Day 6 - Kiev

The next day we were up bright and early to get a train to Kiev that left at around 6:30 in the morning. There were many overnight trains on this route as well, but we opted for the express, which got there in about 6.5 hours, leaving early in the morning. Upon arrival in Kiev we were pretty impressed by the train station. The back end, by the platforms, looked more like an airport than a train station (and not in a good way, more in an overcrowded and charmless way), but the entrance hall was magnificent. Here's are Béla and I taking it all in.
We weren't as well-informed as we should have been about the subway system, which has a stop right below the train station, so we ended up walking to the hotel. It wasn't really that far, and led us along the side of the botanical gardens, but it was so very very hot...

Here's a lovely church we passed along the way. We probably should have gone in, but all I was thinking about at this point was getting to the shelter of our hotel.

This was probably the nicest hotel room of our trip, but without a doubt the rudest service. It wasn't just to us - the woman at the reception couldn't bring herself to make eye contact with anyone, let along small talk, and made it quite clear that anything you were asking her was an enormous inconvenience. In her defense, it was ungodly hot, but it's still not much of an excuse. (This rude service was more than balanced by the lovely ladies at breakfast the next morning who tried to entertain Béla so I could eat my breakfast.)

Once we got to the room I needed to rest - the heat was really too much for me. Béla had a nap with me as well, but not before exploring the hotel room fully, including the inside of all the cupboards. Is that a nupboard in our cupboard? (A very sweaty nupboard...)
After I'd slept off some heat we headed out for a late supper. We were walking toward a particular restaurant that we'd read about, but the route took us down the main boulevard of Kiev, which was lined with blocky, imposing buildings. Unfortunately our pictures didn't come out so well in the low light of dusk, but here's a small sampling:


This digital clock tower played a scratchy recording of a song (a really familiar-sounding song which I can't place) followed by a bell tolling the hour, which just didn't seem to fit with the style of clock.
It also displayed the temperature, which, as you can see, was 32 C at 9:00 pm. (It was 33 C the cycle before, but we missed getting a picture of it. Still, damn hot for so late at night.)
The Georgian restaurant we went to was amazing, and the food was really delicious. Béla even ate a fair bit at this place, which wasn't always true for this trip. In both this post and the last one there are pictures of me nursing him at supper, and this was generally true throughout the trip. Either he slept through the meal and we tried to get snacks into him in between, or he showed no interest in eating and just wanted to nurse instead. He nursed more during the trip than he had in months, but it was a good thing given the heat and the fact that the tap water wasn't potable - at least with breast milk I knew he wasn't going to end up with traveller's diarrhea, the same of which couldn't be said for fresh fruits and vegetables (although we let him eat whatever he wanted).
This was part of the mural painted on the wall of the restaurant, which is pretty bizarre. I'm not really sure what this is about, but the scenery looks pretty mountainous, and apparently such things are done sometimes in Switzerland.
Finally after our delicious late supper we headed back to the hotel, via metro this time, after missing the last funicular that would have brought us back up the enormous hill that we walked down on the way there. (Kiev is situated on a river, the Dnipro, but most of the city, including where our hotel was, is on a plateau well above the river, while the area where the restaurant was was right down by the waterfront.) And this was the looooongest escalator I think I've even been on. I've seen other really long escalators in metros in eastern Europe before (Budapest and Prague spring to mind), but this was really the longest single escalator I think I've ever seen. It gave me vertigo to look down. (In fact, this poorly laid-out wikipedia page about escalators might indicate that the third longest (or highest?) escalator in the world is in the Kiev metro, after only Moscow and St. Petersburg, but I can't quite make sense of the entry.)

Day 5 - Lviv's Opera House

On our second day in Lviv we toured around some more, mostly downtown again. This was the only cool day of our entire trip. Lviv is usually a rainy city but in the last couple of weeks before we got there it had been nice and the heat had been building up. But finally, the night before it rained good and hard and brought the temperature down. I was very grateful for this since it had been very hot (32°C +) since we had left Jena. It made walking around very pleasant. Here is part of the old city walls we saw as we were making our way to the Opera house.

Also a funny camera shop add that had a elephant made out of camera equipment.

