Will, Ben and Nevil

After our previous border crossing attempts, most of which since leaving western Europe have resulted in us parting with money or bottles of wine, we were a little apprehensive approaching the Ukrainian border. As with all the other border-crossing shenanigans we’ve had all would have gone smoothly if I (Ben) had sorted out international insurance properly. But since leaving Slovenia we’ve been effectively uninsured and so border officials have been a little wary of letting us enter the country. However, we tried our usual tactic of playing dumb and with a little bit of creative story-telling they eventually let us in.

After some jokes trying to work out what all the signs in cyrillic were pointing to (L’viv for example is spelt: лвов) we rolled off the road and parked up in a field for the night. Next day we made it to L’viv, the main city in western Ukraine. Tourism isn’t very big here and as a result there were no backpacking hostels to stay in with the usual collection of British, Aussies and Canadians to share travel tips and beers with. So instead we found a soviet-era hotel to stay at for 5 quid a night.

Although L’viv was visually very nice, there wasn’t much to do other than see yet more churches.

Because I’m lazy and can’t be bothered to write in sentences (just been on a long train journey into Belarus and am v tired) some observations about Ukraine…

-Almost all Ukrainians girls here massively overdo it with the makeup and the vast majority also wear uncomfortable-looking (presumably “fashionable”?) knee-length boots and black. Seems to work for the Ukrainian guys!
-The streets are hugely busy at all times of day and queues for the buses and trams are massive.
-A tram ride costs 5pence
-A (good) beer costs maximum 50pence
-Petrol/diesel is 40p/litre
-A meal costs a quid

Am sure I could think of more interesting things to say another time, but this will have to do for now!