We Love Lviv

No, this is not the entrance to Guantanamo bay or Auschwitz, this is the border crossing into Ukraine!

We made it, a border beer was bought to celebrate...
Borat country

We made it, helllllllllllllo Lviv, or Hbib as we fondly called it due to our interpretations of the Cyrillic alphabet
Typical Ukrainian taxi decor
The first of many fabulous Ukrainian appreciation moments. This is one of my faves, I had to stalk him forever to get a shot that defined the back fat in just the right light! The stair case up to our hostel, very Gaudi I thought
Typical Ukrainian bar Ukrainian fashion appreciation moment #2
The oh-so-analogue tram ticket system. Love it!!

....on our way to this gorgeous, lush cemetery....
This is how the locals adorn their graves for the first year after burial, it hides the settling of the dirt. A typical corner store, note the readily available beer and voddy in the window.

This was the first night we spent in Lviv. We went to this bar that was an old bunker full of pro-independent Ukraine and made me feel incredibly patriotic and proud. We spent the night partying with a bunch of Polish boys who showed us how the Eastern Europeans really drink!!!

Pretty Lviv
The world's largest fairy floss!
And this was what we called black market fruit. basically these women turn up at the market's edge, sell fruit from god knows where for 10 minutes before the cops come and they disappear, but not before we got our fill!
Jan's favourite cafe

The City from the top of a hill
Our night at the opera, we got a box seat and everything, pity none of us could keep awake...

bus dreaming....
Ok, this was the exciting bit when, armed with a smudgy photocopy of an old envelope addressed to my Grandfather as my clue and a local 'kid' called Eugene as translator my three mates and I went out to the county to find some of my relatives.. and we succeeded. This was us on the public bus..
Ukrainian poverty.... extreamily prevelent I'm afraid...
We had a slight glitch at the first house which my relos had moved out of and were renting it instead. This info was all given to us by this lovely neighbour, without a word of English. He took a shining to Bark's beard and insisted on a photo with the two of them together. It seems that beard was to be very well respeced in the Eastern Bloc
Success!! And after an amazing day meeting people I was rapidly embracing as my family, we were dropped back at Lviv station to embark on our second Ukrainian city experience: Kiev. Lviv turned out to be one of my top 6 cities of the trip, I was sad to leave it....