Okay, onto Lviv, Part II. Pictures to along with this travelogue can be found here:
Lviv Pictures
***
That afternoon, we boarded a bus with fifteen other people for Zhovka, a tiny town about 45 minutes from Lviv, for the castle tour, which was to have "a tour of a castle and a candle-lit dinner with live music inside the castle."
We arrived in Zhovkva and I looked around for a castle, but saw none. We began following our tour guide around, a thin man in his thirties speaking in a fast-paced Ukrainian. The town, according to our guide, was one of three renaissance towns planned with Italian ideals of beauty. It was, admittedly, a beautiful little towns, with all the three-story buildings colored in faded pinks, blues and yellows. The buildings were built wall to wall, with no alleys, all surrounding a huge square. They were built like this for defensive reasons, said the guide. Looking around, I still couldn't see the castle.
Finally, the guide pointed at the "castle". It was a building that looked like an administrative headquarters, three stories tall with stucco walls and ground floor windows. What kind of defensive structure has ground floor windows? It turned out that there had one been a castle there, and this building, a renaissance "valley castle", said our guide, was built on the foundations. There was no castle. The tour group had lied. Fancy that. And, ironically, we never even went inside this "castle." Dinner, it would turn out, was at a nearby restaurant.
I was pissed. It was almost 5:00 PM, and the sun was rapidly dropping below the horizon, and it was –10 degrees. The entire tour was outside, and hour and a half of walking around in the snow. I was tired, hungry, freezing, mentally exhausted from too much Ukrainian, frustrated at the tour company and really just wanting to go back to the warm hotel and crash. The problem was that our bus wasn't scheduled to leave for six and a half more hours.
One part of the tour made up for my feelings, though: a heartbreaking Jewish synagogue. All the Jews in Zhovka were killed by the Germans during World War II, said our guide. The synagogue, more than 400 years old, was build defensively, like a tiny castle in itself, the pink paint faded and peeling off the outside. With no Jews, though, the synagogue sat locked up and crumbling. Except our guide, a Zhovkva resident and historian, had the key.
There's something about going where people don't normally go that makes you feel special. The old lock squeaked as he turned the key, and we stepped into another time. The inside was empty and barely visible as the last of day turned into dusk. What little light there was came in through dusty windows, refracted in the air.
There was a majesty there. The interior room of worship was nearly three stories high, the roof supported by a series of stone columns that looked like they had Turkish influence. The upper rooms, where the women had worshipped, were inaccessible, blocked by rubble. Masonry lay broken and overturned. We were some of the few tourists to ever see the inside of that synagogue, and seeing it then, into the darkening evening with the room colored in a purple-blue, made me mourn the loss of the people who once loved it, who once came there to worship God, people I never knew.
***
After the synagogue we found ourselves at the restaurant, a tiny little café near the "castle". Realizing we had been lied to yet again, and realizing that "live music" really meant a guy playing MP3s through computer speakers, and so had been lied to yet again, we were damn near done. There were candles on the tables, but there were no private tables, only two, long, communal ones. We all had come in on an overnight train just that morning, were all running on very little sleep. And we had to spend six more hours there.
I was unable to feel my feet, they were so cold when we got to the restaurant, so the four of us beelined to the fire place and took the nearest chairs to it. Then the tour company asked us to move. This table, they said, was reserved for the tour company employees. Because, you see, there were only five paying people on this tour, the four of us and a Finnish girl. The other sixteen or so worked for the company and, as we were to soon realize, this was more their shindig than ours.
We couldn't not believe we were being told to move. Christopher flat out refused, getting angry. I wasn't going anywhere, either, taking a cue of stubbornness from him. I was warm right where I was. And after everything they had pulled, I wanted to sit by the fire. The girls, trying to let cooler heads prevail, finally pulled us from our seats to the table across the room, by the windows, where it was freezing.
Christopher grabbed the bottle of vodka on the table, said "we're going to need more than this," and started to pour.
Thus proceeded a Ukrainian party, for Ukrainians. Were I new to Ukraine, it would have seemed quite quaint: the food and the dancing and the music. But I'm not new to Ukraine, I live in Ukraine and the novelty has worn off. I still appreciate Ukrainian culture, but sitting there, some part of my mind thought "my grandparents would love seeing this," while the rest of me was just cold, tired and pissed.
