The Ukraine
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I left from the outskirts of Koscice in the pissing rain, almost as if it was turned on to coincide with the beginning of the hard stuff. After about 90 minutes I arrived at the border of the Ukraine.... never having left Europe before over land I hadn't a clue what to expect.
I met some border guards who were very friendly and helpful, I secretly hoped that this might be the Ukraine side, obviously it went really quickly, they told me it might not go so well on the Ukraine side, Doh....was just leaving Slovakia.
I drove up to the Ukraine side and was stopped by two soldiers who started making a big deal that I didn't stop when they asked me too (my arse), I could smell the shakedown.
After keeping me for about ten minutes and bullshitting on about the fact that I didn't stop and was also missing a sticker (wanted to say...."do you think I'm buttoned up the back") I handed over the ten euro bribe and was on my way to another pack of freshly castrated crocodiles in customs and the "stampy stampy" pasport bit.
They told me I didn't have a green card and that I needed to go back. I had done the research and had no idea what they were on about, but one of the other lads there from god knows where had one....so I said ok ...f
uck it. Just when I was about to head off for Poland which would mean entering russia via lithuania as you can't get through Belarus (about a 1000 mile detour) one of the girls who worked there called me back and processed me. I asked them was I ok to go, and they gruffly waved me on.....like most border officials these f
uckers moonlight as phlegm.
The only positive to take from it was that two of the border officials were insanely hot blonds (a taste of what was to come?) and I was officially in the Ukraine. Just a comment about the whole bribe thing, at this stage I'm used to it..but it confirms that if you get into trouble in these countries its the guy with biggest wallet who gets off every time...simple as that.
Before I get into describing the Ukraine it might help to describe what I was expecting. Well heres what I knew going in.....
It was the most wealthy region of the Soviet union and the richest in oil etc. So much so that modern historians reckon that had Hitlers army headed south to Ukraine and taken it instead of heading north to Stalin grad he would have won the war in Russia. It separated from the Soviet Union a number of years ago so I was expecting something about 33% poorer looking than Slovakia if you know what I mean... but not a bad spot.
Well once I crossed the border... you question that jumps into your head is "Who flicked the switch!".
The farms are worked with horses and carts and people till the soil with hoes and shovels...whole fields! Anyone whose ever used a hoe before..... and I used to be a pretty keen gardener will tell you its a bit of graft...now imagine doing it for an acre! The road which I took was in pretty bad condition and the towns which I passed through were in really bad shape. This area actually used to be part of Poland before world war 2, looking at how it looks now I doubt they'll be looking for it back anytime soon.
I made my way to the town of Lviv, its in the North west part of the Ukraine. The roads along the way were somewhere between terrible and ok. At one point I turned back twenty miles because the roads were so bad I thought I must have taken a wrong turn, no way this is the road to such a major city.
As the day wore on a couple of trends started to emerge.
The first, this part of the country at least, is as poor as they come.
Second the churches and graveyards in the place are really incredible, no matter how small the town they all seem to have fabulous churches with shiny gold and silver roofs, the contrast between them and the surrounding poverty couldn't be starker.
Third the people seem very gruff.... In the first day I interacted with say ten people, and of those 3 of them were polite the others were like trying to take a bone off a pit bull. Now its not like i'm debating politics with these folks. The extent of my interactions are ... can I have a room and heres some dosh for your trouble, can i have some petrol and heres more dosh and can i have some food and more dosh; thats pretty much it.
I finally made it Lviv and booked into a hotel, the really hot blond trend continued and the folks there were really nice, a welcome change from the folks I'm met along the road and at the border.
I went out and about in Lviv to see what I could see but the weather was crap so I gave up pretty quickly.
The language/place names/ menus / directions using Russian is proving pretty challenging. I'm double checking the map every twenty minutes to make sure that I'm going the right way...you can see some examples above......the blue signs are one in English, the other in Ukrainian.
The first day was tough, and it was the culture shock of the century, but I live to fight another day. The hardest thing to get the hang of is the people, bar the girls in hotel and two cool guys I met while I was parking up the bike, the rest of em are a bunch of f
uckers.
Tomorrow I've a massive run to Kiev, we'll see how we go
over and over
Oisinov
) but I'm going to get accross there myself
