

Day 513
I was up early, finally, and took the metro this time to the Lara Monastery. Visiting here is to the Orthodox Church is what visiting the Vatican is for Catholics. Plus, there are mummy's!

The churches were beautiful, but half of them were closed, including the entrance to the mummy caves. No fair! After a few hours I was churched out and I left. I think I'm sick of churches.

I then proceeded to get horribly lost and walked for about an hour before I found the metro stop again. At this point it was yucky and raining. When I got back to the hostel I ended up hiding from the rain by watching a move called the Orphan (not the scary one, but a Spanish language one) and the Family Guy episodes before calling it a night.

The hostel was over booked because the snorer had asked to stay at the last minute. The girls were going to move them into the seldom used top bunk in their room but when I mentioned that he snored they decided to move me instead. Not only did I have to climb up and down with out a ladder (I almost took out another person getting down) but they kept turning the lights on and off all night. I don't know what was worse!

Lost

Day 512
Up late again due to the snorer I tried to hurry thru my shower and breakfast to get out and see things.

The goal of the day was to visit the Lavra Monastery. It wasn't that far away and I decided to walk. The problem was that there were a lot of turns. I crawled into my own little world while walking and forgot to make one of the lefts. By the time I had realized my mistake I was in a suburb. Opps. It took me ages to get back to where I needed to be and there just wasn't enough time to see the place in th time I had left.

Instead I hit an internet cafe and did a lot of typing. Afterwards I went to the supermarket and picked up dinner and wine. The Crimea is known for its good wine and I wanted to try some of it.

That night I went to a park with some of the other people at the hostel. It was really nice to sit outside and chat. It's just stupid that we can't have alcohol outside in the States.

The wine helped me sleep thru the snorer and I finally got to sleep at a reasonable hour.

Emergency!

Day 511
Due to the stupid snorer in my room I ended up over sleeping. Once I had my act together I headed out and took the metro to save time.

s

My firt stop was the Chernobyl Museum. On April 26, 1986 at 1:23 am the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had a reactor explode. This is considered to be the worst nuclear accident the world has ever seen. The audio guide claimed that within hours a 30 km "dead zone" was created. All the towns were evacuated, Pripyat was the largest. According to the museum the evacuation happened within hours. This, however, isn't true. The town was evacuated about 4 days later when the radioactive cloud reached a Swedish plant and they put out the warning. The cloud floated not only over the modern states of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova, but also Turkey, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Holland, Belgium, Slovenia, Poland Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, France and the UK. You can take tours of Pripyat for about $175 plus free radiation, however I declined. I think I would have done it if it wasn't so expensive.

The museum was pretty well done, if a little loose with the facts. The first room concentrated on the people who gave up their lives trying to contain and control the blast. Most of these people died pretty horrific radiation poisoning deaths. For the most part the dead zone will remain until 2016, however some of the chemicals that were released are far more deadly and it could be a century before the area is truly ready for habitation again.

One section was on outside help. The first country to step forward was Cuba, Castro opened up a hospital for children with radiation poisoning. A letter from an American 4th grader read
"Dear President Reagan,
I have a suggestion. We should tell the Russians that they should enclose their nuclear power plants. We should say that we care for them because they're human beings too. We should also have more donors. We should send more bone marrow transplantation people to Moscow.

We should tell them not to feel so bad because we were down hearted also.

I am 9 and 3/4 and my favorite food is bagel.

Sincerely Joy"

I'm really just including that because it was really sweet.

The following section was pictures of those who had been left behind. It showed weddings and birthday parties. The guide said that it was meant to show how time marches on and how wounds heal. I found it to be rather sad. After that I spend some time with a section on current pictures of the evacuated Pripyat. It was really eerie. In the last room there were some objects from Pripyat, including a bit of the church. There were yards of fabric on the ceilings, one white, one black. They were meant to be birds, the black death and the white rebirth. I just found the whole thing to be odd.