Before the opera house we stopped at a Viennese style cafe for coffee and cake. Bela had berries, I had a fancy cake with some kind of orange sauce, and Julia had some opiate seed cake... I mean poppy seed cake. I fact it she said it was the best she had ever had... and she felt great afterwards... and she put on a very energetic puppet show for Béla using removable parts from the stroller depicting bird beaks eating his belly (which he loved). Unrelatedly, we also heard that poppy seeds weren't held to the same "fun" removing processing found in the EU and probably North America, but that could have been a rumor.
This was just across the opera house's front square where every kid was riding a power wheel. This is the traditional way for parents enjoy the opera in Lviv; drop your kid of in the front yard with his or her power wheel, then sit back and enjoy the show. I'm kidding of course, there was no matinee that day. These were however for rent on the opera square and kids would used them more or less like bumper cars.
Sure beats having to buy one.
Then we went to check out the inside of the opera house.
As you can see the 'usual' fancy marble and carved wood that is so commonplace in grandiose late 19th century buildings. Just being silly, it was of course beautiful and very reminiscent of the Vienna opera house that my parents and I got a chance to see last year.
We were willingly subjected to a tour of the facility by a very nice extrovert who was waiting to prey on unsuspecting tourist for a very modest fee. She ran us through a quick and concise tour complete with many photo ops. Here is one illustrating the use of mirrors to give the illusion of having yet a bigger space. And of course 400 hundred Bélas.
Up there, not a window, more mirrors.
Laughing, about cry? I don't know but there are more mirrors.
The stage, displaying this beautiful mural while in wait.
And the whole family in one of the balconies. I was not allowed to go to close to the edge as I was holding Béla.
After that Béla slept through another fine Ukrainian meal. This is one of the many pints of Kvas we had during our time there. The linked page doesn't really do it justice I find or maybe we were especialy partial to it because of the high temperatures and the fact that it really filled the non-alcoholic alternative slot nicely, often needed when traveling with baby. Basically it's a fermented rye drink. It's fizzy and sweet but in both respects far less than pop and is often sold on tap from kegs or giant tanks on a trailer. Delicious and refreshing.
Here is our 'tourist' room at the George (the less fancy and less costly rooms). You actually had to open two pretty big doors to get in the room, one opening into the room and one into the hallway, on either side of the 2 foot thick wall. We really couldn't say the walls were paper thin but I'm pretty sure they had secret passages in them.
A somewhat better depiction of the actually very classy hotel we were in. Marblely.
Also the included breakfast was a delight. They had the usual cold cuts, bread, fruit, tomatoes and cucumbers we've come to expect in Germany but also many hot dishes including crepe/eggroll creations some that had cottage cheese and some cabbage. Also the next day we had to leave very early to catch the train to Kiev and we were supplied with breakfast brown bags to go. Very convenient.

Here is a poker-crib-sushi-bar call Montana. Interesting combination.
Here is Béla eating some borscht for our last meal in Lviv. We also had there perogies and ribs I think. All delicious.

Then we were off to Kiev to see...

Day 4 - Downtown Lviv

After the exciting night train, we arrived in Lviv at 6:00. We waited around for a while as we tried to figure out if our friend Myroslava's brother was coming to pick us up or not (there was some confusion with late-night text messages), but we eventually ended up walking into town. Here's the train station in the early morning sun. The writing in Cyrillic on the building says the name of the city.
The walk into town was pleasant, but it was already clear by 7:00 that it was going to be a really hot day. We went to our hotel but it was too early to check in, but we were able to leave our luggage at least. From there we headed to a park across the street in the middle of a central boulevard, where we had a leisurely breakfast on a park bench while Béla played with stacking blocks and we watched the people heading to work.

We were right next to a statue of Jesus, around which an old woman was expending lots of energy tending to the flowers, and just a bit further down was a statue of Mary. I couldn't believe how many people, some quite young, stopped on their morning commute to pray for a few minutes before the statues. I really don't think I've seen such public displays of devotion in a Christian community before.

