olha pryymak

We visited three different monasteries in Volyn region today.

The roads leading to the places are bad, lack signs and general depressive ruin of the countryside surrounds everything. Preferred means of transport there are horse-driven carriages. During the summer nature hides all this in much more attractive greenery.

Derman’ dates back XV-XVII century and hosts a lovely woman’s monastery, two churches, a holy well, with ancient row and mot around it. Besides the monastery, an old school, that produced Ulas Samchuk- renowned writer and journalist.

Horodok outside of Rivne sits on an island, old Ukrainian baroque church dates back 1740. The new monastery cathedral has fantastic new wooden decor inside and the warm” church” has a great private feel to it.

Biliv is the youngest women’s monastery of the three, from 1972, owns a fantastic wooden church, and is the hardest to get to.

On the way back we ate at an established inn called Sophia, outside of Rivne. The kinds of place where the local newlyweds come for their photo shoots complete with pretty exotic garden, tennis courts, hotel, solid restaurant and even a recently added live music venue.

Looking for a fine dining experience, Yuri Uzzband and me came to Korona Vitovta – the best restaurant in Lutsk, standing right at the door of the Lubart castle.  It  all started well, the funnest part came with the bill. at the dinner.  We had one glass of wine each,  and the bill modestly displayed six of each ?! ‘Funny,” thought I and went asking about this number 6. “The foreigner (Yuri) asked for a “big” glass of wine,” explained Luda (our waitress).

By now you (who spent some time in Ukraine) all know  that Ukrainian menus like to trick you with items priced by grams, and then the waiters take the liberty at judging how many of those grams your wallet can handle.   Luda’s stab at this problem exceeded all expectations: 6×50=300 grams of wine. “Why didn’t you bring us the whole bottle in that “big” glass?” we asked, very annoyed. “You should have declined the glass when you saw it was 300 gram”. “Forgot my measuring cup at home,”  I defiantly thought. The worst part was that the wine in question was flat. Be on guard if you see too many kinds of wine by the glass in the menu. It could have been sitting open for months, like ours did.

Appalled at this Luda’s lame attempt to trick us, we demonstratively payed the $25 per glass, promising we’d tell every expat to avoid the place. So now you now.  Btw, with the quick poll via blackberry among his “high-flying” friends Yuri Uzzband concluded, that $25 per glass could  cost at only other place in the word – the Beverly Hills Hotel bar!

Everybody, who’s got wheels in Kyiv, climbed the Carpathian mountains to celebrate the New Year’s by the fireplace in the log cabin at the ski resort this season. I did not get there as planned, and was glad to miss the frantic traffic and struggle to find a decent place to sleep after all- good places are booked up there a year in advance. As my smart friend recommended, better times to go there are a few weeks before the holidays or after orthodox Christmas (7-14 January). So I adjusted my plans. Christmas time offers the best entertainment for culture lovers, as the way locals celebrate it, got preserved in its full glory: costumes, caroling, lavish food and all. If I am lucky, I may catch the festivities’ tail end and report on it here. My photographer friend is holding me a spot at the local hata while she fires away her Canon in Verkhovyna as we speak.

The best way to get to the Carpathians from the capital is by car (about 7 hour drive to Yaremche). If you arrive to Yaremche by train (would take a transfer or two to get there from Kyiv) you can hop on a cab for about 150 hrv to Bukovel, which is reasonable considering Yaremche is 40 min away. Obviously putting so much effort into getting there, it can not stand as a weekend kind of trip and is better stretched into 5 days or more.

Accommodations are plentiful and may be secured on the spot if you omit the holidays. The skiing season lasts way past the holidays and into March. My ideal place to stay would be an agrotourism – a local hut with lots of ethnic flare placed on the edge of the village near a stream with a breathtaking view of the mountains. Of course, you have to make sure you can get hot shower/indoor facilities first. Recently a few websites sprung up offering such sights: www.greenworld.com.ua and www.greentour.com.ua.

And finally about Bukovel – the prime ski resort – with European standard facilities as well as prices. My brother came back numb from four days of intense skying and great impressions as he did get up there for the holiday with his friends. He is more into active holidaymaking and seeing everything though his eyes proved to be impressive. You can learn more about all the services, slope maps and specs on Bukovel site.

Besides winter holidays, the Carpathians are attractive during any season. I can’t wait to go down there for a week in the summer to drink fresh goat milk, pick berries and mushrooms and live the simple life. Join me in that to put your money in the Ukrainian Carpathians and help the locals develop their tourism infrastructure to make this beautiful place even more attractive and comfortable to visit. Seems like they get the reinvestment part much better then the Crimea.

21.1.08 Update on the article: Global Comment has also published this article .

Two rival towns going back in sixteen hundreds now are ruins with a palace/castle and a cathedral each. One castle now is a psychiatric hospital, the other – a ruin, home to junkies and stray sheep.

Here are some detailed photo-accounts of the trip by two Ukrainian travel bloggers to Olyka (here too) and to Klevan (and here). And here’s my photo memories of a very wodnerful atmonstperic trip:

The rest of the phots are in this flick set.

Olga Pyl’nyk, another wonderful lvivite, produces very lovely dreamy little sculptures that you can find all around the art galleries in Lviv. You can also find her at L’art Honchari gallery on Andriyivsky in Kyiv, for triple the price. I went for one to Khaos gallery (we like it the most among all the Lviv galleries). She is also well presented by the Green Sofa gallery there with more pictures of her art online.

