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!
Filed under: van
Word has it that both Northern and Southern mum’s are concerned about our diet so I’ve written an eating schedule to reassure all those who might be worried, and enlighten those who are interested as to how many interesting ingredients you can add to curry.
Breakfast – usually starts with someone getting an arm out of their sleeping bag and putting the kettle on. After that the question is coffee or tea? This should be a given however Ben bought a coffee grinder in Mostar (Bosnia) and Will is struggling to find decent milk. After this we discuss what type of tea to have, then when everyone has woken up we have a fairly fast and nutritious meal of either muesli and yogurt and honey, or bread and jam and honey. When its cold and we can be arsed we have porridge. There is a compulsory Serbian apple before lunch is allowed.
Lunch – often bread, cheese and an apple followed by bread, jam and an apple. In the more eastern part of our trip we are becoming quite partial to stopping at truck stops where there is cheap and good grub if you can decipher the menu. Its usually meat.
Dinner – to quote Nick, our most recent guest, “this is the healthiest I’ve ever eaten.” Some regular favourites are:
- Risotto – established after Balthazar and Josie showed us the way in Switzerland, we stocked up with 5kg of aborio rice in Italy. You can add anything to risotto, the best yet was Cauliflower and Parsley with parmesan.
- Curry – mummysouth curry powder + Harissa from Bosnia + one or more of the following: Potato, marrow liberated from wildish romanian fields, any tinned ready meal from Carrefour, any root vegetable, tinned beans or lentils, cream, any type of sausage, peanuts, raisins etc.
- Pasta – the emergency is with pesto but this is less popular now we can’t find good cheese. Mostly tomato based sauces with seasonable vegetables, you can get 2kg of red peppers for 70p in serbia, or an aubergine for 10p in Romania. The flavouring varies from mixed herbs to balsamic and chilli.
- Casserole – well we’ve only done this once, in Croatia, but it was bloody good and lasted two meals! Still not quite sure what the meat was as we couldn’t read the lable, it was quite tender and had little fat and definitely wasn’t pork.
- Couscous – see pasta and add chilli or Harissa.
- Eating out – this is becoming better and cheaper and better the further we go! The menu is always fun so we usually request local recommendations. Buffets or where you can see what you are choosing are safer but less exciting.
Supper – the day is finished off with tea or wine or beer and occasionally some chocolate then we forget to fill the kettle and fall asleep. How civilised!
We left Brasov looking for adventure - armed with a detailed walking map of the Rodneii Mountain range in the Carpathians, North Romania, and our errant Canadian, Nick. Despite the area being a national park with lots of walking and climbing on offer the little town of Borsa that we chose to stay in appeared not to have noticed. It has high fashion shops and lots of ”super” markets but not a weather forecast in sight! This was unfortunate as we were eager to find out when the clouds would bugger off to allow us to do a bit of walking.
The great BBC was the best we got, via internet in a shed full of small boys blowing each other to pieces on screen. It looked promising so we chose to stick it out for a couple of days and tested out my (Will’s) new sleeping bag by parking in the cloud on a pass at 1400m. The windows froze on the inside and I couldn’t spread my honey in the morning, but I slept so it must work! We still couldn’t see the mountain tops, or anything else for that matter, but tried out our boots and stamina by exploring the grazing and shepards huts and then trying to find somewhere to watch a rather important rugby game. After Romania had beaten Holland in a Euro 2008 qualifier and we’d assured the patron we weren’t dutch we were allowed to watch Jonny and co punish the French over some 50p a pint beer and plum brandy.
Unfortunately for my throbbing head the BBC came good the following morning and we began our days expedition/serious hangover cure by walking UP and breaking the ice with some locals at a soon to be frozen waterfall; a school group and a teacher with Vuica (the local 70% proof medicine) . Still aching we climbed beyond the ski lift and everyone else and made the main ridge which was crisp with ice and absolutely stunning. Head recovered we had an awesome days walking in an empty landscape not disimilar from Ben’s home county of Cumbria. We’ll have to come back and do the whole lot at some point in the future, apparently it takes 5 days and is all around 2000m high!