A brief, shining moment came when they asked me what I did. I told them, also telling about my English club. What did I do there. Well, last week we did salsa dancing.
So they asked me to teach them how to salsa. They guy manning the music found something vaguely Spanish-sounding and I did teach them to salsa. They did it for about two minutes, then went back into Ukrainian folk dancing. My mood darkened once again, I sat back down.
Then came the silly games. I had never seen these at a Ukrainian party before, but apparently this was how they expected to entertain us all night. These games consisted of things like, who could carve and apple with their teeth, catch tossed change on a tray or put a puzzle together the fastest. We were forced to take part, and we tried to make the best of it. Looking at the pictures, it didn't seem to be to horrible a time, even though we hated almost every minute of it.
Susannah and I especially. For five months we had been treated like children, told what to wear and when to eat by our host families, given no choice in schedule or locale by Peace Corps. And now, we were supposed to be on vacation, but we were still being told what to do, when to do it, when we could leave and even what we could eat: there was no choice in this restaurant; you just ate what was brought to you. We had paid for a castle tour and candlelight dinner in a castle. You know, something romantic and memorable. Instead we sat at a long table with progressively drunker Ukrainian strangers who kept beseeching us to take part in stupid Ukrainian games.
The hours ticked by slowly. Two of them later, at 7:00 PM, we were done with dinner and the party was still going. We sat, bored and listless, and finally Chris said "we need to get out of here. We need to get back to Lviv."
I talked to the guide. "Getting back to Lviv is easy," he said. "Marchrutkas leave every ten minutes."
"How much?" I asked
"Three hrivna," he said.
A huge grin broke out on my face. I didn't have to wait until 1:30 in the morning to go back, didn’t' have to spend another four hours in exhausted boredom! We could leave when we wanted! I shared the news and we all breathed a sigh of relief. We were no longer held captive to the whims of the psycho Ukrainian tour group. We could leave at any time!
A Ukrainian music group arrived then, three men with an accordian, a fiddle and a tambourine. It was the live music we had been promised.
"Well, let's at least listen to the music," I said.
And fantastic music it was. I'm a big fan of Ukrainian folk music, and they did a lot of classics that the whole group joined in singing. I didn't know any of the words, but I enjoyed just watching the whole group boomingly sing and clap in rhythym. The folk group finished, and we were ready to leave.
We found a Ukrainian stand up comedian between us and the wooden door.
Seriously. This guy was out of his seat and in front of the only way out of the restaurant before we had finished standing up. There was no way to get our jackets and leave without interrupting the monologue he had launched into.
It was 7:30 PM. We sat back down.
I tuned it out, jostled out of my thoughts only occasionally laughter and applause from the of the group. Susannah was getting angrier and drunker with each passing minute. The stand up was speaking in Ukrainian, as did everyone in this part of the country, and she was livid.
Susannah got off the plane in September with an advanced level of Russian, having studied it for nine years and having lived for a year in Moscow. The near-permanent language frustration that has been my life since arrival was something that she was just now starting to experience, and she was hating it. The tour was supposed to be for us, the four American and the Finnish girl who had actually paid for it, she reasoned, and since everyone but me and Christopher spoke Russian, it should be conducted in Russian. To her, it was rude and frustrating for a tour group to give a tour in a language the majority of the tour group didn't understand.
"It's a nationalist thing, a pride thing," I tried to explain.
"Well, it's going to cost them business," she replied.
Finally, half an hour later, the comedian was done.
We quickly grabbed our jackets and headed for the door before another act could come on.
The tour group manager intercepted us. "What are you doing?"
It should be noted that, in Ukraine, you never break up a group. What we were doing was paramount to sacrilege and we were about to pay for it.
"We're going," Christopher said.
"You can't go," she said in Ukrainian. "The bus doesn't leave until 2:30 AM."
Two-thirty? It was supposed to be one-thirty!
"You need to respect when people don't understand you and speak Russian!" Susannah said in Russian, now thoroughly fed up and unwilling to deal with a replay of the morning, when she had gotten sidelined by language.