Next up was the One Street Museum. It's about Andrews Descent, Kiev's most popular street. The whole thing was really quite interesting. The street may even date all the way to the 12th century. Everything seemed to have happened here. Witches were once burned here and one of the oldest theological schools in Eastern Europe was founded here in 1616. Empress Elizabeth laid the first brick for St. Andrews church in 1744. This moved onto typical house interiors. For some time in the 19th century this was Kiev's red light district. Eventually it became the place to live and a lot of the displays were on famous Ukrainians whom I had never heard of before. Eventually it moved on to the world wars. The more recent photo's and post cars were really interesting. one object was a gold toilet!

After the museum I wandered back to the hostel and grabbed a sandwich for dinner. I spent some time online working on the blog and finally got a few entries published. Later on I had problems sleeping again due to the snorer.

Annoyed

Day 510

The train arrived in Kiev at 5 am and it was still dark out. I grabbed breakfast at the only place open, McDonalds as the sun came up. It then took me about 40 minutes to walk to the hostel. Most of it was up hill. I rang what I thought was the door bell and waited. I sat there for about an hour waiting and no one came. Eventually I gave up and found an internet cafe. The problem was that they were shutting down for an hour in 30 minutes. I checked my email and could see that the girls who owned the hostel had emailed me asking if I wanted directions and the door code. Why the hell would they ask and not just send them? I emailed them back and then tried to call both of their cell phones but didn't have any luck. In no time my 30 minutes were up and I had to leave.

I went back to the hostel and found that the door had been left open. I went up the stairs and rang the bell. The girls were really apologetic. To get in touch with me they had sent me 2 emails (I had to leave so I hadn't got them) and had called the phone number on my Hostel World account thinking that it was my cell phone. The thing is that I don't have one, it's my parents number and it was 2 am in the States. They had woken up my parents. I felt really bad about it and they felt bad too once they had asked what time it was there. I couldn't be too upset though, calling an international number to try and find me was really quite a nice thing to do. I'm just sorry that my parents lost sleep over it.

After showering I headed out to buy my train ticket out of Kiev and then set off to explore the town.

Once I had checked out Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the very communist main square, I popped into the guilded and recently reconstructed St. Michael's Cathedral. it as really quite nice. I then headed further uphill (this city is nothing but up hill) to the Spiritual Treasures of th Ukraine Museum. Unfortunately it was closed. It was, however, right next to the very pretty St. Andrews Church.

Finally on slightly even ground I found the National History Museum. It was ok, but no photos were allowed. The stone and bronze age stuff was boring. There was a rather interesting display of holograms though. Not much was in English, but my spidey sense told me that some of it was about the Austria-Hungary Empire, the Crimean War and WWI. For unknown reasons there was also a mermaid.

At this point I was dragging and went back to the internet cafe. I managed to type a bit but mostly chatted with people from home. If I'm good at one thing it is certainty procrastination!

Before heading back to the hostel I picked up dinner. I was able to barrow one of the girls computers for some time and managed to get my pictures organized and uploaded. That has been the biggest challenge recently and soon I will be able to get the blog back under control.

That night I tried to sleep early but the other person in my room, a retired Dutch man, was a terribly loud snorer and it took me a long time to find sleep. I could hear him thru my earplugs and over my ipod!

Perfect Storm

Day 509

Lviv is considered to be the cultural and patriotic center of the Ukraine. It's rather picturesque with a large range of well preserved buildings and cobblestone streets. It's just rather small.

I got my act together slowly and walked downtown. My first stop was what I thought as the Lviv History Museum. It turned out to be a collection of royal rooms. Further down the main square I found th actual history museum. Th stairs were so creaky I thought hat they might give out on me. Also all of the doors were shut so I wasn't exactly sure where I could go in. Eventually I got it right, I just did it all a bit backwards. it didn't matter though because nothing was in English. From what I could guess there was a bit on communism, folk culter and a scary peasant house.

