Kiev to Lviv

After visiting the beautiful Crimea, I took the night train back to Kiev, where I spent a few more days writing and hanging out with very kind Ukraineans. My plan was to go hitchhiking to the Netherlands to celebrate Christmas with my family. Since I had good experiences fetching a ride up north, I thought it would be easy to get back west. But it was cold and rainy, and Bratislava, Vienna, and the other potential cities on my way wouldn't be so attractive this time of the year, and neither would the Carpatian and Tatra mountains. So I checked the internet and found a cheap flight from Katowice to Eindhoven (40 km from my family), with Wizz air, Hungary's cheap airline, and decided to go.

I had to take an overnight train to Lviv first, which left at 23:58 and arrived there at 10:30 in the morning. It cost me about 8 €. That night was the first time that I met no other people on the train, and just took the provided linen out of the plastic and laid my head down on the upper bunk bed, as always. Couldn't sleep though, and was quite tired when I arrived in Lviv.

Lviv (Lvov in Russian) is an interesting city. It used to be Polish, but

I walked around; the center was near the classicist train station, and I had the impression that a Russian town was blended with and a Polish settlement. Some houses reminded me of Krakow and Gdansk, the parks and boulevards (the main Prospekt) were just like their counterparts in Russia's metropoles. I didn't have much time though, to explore this interesting city, because I had to take the Mashrutka to the avtoboksal (autobus station). Fellow travelers: it takes about 40 minutes and you might have to wait for a less crowded bus, so take your time. The bus to Katowice was late, and I had a conversation about the family of an older Ukrainean couple, that could have been taken right from my Russian coursebook. They went to visit their daughter who was a medic in Edinburgh. Yes we share the same world.