Ukraine to Romania (L'viv to Cluj-Napoca via Chernivtsi-Suceava crossing)

After a day and a half in L'viv, I decided it was time to get to the major objective for this entire trip - Romania. I've wanted to go to Romania for years. I think this desire dates back to my favorite video game series growing up - Castlevania, which is based around the legend of Dracula and the Belmont clan of vampire hunters. Yes, I just admitted that a video game helped drive me to visit a country on the other side of the world. I also was looking forward to being able to halfway communicate again, as Romanian is a Romance language.

In any case, I took the night train from L'viv to Chernivtsi, which turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant and cheap experience. The nine-hour train ride only ran me about $9, and the compartment I shared with a middle-aged Ukrainian woman was spacious enough for the two of us (could have been 4 of us in there). I was given a nice set of sheets and slept reasonably well, though for some reason the lights were on all night and would not turn off. The other thing of interest on the train was the bathrooms were locked. I went to several and they were all locked...with apparently no one inside. I'm pretty sure I had found the right place as it certainly smelled like a bathroom in that vicinity. In any case, having to go to the bathroom and not having access to one, I...got creative. Let's just leave it at that.

Upon arrival in Chernivtsi (about 50km from the Ukraine-Romania border), I attempted to find a minibus or shared cab to the border area. No such luck and no other travelers appeared to be headed that way. Generally I have luck in these types of situations, as services usually exist, but not this time. Communicating with the couple of bus drivers I talked to was getting me nowhere, as I had not a word of Ukrainian at my disposal and they appeared to have no English. This is not uncommon among older Ukrainians; they typically speak only Russian if they have a foreign language. Younger folks tended to have some measure of basic English. Luckily, I stumbled across a nice cab driver that spoke Portuguese due to spending some years there working. Thanks to last year's trip to Brazil and my Spanish skills, I can at least get around in that language. And surprisingly, some useful phrases came back to me pretty quickly. After a discussion in which I learned finding a shared cab or bus to the border would be best done from the bus station rather than the train station, we headed off in that direction for a few dollar (30 hyrv) charge.

We had a nice talk on the way as we rattled along the cobblestone streets in his 35-year old Lada. At the bus station he was able to quickly help me find a local bus that would end up dropping me off about 2km from the border, and even paid the 1.5 hyrvna (about 20 cents) charge for me to use the filthy fly-filled bathroom with squat toilets. The bus to the border area was old and banged up like most of the vehicles I saw in Ukraine. The only notable thing about the bus ride was I was nearly the only male on board, besides the driver and what looked to be the invalid caretakee of a tall, big-boned, sturdy, nurse-type woman that sat in front of me and repeatedly glanced my way. The bus dropped me a couple clicks from the border, and I stepped off in a light rain down the side of the four lane road leading directly to the border, hoping it would not start raining harder. (It didn't and soon stopped.) I considered trying to hitch a ride from one of the numerous cars headed past me to the border, but decided I would keep my options open on hitching a ride until I had crossed both borders on foot. On foot I have learned is often a quicker way through a border zone than the inevitable delays and searches that plague motor traffic. I almost re-considered though when an ancient motorcycle went puttering past...complete with open sidecar!!

At the Ukrainian border I was initially denied the ability to cross. The border guards made walking motions with their fingers and told me "Nyet" or "No" or some such negative indication. I accepted that for about 30 seconds before I went up to them and gave them a questioning-annoyed-frustrated expression, at which point they took my passport, ogled the different stamps and visas in it for a few minutes, and then let me on my way with a piece of paper of some import. I got my exit stamp from the Ukraine side, approached the Romanian side by passing what looked to be about an hour-long line of motor vehicles, and went straight up to a border agent standing on the side walk. He spoke good English, asked me a few questions, laughed when I said I was headed for the Dracula-trail, and said he would help me find a ride to the nearest major town in Romania, Suceava. He then had another agent stamp my passport and off he went.

A minute later I was sitting in a van with what turned out to be a Ukrainian police officer who spoke almost no English. He was a gruff and irritable guy that seemed to resent being corralled into taking me down to Suceava, but we managed to share a couple of laughs when he stated he only drank "a little" vodka nowadays...a little being a liter for a Ukrainian. After a 30-minute ride I was unceremoniously dumped off at a bus stop on what I thought to be the outskirts of town. (We were actually farther into town than I needed to be.) I had offered to pay him to drive me further to another larger city on down the road, but nothing doing. I gave him about a buck anyway, but if I had known what a useless place he had left me in I would have kept that too. The nearby train station I went to looked the part of a train station...complete with tracks populated by antique-looking coaches, and so forth. However, the station had broken windows and looked completely abandoned. Only one person was working one counter, and she quickly made the point that I needed the other station. Not sure what the deal was with that place.