Khaos gallery, 16 Ruska st., Lviv

Green sofa gallery 7 Virmenska st., Lviv

With a recent visitor from the Sates I spent quite some time browsing the stalls of street art in Kyiv and in Lviv.   I must say, in comparison with the likes in Paris and Rome, Ukrainians actually can offer some very original items. The pricing is so good of course that pretty much anything they offer is much better buy then in the States.

Also, I was set back by an unpleasant targeted pricing there.  The thing is when at the Lviv art market, we set our eye on a very lovely cityscape done with a palette knife – a very recognizable technique (for $80). When on Andriyivsky, I spotted a similar cityscape, and indeed, it was the same Lviv artist piece, just in a slightly bigger format (priced at $280.) Wow, that beats a flight to Lviv and back plus a painting, I thought.

We ended up with these two beauties, by a felllow artist of the lvovite in question.  If you ignore the signature smack across the bottom of the picture, you can get the pure pleasure of enjoying these on our living room wall.

Note: the art market in Lviv is just to the right from the opera when facing it, across the street and into the alley. The original art salespeople all congregate in the middle of that market square.  Don’t forget to bargain. Greatest exuse: my atm only game me this xx amount (and show them the money, looking innocent) but be reasonable- the artist’s got to bring home the cheese.

I dug up a most exhaustive list of places, in Kyiv in particular of various coffee-shops and restaurants that offer wi-fi (mostly free, but some charge). It’s a great resource for those trying to get away from the house and do some work (wink Claire) or for travelers who dared to schlep their laptop along. Of the places listed, I often used Babooin and Antresol, the speed was average but the availability more or less stable.

The only donwside to this list is that it’s in Russian ( only basic understanding of Russian is required – to read the name of the establishment highlighted blue on top and the adress on the bottom).

Just got another nice link in Russian-language online newspaper about hotstpots, no info there about prices.

Every time an expat gets visitors, he instantly takes them to the Lavra. It’s top three holy christian orthodox places (another one is Pochayiv in West Ukraine and a place somewhere in Russia). We started with lunch at a place Kupol, it’s located on Sichovyh Strilciv st., around the corner to the right of the main entrance to the Lavra and the passage to the caves.

You got to buy tix for seeing the host of churches on top, and once inside, get extra tix (look for “Kasa” sign) to get into the museum of scythian gold, which is very nice. The prettiest church in my mind one can see from the street - the Nadbramna - above the main entrance – a perfect example of Ukrainian Baroque. Then one can wind down the back of the churches past the beautiful arcade following the signs to the caves. Ladies, bring your scarves to wear inside the caves and churches or else they made you buy their own ugly ones. And finally, the descent/ascent to the caves is pretty steep and slippery.

Btw, apparently another restaurant nearby is the CCCP with its of soviet paraphernalia. It’s a bit pricey, but a great choice to impress the visitors. If you go next weekend, you can combine the reverence with the fun of lounging in the park during the rock-folk festival going on right next to the Lavra.

Lavra, open every day, 10-17, Sichovyh Strilciv St.

I am thinking of making it my permanent home for the last month of this summer. I can not belive we are still stuck here in Kyiv. Right, so are the best and the brightest of Lviv, but that’s because this is where the money is, and hot water in the tab, and regular flights to Europe. But we will be to pass on all that for a month easily I am thinking as I will be happily blogging about my current favoarite city of all times!

The new discoveries of this visit – several solid coffee places:

Svit Kavy

Pid Synyou Plyashkoyu – it was there that we really dug our heels into the groud and said – we are going to be back! Most solid looking 5-table establishment, predominantly a coffee and drinks place, ask for their honey liquer specialty – not as good as my dad’s stuff but really great!

Rooftop cafe at the shopping mall that used to be the old Univermag – very low key, almost fast food place, but with amazing views of the city!

Kilikiya – very beautiful side alley off Virmenska St., it’s quite easy to find by its sign. They serve regular Ukrainian food fare as well as the best hot chocolate and mostly coffee. Their furniture is hade of the heaviest steel, but it’s “ironmonged” very stylishly.

and the regular tourist-heavy Videnska Kavyarnia and the Italiysky Dvoryk

and restaurants:

Opera – the Terrase on top of the Opera hotel across the street from the opera house – very fancy, perfect for dessert, decent wine list also their dinner tasted very good too. Check out the automatic shoe cleaner in the hotel lobby – classic! The views are really hard to beat – you are up there, soaring with the sculptures on top of the opera, checking out the city center rooftops.

For sughtseeing, we went up the City Hall tower, which also provided the best view! Get into the city hall lobby, ride up to 4th floor and follow the signs to “vezha”. After paying your 3 hryvnyas you will have to climb 17 floors on rickety wooden stairs and appreciate the exposed bell tower clock. The view is worth all the trouble. To be continued…

Lviv is one of my top three favorite cities to live in, although it’s more like visit because all the lvivites I meet cautiously talk of short supply of water and other inconveniences. Given I never stayed there longer then a week, these things we are yet to explore.

The usual architectural landmarks to see there are the Lutheran cathedral and the Campians’ chapel, the Armenian church and the streets nearby, the Rynok square, the arts market and the Opera. Since we arrived mid-week, opera was closed and we ended up dozing off in the cool of Zaknovetska theater with school kids on matinée.

The old and tried Dzyga gallery had the Yellow-themed exhibit of many local artists.The cool yard nearby the roman-catholic church got gated off, preserving the stunning graffiti from getting “corrected”. A new great find is Slyvka gallery around the corner from the art market, full of original trinkets at realistic prices. This girl particularly looked interesting. Another fun new gallery is on Virmenska St. called The Green Sofa exhibited paintings from plain-air at the Mediterranean.