After the museum I grabbed lunch, actually a cheese and fruit platter, it was really good, and wrote in my journal. When I was done I went ot the internet cafe to type. Around entry number 6 the building lost power due to a storm. I hadn't saved anything and was livid. I then had to sit inside for about 45 minutes waiting for the storm to pass.

This was one violent and scary storm. It had been a slightly overcast day, but now it was pitch black. The wind howled and anyone who went outside was drenched in seconds. The thunder and lightening were so loud that they were clearly directly overhead. Then it stopped, just as quickly as it had started.

The streets were littered with downed branches, one unfortunate person had a branch land on their car. I don't know if it was due to the lightening or fallen branches, but all the trams had been stopped in place. As they don't have their own lane they were causing traffic jams everywhere. One spot of the pavement completely caved in and there were bits of tree in the hole. I guess that lightening had struck there.

I hung out at the hostel for a bit, but when it began to look like rain again I headed out. There wasn't any public transportation for me so I would have to walk. I made it just as the sky's opened up again. There were two trains headed to Kiev and I, of course, got on the wrong one. The stupid thing was that the attendant actually let me on. I only figured out that I was in the wrong place because I had the same seat as someone else. I had 9 minutes to figure out where my train was and get on it. I made it with about 3 minutes to spare.

Plascart class is basically one open carriage with divots that hold 4 beds and a table and then 2 beds running down the side of the isle. I was in a divot section. I had the top bunk which is nice because no one can sit on my bed when I want to be lying in it. Usually the people on the bottom are nice about opening up the under bed compartment and letting me sit on their bed until the provenista passes out the linens. The people I ended up with this time just gave me dirty looks and refused to let me put my bag beneath the bed I then had to attempt to get my bag on the top shelf. I can't stand on my toes very well any longer due to my dumb ass left foot, but even if I good I couldn't reach the top shelf. They just sat there and watched me try to get my bag up there. Luckily a nice man a few beds away helped me get it up there. I then sat on the bottom bed waiting for the sheets. The rudies gave me even more dirty looks. Once the sheets were passed out I made up my bed. As I was on the end of the carriage there is no ladder to get into the bed. To get up there you either need to have loads up upper body strength (I don't) be 10 feet tall (I'm not) or use the bottom beds and then the table get up. My doing this did not make those people happy. If looks could kill I would have been dead the first of the two times I had to get down to use the toilet. Luckily they didn't snore and I was able to get some sleep.

Welcome to the Ukraine!

Day 508

I was woken up by the very nice woman on the bunk below me when it was time to get off the hostel I was staying at offered train station pickup and I had e-mailed them about it. I just hadn't have the time to see if they responded. After about 15 minutes of waiting I gave up and tried to walk there myself. Of course they had given really crap direction and I didn't have a map. I think that fact that I actually found it (by asking for help in a pharmacy) is testament to my sharply honed travel skills. When I arrived the man said that he had been there but hadn't seen me. He the added that he was surprised that I had found the place on my own. I wanted to make a snide remark about how is directions were of no help, but didn't.

After changing and showering, well in the opposite order, I headed off in search of food. It was one of those days where I just couldn't find anything and ended up at McDonalds. A least it was airconditioned.

Once eating my first stop was the Lviv Art Gallery. It was ok, not nearly as good as the city guide made it out to be. Most of the works were Polish.

After a short walk thru the very pretty Svobody Prospect I found the National Museum. It was really rather odd because all the doors were shut and they checked my ticket at each section. The icons were quite old and interesting but poorly cared for. That always makes me sad. Upstairs had more paintings than objects. At this point I was on the tired side and decided to do some blog work. I wasn't able to upload at either of the internet cafe's I found so I just gave up.

I then ended up walking to the train station and getting my ticket out of the city. On the way back I stopped for some pizza for dinner. The place was called New York Pizza. What an incredibly American day for me.

A very annoying girl from York spent 40 minutes in the hostels one bathroom. I could have killed here. Instead I gave her dirty looks before I went to sleep. Actually, I contemplated peeing on her bed, but that would have just been immature and very gross.