It ended up taking me about an hour to get to the main train station in Suceava, by means of two local buses I boarded without paying, not yet having a dime of Romania lei. (I will mention that getting directions and catching two local buses would have been very difficult for me to accomplish in Ukraine, but in Romania I can communicate enough by speaking a Spanish-Portuguese-Italian jargon that what I am asking for is comprehensible...and I understand just enough that receiving simple directions even from an older person with no English is doable. Speaking that same Romance-language garble with a young person usually results in a patient expression and a subsequent reply in fairly good English.) I offered the fare takers on the buses Ukrainian hyrvna, US dollars, and Euros, but they were having none of it. They didn't ask me to get off though. By this time it was around 1300 and upon arrival at the station, I quickly saw a train was leaving for Cluj-Napoca, which I figured would be a nice ride through the Carpathians and leave me in a good place from which to explore Transylvania. I had no firm plan coming in to the day on where I wanted to end the day...I just wanted to see how far into Transylvania I could get.

The ride to Cluj ended up costing about $30 for a seat in "first class" which was more than I expected to pay. Turned out to be a beautiful 7-hour ride though. The northern branch of the Carpathians has some mountains that really go up quite high and mostly covered with tall pines. The whole area reminded me of a drive through British Columbia my dad and I did in 2007, only not quite that spectacular. Impressive it was though, and BC doesn't have the quaint looking medieval-type architecture (Yes, despite all I have seen, this trip particularly, that's as good a description I can come up with.) in the foreground that is so prominent here.

During the first couple of hours of the train ride, while I was still sharing my cabin with a few people, I was repeatedly warned to keep an eye on my things on the trains. These warnings were made to me by an old man using gestures and Romanian, an old woman using gestures and facial expressions, and a young lady speaking fairly good English. I got the point and after they had left I went so far as to remove my flash light from my bag...to turn on and shine out the compartment when the train went through the many tunnels. I will mention the train had no lights and the interior was completely dark every time the train went into a tunnel...good time to be robbed according to my cabin mates. The train had a fair number of gypsies on board, attempting to sell things and asking for money. All the warnings made me unable to relax...and so I kept vigilant and avoided having anything stolen. I've been pretty alert throughout the trip as I have had multiple things stolen from me in my life in many different circumstances and would like to avoid another such event. Here in Romania I will turn the vigilance up a notch, however, as this country is well renown for thieves - everything from cyber thieves to gypsy pickpockets. I try not to let the paranoia detract from the enjoyment of the trip, though I do find myself patting myself down for my belongings pretty frequently and after every time anyone physically touches me under any circumstances.

The train finally rolled into Cluj around 8pm; I found a hotel near the station and crashed for some much needed rest.

L'viv

Unfortunately, I was only able to visit one place in Ukraine, the great city of L'viv, but at least I made it to that one place. Traveling in Ukraine has its difficulties: you can't read the Cyrillic alphabet and Ukraine had the lowest level of English language penetration of any place I visited on my trip. However, if you can overcome the communication difficulties, the rewards are many: it's extremely cheap, the sights and people are beautiful, and the nightlife (at least according to what I heard) is incredible. And really, the communication problems just add to the adventure.

At any rate, L'viv is cheap and has some unique foods. I paid about $2 for a potato pizza at a restaurant, which was large and filled me up. Potato pizza, as you can imagine, replace the bread part of a pizza with potato. It's not bad. I also ate snack bars made of sunflower seeds and some type of oil (sunflower oil?) holding them together. Not the tastiest snack, but again, it gets the job done.

As for the city, never have I seen so many statues...in plazas, and parks, on the side of buildings, at the top of buildings, underneath balconies, everywhere. L'viv is a very beautiful town, in a kind of rundown sort of way way. Not too rundown, but the city could use a bit of a facelift, or maybe remove that grungy outer layer. Nah, never mind. It's perfect the way it is.

Krakow to L'viv

My day trip to L'viv got an earlier start than I had planned, as a number of drunks began making a ruckus on the balcony outside my window right at 7am. I had slept fitfully all night, as my roommates consisted of two Brazilians and two Australians...two nationalities not known for going to be early while on vacation. Those guys were in and out of the room all night. Once the noise began at 7, I figured I may as well go on and get up and catch the 8:30 train, rather than the 9:30 train I had planned on. I accompanied a 30-year old black American girl (the first American I have met the entire trip) from the hostel to the train station and right up to her train, for which I was profusely thanked. (I think she was feeling a little lonely...as I was I.) That 20-minute walk together was one of those short encounters in life that leave you glad you had it, but also a little melancholy briefly afterwards...such a nice, agreeable person will only occupy that oh-so-brief period in all the moments of your life. Traveling alone is certainly a great way to meet those "single-serving friends", to borrow an expression from "Fight Club". I have many such memories.