Our friend Myroslava (who works at the same place as me, and who grew up in Lviv before immigrating to Canada when she was a young teen) explained that the statue of Mary had been removed by the Soviets, and the church in general was really repressed. Because this region of western Ukraine is the most anti-Russian of all, they flocked back to the church after independence as a way of demonstrating their freedom. It's also a region where everyone speaks Ukrainian, rather than a mix of Ukrainian and Russian (as in Kiev) or only Russian (as in Crimea, in southern Ukraine).

Further up the same square is a statue of Taras Shevchenko, a very famous Urkainian poet who is also featured on the 100 hryvnia bank note.
And still further up the square is the Lviv Theatre of Opera and Ballet, which is featured on the 20 hryvnia note. We went on a tour of it the next day, but I'll get back to that.
The first day in Lviv we spent a lot of time wandering around, checking out various churches. This one impressed me in particular with the amount of embroidery! Look at the sashes around all the paintings...
...and a little closer...
...and a little closer...
...and closer still! That's a lot of stitches!
We toured the central market square...


...and visited an outdoor used book market, which is held around the base of a statue of Federov, who was instrumental in introducing the printing press to eastern Slavonic languages, and who lived in Lviv in the 16th century. (A good place for a book market, isn't it?) Jeremi was impressed with his style, and was wishing that he had a long apron too.
One of the many picturesque buildings around town...
Here's one of the four fountains that are found in the corners of the bustling town square.
We had a lovely lunch while Béla slept, enjoying the view of the Bohemian Chapel behind him.
After lunch we had a bit of a nap to recover from our night of customs, and to get away from the heat a little. In the late afternoon we met up with Taras, Myroslava's brother, who lives in Lviv, and his girlfriend Yuda. They took us around to see some of the sights of the city, such as this little art gallery/café, with a cool ladder going somewhere...
We went out for desserts and coffee, and then later went for supper at a theme restaurant, which was set up to be like a resistance camp of partisans against the Russians during the war, with country-style food, like what they'd have in the camps, and a guard at the door in an antique uniform (with an antique weapon) checking for Russians and asking for the password (which was something like death to Russians). This all really underlined the fact that we were in Western Ukraine. Here we are, enjoying our meal.
Look at the size of that kolbasa! And it was sooo delicious. This was also the first place where we tried salo, a Ukrainian specialty of seasoned slices of pork fat. It sounds a bit gross, but was really surprisingly delicious, and went incredibly well with its garnish of chunks of raw garlic. Yum!
Here's the basement of the restaurant, which had live music as well. The atmosphere here was a bit more lively, but they asked for us to sit elsewhere so that Béla wasn't exposed to cigarette smoke, which I thought was really thoughtful.
Afterward we went for a walk through the city together, stopping to enjoy the romantic views around the fountain in front of the opera house. At this point it even started to rain a little, which continued into the next day, providing the one cool and cloudy day of our vacation. We'll tell you more about the next day in Lviv in the next post...

Night 3 - Night train to Lviv, Ukraine

Everyone had warned us about the trains in Eastern Europe, about how they were always late and crowded and slow and dirty and not air conditioned, and that even the first class wouldn't be as nice as German second class compartments. (And we did splurge for the first class, as it meant we had our own sleeping cabin, which seemed worth it with a baby, and wasn't all that expensive compared to German trains).

Well were we ever pleasantly surprised! The first night train we were on had really fabulous little cabins, complete with a little sink with running water that was cleverly folded away into a little cupboard. (I really wish we'd taken a picture of that!) The conductors were also dressed more like flight attendants, and came around shortly after we started to offer coffee or tea, the latter of which came with slices of lemon in these really cool glass mugs with pewter handles.

Here's the view from the bottom bunk, where Béla and I were cozily snuggled in together. At first this didn't seem like it was going to work so well, mostly because the bed slanted slightly, and a bit the wrong way (i.e. so that I was worried about rolling out in the night). The bar on which the folding mattress rested was a bit loose, which wasn't at all dangerous, but meant that it leaned a bit outward. It was remedied by shoving Jeremi's sandals between the bed and the bar, and we slept find after that. That's our big backpack wedged up over the door, which will be relevant later.
I sort of wish we'd taken more pictures of our compartment, but we were really ready to get right to sleep. The train went from something like 10:00 to 6:00, which sounds like we were on board for 8 hours, but it was only really 7 hours because there's a time change, and it took us an hour to get Béla to sleep after he'd explored the train compartment fully, and beyond that we were crossing a border in the middle of the night, so we knew we'd have to wake up for that. What I didn't realize is just how long we'd have to be awake for that...

