So this week I thought that I would talk about the price of food, among other things, in Ukraine. Let me start off by saying that food, and most things, are cheaper in Ukraine. Let me show you through a picture.
So in this picture there is a loaf of bread, a bag of crackers, a 25 pack of Lipton tea, a yogurt drink, a pack of cookies, a box of cereal, what I thought was milk, a bar of soap, and a pack of coat hangers. You may be wondering what all of this cost me. Well, ready for this, $8.00. I don't know about you, but I think that is a pretty good price. The cheapest items were all under 50 cents, and the most expensive item, the cereal, was $1.75. The bread, mind you, which was amazing, only cost 40 cents! Be jealous, I'll let you.
Anyway, so this week people keep knocking on my door. First, the cleaning ladies knocked like three times to give me all this free stuff for my bathroom, which was fine with me. Then, they knocked and said something that I didn't understand, and so I just smiled and nodded. They came back in a few minutes with sheets and unlocked the vacant room that I share a bathroom with. Well they said something else and I just happened to recognize the word for boy. Now I have no idea what else they said, but I was thinking that someone was going to move into the room. Well, no one has yet, but they also left the door unlocked. So I'm thinking that if no one moves in soon, the next time that I need to do laundry, that room is getting filled.
So this weekend I went to L’viv with my friend Olga. She invited me earlier in the week, and of course I accepted because I love traveling. We took a train from Chernivtsi at 7:30 on Saturday morning and arrived in L’viv at around 1:00 pm. I wasn’t sure how much the tickets were going cost, I thought maybe like 200 grivna each way. Um, yeah, it cost like 60 grivna each way. That means that it cost like $15 total for travel. What's crazier is that we traveled second class. I can’t even imagine how cheap 3rd class would have been. It was a six hour train ride each way, which kind of sucked, but what are you going to do.
Let me just say that L’viv feels much more different than Chernivtsi. Chernivtsi feels very Ukrainian, while L’viv feels more European. The buildings are more or less the same style, just bigger, because L’viv is a bigger city. I could try to explain the actual differences, but I’ll just show you pictures instead...
Gothic Cathedral, stupid car
The Opera House
City Hall, and the TOWER
View from the top...
Opera House from above
going down
Dominican Church
It’s even more beautiful than the pictures make it out to be. You’ll just have to come see for yourself.
When we arrived to the city, we walked to the center of the city, where all the important building are. After about an hour we went to eat. I got borsch and perogies, cause that’s how I roll. After we were done eating we met Olga’s friend who studies in L’viv. We went to the City hall where we climbed the tower. It was quite a workout. First we had to walk to the 4th floor of the building where the entrance was to the tower. Then we started to climb, and climb, and climb. Once we reached the top though, the view was definitely worth the climb.
From the tower we went to a few churches, and looked around a little bazaar. The bazaar had books, movies, antiques, pottery (and yes Mike I did look for some soviet stuff, but nothing), metalwork, old soviet military medals, etc.
Eventually, we went to this really cool café called Gas Lamp. The café was a four story house, and each story had one small room with a couple tables. We had to climb up to the 4th floor to find a table, but it was no tower. Now I haven’t had very much wine in my life, but I can assure you that you haven’t had wine until you’ve had hot spiced wine. It was red wine with cinnamon and some other spices in it. It was really good and perfect for the day since it was a little chilly outside. Oh, and a Nightwish song came on when I was in the Café…
Our train left the city at 11:30 Saturday night so we didn’t get back to Chernivtsi until 5:30 in the morning. Oh, did I mention that they lock the Residence Halls at midnight…now I know when they open them too…
So I don't know what to name this. Anyway, life has been going well in Ukraine. It was really cold for a few days last week, but for the past few days it has been beautiful! I finally got some heat in my room. I had just gotten back from classes when this lady just walked into my room with a heater. Knocking seems to be optional in Ukraine. Other than that I can't complain, my room is toasty warm, and when did another load of laundry this weekend it didn't even take a day for my clothes to dry.
You see in Ukraine, public buildings, like hospitals, schools, apartment building, etc, are told when they can turn on the heat. In Chernivtsi the date set was the 15th of October. However, since it has been unseasonable cold, the city said that hospitals and child care centers could turn their heat on early. All the other buildings are waiting for the 15th though, including mine.
So on Saturday night I was invited over to a party across the hall. It was hosted by the two girls who live there. One is from Germany and the other from Poland. It was a going away party since it was the German girls last weekend in Ukraine. Anyway, when I came over they were just starting off the night with a shot of something called Le Femme. The funny part about it was that everyone there, accept me and another guy, spoke German. So even though we were in Ukraine, most of the conversation was in German. I thought it was pretty funny. For the third, or fourth, who can keep track, toast we had some Honey vodka. After all what's a party in Ukraine with vodka, seriously. This toast was to women, and all the men in the room had to say something nice about women, including me. After that a guy played some traditional Ukrainian songs, but as the night went on we moved to English songs and finally national anthems. I was treated to the German and Ukrainian national anthems. Towards the end of the party we started to play charades which surprisingly seems to cross all language barriers.
I guess that's it for now, cause I have class. Maybe the next post will come from my room since I'm getting internet! Poka.
So it's starting to get a little colder outside now. I was walking down the street the other day and I saw a thermometer on the side of a building. It said 12 Celsius which is like 50 F. It felt much colder than that though, the wind didn't help. The other day I was talking to Viktor about the weather and he was saying that winter's in Chernivtsi are different every year. However, what he did tell me was that weather forecasters in the country are expecting what's called a 100 year winter. That mean's that they are expecting record cold temps and a lot of snow. I hope that doesn't put a damper on the people who are thinking of visiting me.
The train station
the church that i go to
cool abandoned church
city hall
So the city seems to be celebrating it's anniversary right now. I think that it's 602 or 603, but it doesn't matter. All that you have to know is that it's really really old.
Anyway, my thing is entitled laundry because on saturday I did my first load of laundry in Ukraine. It was interesting. By interesting i mean that it took 2 and a half hours to do on load, and there is no dryer. Right now all of my underwear is hanging around my room drying. Thank God I have so much furniture and no roommate!
