Ukraine

October 2013: Trevor is Ukrainian, and often talked about wanting to see where his family lived before they moved to Canada. So we joined a couple of friends and headed to Ukraine for a week. We rented a car and saw both Kiev and Lviv, which are two drastically different cities. By renting a car we were able to see lots of the countryside, which is pretty incredible.

highlights

. Lviv . Food . Vodka . Chernobyl . Trev's Heritage Tour

lowlights

. Highways . Scams . Chernobyl .

kiev

We visited Ukraine right before the riots started, so tensions were rising, there was quite a big police presence, and we were staying right in the area of where Independence Square is. We stayed in an awesome apartment. It was huge, and in a great area. Parking was a little tight, but we had a small car so we managed alright. We didn't stay in Kiev too long, just a night at the beginning and then a couple of days at the end of our trip. So we stayed in the area and just wandered the streets. The city is lit up with lots going on at night. It was fun to just drink and wander around. We found a couple of decent restaurants, as well as an indoor market with a good variety of cheese and meat. While waiting for Trevor one day, a man with very broken English started talking to me about life under the Soviets back in the day, and he started drawing on the cement with a piece of chalk. He was very interesting, although I didn't understand most of what he was talking about. That man is pretty much the perfect description of all the people in Kiev: hard. Just stern looks on their faces, like they've been through some shit, and not super friendly. But we felt safe and it was definitely an experience we'll never forget. Just watch out for corrupt cops...our friends had a little run-in with them while driving.

lviv

While Kiev had a very "Soviet" feel to it, Lviv is the European side of Ukraine, which makes sense as it's fairly close to Poland. On the way from Kiev to Lviv, we stopped in a few places with cool churches and ruins, and saw quite a few horse carriages and chickens crossing the highway (literally). In Lviv we stayed in a great hotel called "Delice" in a quiet area with a big park behind it. It was a little ways from the square, but it was still within walking distance, and we had a car to get us everywhere else. The park was gorgeous, and coming from a country with no Fall season and no greenery, this was paradise. We took a few good long walks through there. The main square was great to walk around, and had lots of restaurants and shops around. Trevor had looked up a restaurant earlier, which is in an old bunker, and needs a password to get in. He looked up the password, and the man at the door I don't think wanted to let us in (or he was just joking around...I can never tell with Ukrainians). Anyways, we were let in eventually, with a mandatory shot of vodka first of course, and we headed down into the "bunker." The place was packed and the food was delicious. For the rest of our time in Lviv, we visited an incredible cemetery, and also hiked up to a great view overlooking the city. On our way back to Kiev, we visited the "Tunnel of Love" in Kleven. The online pictures look beautiful in the summer, and although all the leaves had fallen off the trees, it was still pretty amazing to look at and walk through.

Trevor's heritage tour

Trevor wanted to see where his family lived, and he knew they were from South-West Ukraine, but didn't know exactly where. He found this man who's business was actually taking people around, and, using their family names, going to towns and finding where their family once lived. Slav picked us up really early, and we spent the entire day (over 12 hours) driving from town to town, looking in phone books and talking to people to find traces of Trevor's heritage. The roads were AWFUL. So many potholes and very narrow and curvy. We went to about three towns, and were able to explore a little bit in each place. Our first stop was Ternopil, which is a university town. It had a great square, and was on a beautiful lake. We wandered around and grabbed some food before heading on to the next town. Our next stop was Terebovla. We spent a lot of time here. We visited an old castle that was in ruins, and found a beautiful outdoor stage (behind a castle in a park), and visited a museum. At the castle we found out that the tour guide had a neighbour with the same last name as Trevor. In these towns our guide would pull over and ask Babas for information, and we looked around cemeteries as well. This was such a cool and interesting day, and the whole day didn't cost us very much at all. Our guide, Slav, from Lviv Ecotour, was amazing and knew these towns so well. I recommend doing this if you are Ukrainian and are curious about your heritage.

chernobyl

On our last day in Ukraine, we took a tour from Kiev to Chernobyl, the site of the nuclear reactor that exploded in 1985. The city of Pripyat was evacuated, and is currently a ghost town. At the reactor site (where there are more reactors in use still), they were working on a new sarcophagus for the one that exploded. On the way to the site we watched a great documentary, and stopped at the reactor site, then walked around Pripyat. It was eery, to say the least. There were checkpoints before you enter each "zone" of where the radioactivity is. We stopped at a kindergarten, that still had toys and beds, as everything was just left and abandoned when they were evacuated. We rented a geiger counter, and it would go off at random spots while walking or driving in the van, and of course at the reactor. In Pripyat we walked around an amusement park, in a high school, a community center, and a hospital. Everything was left as it was, and it looked like this city was beautiful before disaster struck. Everyone should go here. You might not like it, but I think it's important for everyone to see the kind of damage that humans can do. On our way out we had to step in a machine to check our radioactivity. I think only a couple of people have had to be quarantined since starting these tours. So don't worry, as long as you're not touching all the trees and scooping up dirt, you'll be fine.

food and drink

There is some amazing food in Ukraine. Perogies and borscht are among my favourites. We had all types of perogies, including delicious dessert ones with fruit filling. For drinks, try some vodka. Trevor loves vodka, and Lisa does not care for it. But they have some delicious vodkas, and we both had plenty.