At any rate, I entered the train late, having been a little unsure which car I was supposed to be in and wanting make sure I got on the right train. I managed to find a seat with a family of three and middle-aged guy with a gimp arm (which I did not notice until 2 hours together in the compartment) who smelled of beer early in the day. Communication with all of them was a non-starter as none spoke much of any English and I did not manage to gain any words of Polish during my three-day stay in the country. The talked quite a bit amongst themselves, however, until the beer drinker got off. Later, once we were nearing the Poland-Ukraine border, I got out the Iphone and used google translate to write a question to the father, asking him if he would help me locate a minibus from the train's last stop at Przemysl (pronounced Pah sháh mish) to the border at Medyka. He smiled, showed it to his wife, nodded and smiled. We then began a bit of communication, from which I learned they were coming back home from the beach, which perplexed me at first, not being able to imagine what beach they were coming from. Turns out they had been at a beach on the Baltic Sea in the NW corner of Poland and were completing a 16-hour train journey from one corner of Poland to another.

As the train pulled into the station at the border town of Medyka, they pointed out the minibus I would need to me, and I indicated that would be all the help I would need. I exited the bus, walked over to the minibus, paid the 2 zlotys (under a dollar) for the trip, and we were soon off to the border...even got to listen to "Karma Chameleon" on the radio as we made our way to the border. (The penetration of American culture into the far reaches of the globe never ceases to amaze me.) At any rate, crossing the Polish side of the border was simple enough, but the Ukraine side proved to be a little more interesting, as the border agent spent a significant amount of time, probably five minutes or more, examining my passport. She mostly focused on the extra pages I had added to the passport a few years back when the other visa pages were full, but she also brought out a magnifying glass to study the first pages. I will admit my passport is a little ragged and I have not taken good care of it. During the trek to Macchu Picchu it got soaked...I remember the next time I went across customs with it, in Colombia, the border guard asked me if I had been in "un naufrago", which at the time I did not understand...I will now never forget that word...it means "shipwreck".

At any rate, the guards did not seem that serious during this process and I was never really concerned that they would deny me entry. (I will mention that Americans do not need a visa for Ukraine at this time...thus, why I was there.) However, the examination of the passport did go on for what seemed like a long time...long enough that I broke out the phone again to explain about the extra pages in the passport, as I held up the translation to the clear plastic divider and asked them to read it. They seemed to understand and eventually let me go. Ukrainian border control would give me a little trouble on the way out too a few days later.

Crossing the border I was offered ridiculous prices for cab rides into L'viv. I was not real sure where the bus into town was, but luckily I found someone to help me out. Finding the bus station, I paid the small fare and off we went across the Ukrainian countryside in a rickety Soviet-era bus. I suppose my image of Ukraine coming into the trip was of a country a little more wealthy than how it turned out to be. The countryside was pretty enough, but many other things were rundown and shabbily maintained, from the dwellings to the roads and vehicles and even to the scraggly dogs. I would later learn that yes, the people are in general happier now than they were in Soviet times, but times are not real great either and most people seem to jump at the opportunity to leave.

The Ukrainians I met that spoke English were certainly nice enough and I was in no way mistreated in Ukraine. They did seem a kind of uncouth people though. Men (not bums but regular guys) picking their noses and scratching themselves in public, quite a lot of litter in the streets - I even saw a dog defecating in the middle of a road in the countryside...as if it didn't know better or care to do that sort of thing somewhere a little more private. LOL. And while I am on the subject of the Ukrainian people I have to throw in a few words about the women. What I cannot understand or reconcile is the young, tall, striking females that so heavily populate the streets of L'viv with the old, short, hunchbacked, babushkas (Russian for grandmother) wearing their hair bandannas and thick woolen clothing. I am not sure how that metamorphasis occurs. Or maybe these were just peasant women. At any rate, age is a terrible thing I think. I will choose to stay young.

I got to the train station where the bus ride ended, broke out the Iphone and used the GPS to navigate my way into town. Count on the Soviets to build the damn train station a brisk 30-minute walk from the city center. I checked into a great little hostel, the Old City Hostel, where I would spend the next day and a half.