We said a sad, or as sad as is possible at 5 in the morning, goodbye to Emily at the airport in Bucharest and had a good disagreement about where to head next. In the end the lure of the Black sea was just too much and I (Will in this case) managed to give a good case for the 300mile detour.
In hindsight my argument was a load of rubbish. The brand new, empty, straight and very flat dual carriageway from the capital to the coast was fun for about 10minutes – as were the incomplete “service stations” that consisted of a carpark and a loo block in the middle of nowhere! Luckily we had filled up with fuel before and arrived in the top Romanian seaside resort of Constanta in time for lunch. There is a huge port and an extensive promenade which I think is a little past its hay day. More Morecombe than Monte Carlo. We saw some sites but decided that the tourist brochures might have been onto something when they recommended Transylvania… A night on the banks of the Danube was followed up by one of the best camping spots we’ve found so far in the foothills of the Carpathians. Hidden away on top of a hill in the sunshine with a good spot for a fire, we cleared the extensive evidence of other visitors and burnt it. This was a stroke of luck as it turns out the black acrid smoke of burning plastic deters bears, wolves and vampires – we awoke in the morning with all of our limbs and no fanged teeth.
According to the Lonely planet Bran castle is the home of Dracula, however he seems to have been usurped by “Queen Maria” whose photos are everywhere. I really liked the small interesting rooms and hidden passageways and decided to put an offer in. The master bedroom had especially extensive views down the valley, perfect for spotting approaching guests! The mystery of the missing Dracula was solved by a particularly bubbly hostel worker when we checked in to Rolling Stone in Brasov. Apparently there are two Dracula’s castles and a very savvy tourism bureau!
Brasov has been a relaxed stop. Nevil had gearbox trouble but he mended himself on the way to the flash Mercedes dealership. The service man had great fun driving the right-hand drive banger (no offence Nevil) and weaved alarmingly in and out of the very shiny cars in his carpark! 700Euros for a clutch plate is a little out of our budget so Mercedes Van Nevil (he’s now a dutchvan) is going to hang on for a bit. Roshan is leaving tomorrow night and we’re going to do some hiking with the bears and a Canadian from the hostel (we wouldn’t want to have another night with just the two of us, would we?!)
It’s been a little while since we posted anything particularly interesting here but to be honest we’ve just been cruising about in search of something suitably spectacular to write about. If you’ve seen the more recent photos you’ve seen a little of the beautiful and occasionally very industrial countryside we travelled through. We’ve got used to overtaking horse and traps and 12-year old scooter-riding boys along the roads now and it now seems normal to see packs of dogs roaming every part of the countryside.
At the border into Romania we impressed a border guard so much with our newly-acquired Romanian skillz (“boo-nuh-zee-wah” is something that approximates “hello”) that she asked if, when we’re back in the UK, we could send her a copy of our Lonely Planet eastern european phrasebook as apparently they have nothing like it here.
Entering bucharest was fun. Trying to locate a hostel we liked the sound of proved difficult and once again we recruited the skills of a Romanian student studying (coincidentally) computer science to help us find the place. In between having geeky computer conversations with Roshan and me (Ben) he proved to be totally useless and we spent a couple of hours driving in circles around the suburbs of the city.
Bucharest was okay, but nothing particularly special to look at. The four of us had a big-ish night out at a club and during the day wandered about. Saw the balcony/square where the dictator Ceausescu made his speeches until he was executed in 1989 and the massive (Communist) Parliament building he built for a ridiculously huge $6billion in the 80s. It’s the 2nd biggest building in the world by floor space after the US Pentagon building.
The city contrasts quite a bit with the rest of the country. As with most cities it’s a lot more modern than the countryside, more westernised. Apparently the average wage in Romania is something like 120quid a month (1,440 a year), not much at all. By the price of drinks on our night out (same as UK) there is a pretty massive variation in incomes.
