Bottoms up

Train travel in Ukraine is a little maddening. At the train station there is only one line for advance tickets, even if that means that 30 people are waiting in that one line and no one is waiting in the other lines. And each line is closed for ten minutes of each hour -- a different ten-minute chunk for each line -- so there's this stupid musical line dance that happens every time a line is about to close. And, even if you pay the extra money to go first class, you still might end up sharing a sleeper car with a fat man who strips down to his small underwear to sleep, and snores, and doesn't like black or Turkish people. (He was nice to me at least -- showed me photos of his kid and insisted on sharing his dinner with me -- my being the right color and all.) But, if not for my dinner with Andrey the racist, I would not have made it to Lviv (one slow overnight train is apparently the only possible way to get between Ukraine's second and third largest cities--there aren't even any flights, even though both cities have airports), and that would have been a shame.

I love Lviv. It is so beautiful and so lovely and so charming that I sort of want to give it a big hug. There are all these beautiful churches and cute little squares and big plazas with fountains and tiny cafes, and there are good restaurants and hardly any tourists. It has a big old university and a beautiful opera house. It's basically the perfect European city. Which is kind of weird if you're like me and have only ever really thought about Ukraine as it relates to Russia. Turns out it's more complicated. What is now western Ukraine spent most of its modern pre-World War II life as part of either Austria or Poland, and it really shows. Odessa felt entirely Russian to me; aside from the language and absurdity at the train station, Lviv doesn't feel Russian at all. (Even the language isn't actually Russian -- people mostly speak Ukrainian here -- but to my gringo ears they sound the same.)

Anyway, I usually roll my eyes whenever a city is referred to as 'the next Prague' but seriously, people, come here before everyone else does. Just try not to come via the overnight train from Odessa.