"We're taking a marshutka back," I said in Ukrainian.
"But the marchrutkas stop running at 8:00!" said the tour guide.
We all stopped moving. It was already 8:15.
"What?" I asked.
"The marchrutkas stop running at 8:00."
That fucking guide knew we wanted to leave, knew we were asking how to leave at 7:00 PM and he casually forgot to mention that they stopped running at 8:00? Had that comedian not blocked us, we would have gotten out the door at 7:30 PM and already be on a marchrutka to Lviv.
"We're going," I said, pissed.
Susannah was currently going off on the lady in Russian, but I couldn't understand most of it, and I was walking out the doors anyway. Marchrutkas sometimes run late. As soon as I stepped outside, I saw a marchrutka drive by with LVIV in the window and I took off after it. The driver didn't see me, though (marchrutka drivers will stop for anybody) and it sped off into the night.
The guide, who had followed us out with the manager, began laughing at my Forrest Gump impression. That further set Susannah off, who was now joined by Christopher, yelling in English.
"Which way to the bus station?" I asked over the din Other tour group employees had followed us out and there was a three language argument going on. .
"There are no more buses," said the guide.
"You said there'd be no more marchrutkas and I just saw one," I said back.
"You can't go," said the manager, "you're our responsibility."
"We'll be fine," I said, the snow falling down around us. And then I said: "If there are no marchrutkas, it will just be an nice walk around your beautiful city."
That calmed them a bit. It took another ten minutes, but finally they relented and pointed us in the right direction.
Nothing felt so good as those first steps away from the restaurant, away from the crazy tour guide people.
"How far are you willing to take this?" asked Christopher as we walked to the bus station.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean I'm willing to walk to Lviv if necessary," he said.
"That'd take like four hours," I said.
We arrived at the bus station and looked at the times. The last marchrutka had left for Lviv at 8:30 PM. Had the people not held us up an additional 20 minutes, we still could have made it. We stood there just in case one was running late.
"I'm willing to throw money at this," said Christopher. "I'm willing to pay someone to drive us there."
Every car in Ukraine is actually a potential taxi if you have the money. We watched him put his hand out for every car that went by, but none stopped. Finally, a marchrutka came by, but the guy said he was done and going home. Christopher, over my shoulder, was trying to negotiate through me, me translating for him. The guy obviously did not want to drive to Lviv. Finally, I thanked him and he left.
"Why'd you do that?" asked Christopher. "We almost had him!"
Actually, I was mulling over the news the guy had given me, that a train was leaving for Lviv at 9:00 PM. It was now 8:57 PM, and there was no way to get to the train station in time. The tour guide, a Zhovka resident, would have known about the train, would have known we could have made it, and had just decided not to tell us about it.
Finally, another marchrutka came, and the driver, too, said he was finishing up his run and no more marchrutkas were going to Lviv that night.
We flagged down one car, but it was full of teenagers and I told them nevermind. That was it. We were out of options.
I started walking back towards the restaurant.
"No!" yelled Christopher. "We can't give up. Did they give up at Bull Run? Did they give up at Bunker Hill?"
"They gave up at Vietnam," said Wendy.
"Do you have any other ideas?" I asked him.
"Let's walk!" he said.
"We're not walking, honey," said Wendy. "Let's just go back."
"I'm not going back!" he said. "I refuse to go back!"
We went back.
***
We threw open the doors to the restaurant like conquering heroes, as if we had just been taking a stroll and were back to get the party started. Luckily, they let us keep our dignity and welcomed our arrival with cheers.
I took the tour manager aside and, with Susannah as back up in Russian, we made it clear that we were leaving at 1:30 AM as originally agreed, and not 2:30 AM.
She relented and conceded we would leave at 1:30 AM.
That done, we still had three hours to go.
"We need vodka," said Christopher.
I agreed.
We all sat back down at our table, Christopher poured a round, we all clinked glasses and we drank, including me.
The alcohol finished off the rest of my energy. Using my sweater as a pillow, and with Susannah leaning against me, I leaned back in my chair and went to sleep.
I didn't wake up until it was time to leave.