First the conductor came around and knocked on every door so we would wake up and open our doors, and he handed around entry and exit forms that we had to fill out. (Because Béla has his own passport rather than being included in my passport, which isn't very common in Eastern Europe, I filled one out for him as well.) Then we waited a while. Here's Béla waiting for the border guard to come around, passport at the ready. (Yup, his feet were really dirty.)
First came the Polish border guard, who collected all our passports so that we could get exit stamps. We waited a while, and another border guard brought them back. Again, we waited.
Next came a Ukrainian border guard in military fatigues who took away all our passports and the completed forms. He didn't understand why there were three passports but only two people, so we showed him the sleeping baby, and he laughed at his passport photo, and gave us Béla's form back. Then we waited a while longer. Next came a woman from customs, who was going through peoples' bags. Because the big backpack was shoved up over the door she didn't notice it, which saved us having to go through everything. (There was nothing of interest in there anyhow.) Then we waited a while longer. Finally, a different Ukrainian border guard came, this one in a fancier uniform, and gave back the passports with entry stamps inside, and the entry part of our immigration forms removed.

Finally, we could get back to sleep. All in all we were awake for at least two hours at the border, which made the 6:00 am arrival in Lviv seem all the earlier. But for that, you'll have to wait for the next post.

Day 3: The Salt Mines

The next day we were taking a night train to Lviv, leaving at something like 10 pm, so we still had the whole day to explore the city. After a nice breakfast, we headed to the train station to store our luggage, knowing that we didn't want to cart it around all day. From there we planned on visiting the Wieliczka Salt Mines, which aren't so very far away from Krakow. These salt mines are a UNESCO World Heritage site, and had been a place I'd wanted to visit since I read about them as a kid. (Yes, I really do love salt...) The guide book (Lonely Planet Eastern Europe) indicated that there should be minibuses leaving from a given intersection downtown, and we decided to go and check out if these minibuses looked remotely babysafe, and then decide if we were going based on that. But first we stopped at a little market and bought some food for a quick little lunch, trying out some street food (like long open-faced subs that we saw everywhere), and these seemingly homemade molded pastries that were being sold by women from little carts in the street:
We were surprised by how much they were charging for these little "pastries", and then surprised by how heavy they were... And of course it's because they weren't pastries at all, but rather smoked cheese. It was really delicious, but we probably wouldn't have bought quite as much had we known it was cheese.

And then on to the salt mines... or so we thought. Lonely Planet let us down in a pretty big way on this one - there were no longer minibuses of any description going to Wieliczka, and none from the intersection in questions. We still wandered around for quite a while trying to find them though, before we asked at the tourist information centre, where they very helpfully gave us information about how to take a city bus out to the town, which was only about a 40 minute ride away. Getting to the bus stop was a bit of a fiasco, mostly because we somehow lost the map they gave us but thought we could do it from memory, and ended up walking around a big block and seeing the bus we wanted drive by us three times while we tried to find the stop. Eventually we did though (after getting directions at a giant fancy mall that had more high end stores than most airports), and we were off!

Luckily we got there shortly before an English-language tour was due to begin, so we didn't have to wait too long upon arrival. We'd already checked the stroller at the train station, as we figured that salt mines were probably not very stroller friendly, which proved to be a good decision, as the tour began by descending 378 stairs to get to the bottom. By the end my knees were really feeling the extra 25 pounds of Béla in the carrier! Check out the view down the centre of the stairwell - it looked like it went on forever...
Yes, mom, I'm a little sherpa.
There were lots of warnings to bring a jacket because it was cold underground, but we found it remarkably comfortable. (We'd read it would be 14 C, but I think it was more like 18 C.)
Here's one of the many statues in one of the chambers we visited. Everything there was made out of solid salt - the carvings, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, with the exception of some wooden support structures. (Wood keeps really well there because all the salt prevents rot.) This statue is of Copernicus, who was, of course, Polish.
These statues tell the legend of the founding of the mine, something about a noblewoman throwing her golden ring down the shaft, and then the riches of the salt deposits being discovered. In this and other pictures you get an idea of how dark the salt rock is - it's something like 92 % NaCl, but the impurities make it look really dark, and it's sometimes called "green salt". Naturally it's refined before use.
Here there were some stalactites of pure salt, really long ones, that reminded me of crystal-growing "experiments" with salt water and hanging strings as a kid.
Here's a chandelier in one of the many chapels. The "glass" in the chandelier is also salt, but it's been purified to appear clear rather than grey-green.
Despite the dark appearance of the "stones", they really taste like salt. Mooo...
This is a bit hard to see, but it's a statue of a miner doing a special job where they'd try to burn off methane build-up using lanterns on long poles. Naturally a very dangerous job, with lots of casualties, and no longer necessary in the still-functioning part of the mine thanks to modern technologies.

