The Ukraine!

Today was weird.... probably the weirdest day I've had since that random day I went to Thailand. I was in Krakow (in Poland) earlier on in the day, but I had to take a 10 hour day-time bus to the Ukraine. Day buses are weird - taking a bus all night is fine because you can sleep a bit and you get there and its the start of the day. But sitting on a bus all day while the sun is shining and arriving in a foreign (very foreign) city kind of plays with your mind a bit.

So, today at 11:30 (well, I was there at 10:30 because I'm always stupid early) I was waiting for my bus. Every bus going in to and coming out of the Ukraine is late, so it didn't come until 12:30. I sit for about 6 hours until we get to the border leaving Poland. That takes about 30 minutes... and then we pull up to enter the Ukrainian border, which takes another hour or so.
I've been reading a lot about the Ukraine, for the sole purpose of planning for this trip. There is very little information regarding how to get to/from places here, so I've needed to do a lot of research. As my bus got closer to the my final destination (Lviv), I started to get more and more worried because it was getting darker and darker. As I said, getting into a city at night always sort of freaks me out because I don't know anything and it's dark, and you don't know if its safe. Arriving in Vienna at night would probably be fine, but I'm not sure about the freaking Ukraine.

Luckily I had talked to some Ukrainian girls on the bus ride. They acted as my translators while the Ukrainian/Polish customs people came on to talk to each person. When I got to the bus station, I realized it was about 30 minutes from the center of the city, which is where I needed to be. I had some stuff written down in crylic (the style of writing you see in Russia/Ukraine/etc) for a cab driver to look at to get me to my hostel, but I was feeling really weird about the bus station. Apparently, the English speaking proficiency here is essentially zero, so I needed to have some Ukrainian written down.

It was SOOO sick. The girls that I had talked to on the bus had asked one of their dads if they would drive me to my hostel, and he agreed. He couldn't speak a word of English, but he was willing to drive my ass to my hostel. It actually helped me out SOO much.

So much shit could have went wrong today.... and everything went right (aside from the bus being an hour late). I'm in my hostel now, which has tons of old relics from the old Soviet days. Pretty cool place.

I haven't really been walking around yet. I'm going to bed, but there will definitely be some Ukrainian style sel-ca pictures tomorrow.