The roads have suddenly got a lot better and the scale on our map has increased; this means we suddenly seem to be travelling much faster! Krakow was amazing despite the drab background. We walked pretty much the entire city in search of a launderette before spotting one advertised: “The only Launderette in Krakow” it said. We reckon its the only one East of Krakow too as our washing was beginning to walk by itself! Make sure you visit this launderette if you go to Krakow with dirty washing (not that you’ll have a lot of choice), it serves coffee and tea and there is free internet and comfy sofas in a bright and inviting environment!
So, after our 2 weeks of travelling by train it was great to be back in the van and have some freedom back. As L’viv is fairly close to the border with Poland (our next destination) we envisaged a couple of hours driving then maybe an hour or so going through the usual formalities to leave Ukraine and enter Poland. We had no such luck.
After enjoying our 2 hours of freedom driving west at 1pm we hit a queue full of Polish and Ukrainian vehicles, which we guessed to be the border crossing. We were instantly offered the chance (using a combination of Ukrainian, charades and pictionary) to queue-jump: only 30 dollars/euros/hryvnia (we had several offers from several different dodgy-looking guys). Being cheap and also from Britain – where queue-jumping is considered a social evil – we naturally refused their persistent offers. We were told therefore we’d have to queue for maybe 10 hours (until 11pm) to get to the border – we assumed they were probably exaggerating but still, this we could deal with.
After witnessing a frustrating number of other people paying to push in further up the queue and having lunch and dinner in the van it was dark and we started taking turns in getting some sleep on the bed in the back of the van. After 3 hour shifts through the night we finally made it to the Ukrainian exit border at 6am after a wait of 17 hours. (The queue from when we joined it to the front was only about 140 cars and maybe 500m long, so our average speed was an impressive 29 metres an hour!) Here we had the van thoroughly searched for the first time on the trip and then queued a further 7 hours waiting to get to the Polish frontier 200 metres away.
The shining, golden gates of the EU were so close! When we got to the Polish border we joined the queue for EU citizens (which of course the cheating, queue-jumping Ukrainians couldn’t get into. ha) and were through in minutes after a quick check and showing some photos of our trip to the Polish customs guy! I love the EU.
Total time to cross the border: 26 hours. Total distance covered: 1,500 metres.
The cost of Moscow and trains and actually PAYING for accommodation eventually got to my (Will’s, obviously) student budgeting psyche, it is definitely time to head back Nevilwards.
On the way back to the car park in L’viv we made a weekend stop in Kiev to complement our tour of former Soviet capitals. Making more use of couch surfing we stayed with a guy called Alexey who lives in a wicked central flat with his girlfriend and a small kitten (called tit). Alexey was a great host and after meeting us from the station and feeding us showed us the sites of Kiev. The city is a lot less rectangular than Minsk and Moscow and the architects steered clear of the “bigger is better” mentality, there are also hills and we found the top of one with a great park and views over the river and Dinamo Kiev’s stadium. As with the rest of Eastern Europe Saturday seems to be getting married day. We shared our park with about seven or eight individual happy couples, all followed by an entourage of photographers, film crews, friends, relatives, small dogs and mother inlaws. It was great fun, Ben managed to get three brides in one photo.
In the evening we found our favourite Ukrainian cafeteria chain, “Pazata Khata”, before Alexey took us down several dark alleys; all of which seemed to have trendy hidden bars at the end! Sunday was once more grey, so we went to the beach on the river and had a beer. Some guy was swimming! or maybe he was washing… The grey skies have recently prompted Ben to say, and I quote, “I’m definitely not going to complain about the weather as much when I get back home… well not in Autumn or Spring anyway.” You heard it here first.
We left Kiev on the night train for L’viv with a good overall impression. The city had a weekend quiet about it, but there were lots of people in the bars and cafes despite the seemingly empty streets. There are some tastefully grand Orthodox churches and the President lets you walk right outside his house! For a change everyone was friendly and patient at our inventive communication skills; rarely using language, masters of pictionary.
Although I’d (Ben) heard about Couchsurfing before neither of us had ever used it. Jose (an Aussie we picked up and stayed with us for a while in the van in Bosnia) was using it while trying to travel as cheaply as possible back to Australia from the UK, so we thought we’d look into it. We eventually got around to using it in Moscow and, as mentioned in our last post, after less than 5 minutes of talking to her at a couchsurfing party were invited by Sasha to stay with her! For a first experience it couldn’t have been better. Although she only lives in a very small apartment with one small room, a kitchen and a bathroom she still finds space on her floor to people from couchsurfing.
Housing (and living in general) in Moscow is possibly even more expensive than in London. Fortunately the vast majority of people own their apartments as a result of the fact that in Soviet-times housing was provided for everyone by the state, but food prices can get ridiculous at times. In one supermarket full of standard western food I found a small packet of ‘Kellogg’s Special K’ for EIGHT POUNDS!! I guess the large number of shiny expensive black cars on the roads is some indication that maybe this isn’t so expensive to quite a few people who live in Moscow.
Moscow is a crazy place, even more so for us having driven through eastern Europe where everything is cheap and tourism is welcomed. At times it was almost as if foreigners aren’t wanted there. Official prices for all sorts of things can be ten times more for a foreigner (or non-Russian speaker) than for others. To get into the Kremlin it was 2 pounds for Russians or 13 pounds for “foreigners”. This is standard across most museums and anything else you have to spend money on in Moscow. Fair enough if they need the money, but Moscow did not seem a particularly poor place.
Other things that we found only in Moscow
- every government official (there are a lot of them) appear to have one of those expensive-always-black cars but they get to have a blue light on their roof which seemingly gives them the right to drive anywhere at any speed irrespective of other cars or pedestrians!
- novel tactics for extracting money from tourists such as old women asking for you to have your photo taken with her and her monkey who’s dressed/buried in a bright pink coat
- the army/militia are everywhere
- a refusal by some to even acknowledge you if you don’t speak Russian (even the French don’t go this far!)…
During our last couple of days we spent in the most amazing museum – the Polytechnical museum: scale models of everything from Soviet nuclear power stations to Soviet spacecraft to Soviet coal mines! Surely everyones favourite museum. We were also treated to a comprehensive four-hour walking tour of Moscow by Sasha’s friend Olga including a visit to the ’skylounge’ restaurant/bar for a drink and the impressive view it has of the city from the 13th floor. The view was nice (despite the low cloud!) but an espresso cost 4 pounds! Obviously we didn’t stay there long.
Moscow was great, the couchsurfing made it much more interesting for us as we met some ‘real’ people. Despite the fact that a visa costs 100 pounds I’ll definitely make it back one day. Next time though I’ll have to learn some Russian!
Ben’s photos from last three weeks up until leaving Moscow…
http://bristol.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2134618&l=e89d5&id=193107027