There were lots of little models showing how things used to be done in the mine, including the use of horses underground.
Along this particular section of wall you could see how cylinders were drilled in to break off chunks, reminding me of granite rock cuts in Northern Ontario.
One of the more narrow white-washed passages...
Hard to see, but here there was a view down a sort of canyon in the series of tunnels and chambers where you could see down something like 70 meters. Of course it's rather dark, and we're not the best photographers.
Here's a set of the original stairs used by the miners, which were carved out of salt. Of course they get rather slippery when wet and wear down over time, so they've replaced most of them with wood for the tourists.
Here's an underground stream running through the mine, with something like 18% salt in the water (saturated in any case, I don't remember the exact figure).
Hard to see here, but the water was actually sort of a greenish colour. It looks rusty here just because the vessel is rusting (of course).
This room had carvings of the little gnome-like spirits that the miners believed lived underground in the mine.
This was one of the smaller chapels, one of more than a dozen built by the rather religious miners over the years.

But that little one was nothing - this is the Chapel of St. Kinga, which was truly breathtaking. My favourite part was the "tiles", which were designs routed into the solid salt floor.
There were also lots of other carvings though, like in any church, with bas relief reproductions of the last supper, and a giant statue of Pope John Paul II.
Béla loved it, of course. He was quite a hit on our tour in fact, and coped well with the three hour tour, which is longer than he likes to be in the carrier these days. At least in the big chapel I could let him out to run around.
That's the Last Supper on the left...
From there the tour continued, and we went to the Weimar chamber, which was cool for us because Weimar is a city really close to Jena (about 25 km away). Goethe is a really famous German poet and writer who lived and worked in Weimar and surroundings, but he actually came to visit the mine in his earlier career, when he was a German civil servant and was coming to inspect the mine operations. Here he is now!
And here's the sign for the Weimar chamber, which had water in the bottom and a really high ceiling with wonderful acoustics, and we were treated to a piece of music by Chopin (who was Polish) while we contemplated the beauty (and we tried to keep Béla respectfully quiet - he found the echo in the giant chamber rather fun).
At the end of the tour we had supper at the restaurant at the bottom of the mine, which serves up traditional Polish food cafeteria-style, and is meant to be a bit like what the miners get in their cafeteria. Honestly, the food was delicious and quite affordable, and Béla ran around like a mad man, burning off his excess energy, while we enjoyed our meal.

After that we headed toward the exit, which led us by the big event hall with the fancy dining room, shown here. This place is rather classy, and is famous for a big New Year's Eve ball, as well as private functions, including weddings.



Thank God we didn't have to walk back up the stairs! Instead there was a cage-style elevator that brought us up, and which freaked the hell out of Béla. He screamed from the moment the doors closed until the moment we exited, which was actually a pretty long time given that we were 125 m underground. I'm not sure if it was the darkness or the claustrophobia or the creepy elevator operator who he was smooshed in next to, but he settled down as soon as we exited. I haven't noticed him being nervous or upset in other small spaces, so maybe it was just a one-off. And even if he has an irrational fear of cage elevators in salt mines operated by creepy men, he'll probably be able to make it through life without it holding him back too much...

After that we took the bus back into the city, stopped at the high-end mall to pick up some eats for the train, grabbed our luggage, and headed on to Lviv. We'll tell you all about the train trip in the next post.