Travels and Misadventures Abroad: Toilets and Night Trains

This past weekend, Kate and I took a trip to L'viv, located in western Ukraine, and definitely had a few interesting experiences. First, we didn't know we definitely had the tickets until 6 or 7 hours before we left. 3rd class there, 2nd class back. Since neither of us have traveled on the trains in Ukraine before, we arrived at the train station with plenty of time to spare... which was completely unnecessary. Once we figured out what track our train was on, we walked right up and onto the train... no security or ID check as we thought may be needed. Getting on a train early that you will be riding for 10 hours is unnecessary, and even more so when you're in 3rd class. 3rd class consist of areas of 4 beds/padded benches (bunked) with a little table in between, the main aisle, and then 2 bunked beds running parallel to the aisle. In each carriage there are about 10 of these areas. There are no doors to separate any of the spaces. This is where Kate and I spent our Friday night... in one of the sets of 2 beds, parallel to the aisle, at the end of the carriage, by the bathrooms. This being July, it has been in the 80s, and you could definitely feel it with 50+ people crammed into one of those cars and producing body heat, and people closing windows at night because of noise or something. Needless to say, very little sleep was to be had that night and I was definitely awake by 5am.

The train arrived in L'viv around 7:30am, and I decided I'd rather wait to change in the station bathroom than use the dirty one on the train. After disembarking from the train, we wandered around until we found the ladies room in the station (given away by the long line!). While waiting we see a sign that it is about $0.20 to use the bathroom, which I hate having to pay to use a restroom, but it is totally worth the few cents to use a semi-clean bathroom. Once I round the corner and actually get into the bathroom I am a little surprised by what I find. There are 4 stalls with doors that you step up into... and then there are SQUAT toilets!!! But they were nice, clean, flushing squat toilets. L'viv is a very touristy town and this made me even more surprised by the presence of squat toilets. I think in the end the biggest thing for me was that it seemed counter-intuitive to pay to use a squat toilet. (I think I just wanted to see how many times I could get the world squat into those sentences!!)

Through the sleep deprivation and after the shock if the squat toilets, Kate and I made our way into town and went to our hostel to leave our stuff there. The hostel was in an awesome location in the older part of town, but had it's pluses and minuses.

Plus- staff was super nice and helpful and cute (at least Igor #1); location; they gave me coffee when we arrived; clean; seemed safe

Minus- no hot water pressure; no lockers in the rooms; didn't take credit card; on the top floor of the building it was in... and there were no lights in the stairwell at night.

After hitting up the hostel, we headed out into the town and explored. In the early afternoon we meet up with an UM student, Jamie, who is doing an Ukrainian language program in L'viv. She showed us a few things we'd probably have missed and then we set off to climb castle hill. There is no longer a castle on the hill because it burned down or something, but there are good views of the city and it was a walk through woods, so a mini-break from the city.

After a long day of exploring we stopped by Kriyivka, a pub/restaurant. Kriyivka means bunker in Ukrainian, and this place definitely had that feeling. The entrance to the bar isn't labeled anywhere on the building, it is just this shady archway of the main town square. Apparently the website doesn't even list an address, but rather "somewhere in market square." Once you find the entrance, you must knock on the door and wait your interrogation. When the doorman comes out, he ask if you know the password, which is "slava Ukrainie" or "glory to Ukraine." Oh, by the way, the whole point of these exercises is to prove you're not Russian. Once we passed this phase we were asked our nationality. As soon as Jamie said American.... we were golden! How could Americans be Russian spies (obviously they weren't following the recent news)? Before completely being allowed in, you're required to take a small shot of honey vodka, which is rather yummy, I must say. Although all an act, it was rather entertaining. We kicked back here for a while and watch the first half of the soccer game and tried some honey, mint, and caraway vodka (separate, not mixed together).

Jamie then took off to get back to her host families house and Kate and I back to the hostel, hoping to find people around we could hang out with and/or to watch the 2nd half of the soccer match. Unfortunately, there were only 4 other people staying there that night and they were all in bed (apparently early mornings ahead) and there was no TV in the hostel. After consulting Igor, we got ready and headed out for a night on the town. Although Igor strongly suggested Picasso (he was totally biased), we thought Metro may be more up our alley because it had a couple different areas for dancing. Once we arrived, we found the majority of the crowd to be teens... like young enough that my parents would never have let me go out that late. We were slightly disappointed, but had paid cover so not willing to leave that quickly. After a little bit of dancing we went in search of the bathroom... which lead us through this extensive maze we had missed before. During this exploration we found 2 other dance floors (one which played some awesome hip-hop and R&B) and the bathrooms, or should I say room. We walked passed it at first because it looked like the men's room without a door (aka just urinals), but a ladies room was no where to be seen. To further confuse the matter this was this funny sign on the door of a guy peeping over a wall at a girl with a X through it (indicating... DON'T do this)... which made no sense, until we figured out that it was a CO-ED public restroom. If you were to walk through the urinal room, you'd find the area with stalls for women. It was kind of odd to come out of the stall and find a man fixing his hair, but whatever. Once that business was taken care of we hit the dance floor again for a while then headed back to the hostel around 2am. I haven't had that long of a day in a while!

Sunday we slept in (well I did the best I could) and then set off for a more relaxing day, although we still ended up walking a good deal. We went through a cemetery, where some famous Ukrainians are buried and that is kind of old, had a relaxing lunch, went to the brewery museum (apparently not a tour, but still had free samples... totally worth the ticket price alone), and just sat in a park and read. We caught the 1st half of the soccer game before having to board our train, so I didn't know until this morning who won. Oh well, adventures in Ukraine beat out soccer!

On our way back to Kyiv we were in a 2nd class compartment, which was like heaven compared to 3rd class. There are 4 people to a compartment, with longer beds, higher ceilings, a door that closes, and AC!!!

I've included some pictures below, but only wish I would have taken pictures to do the toilets and night trains justice!