Odessa, Ukraine, August 1992.
In the late afternoon, I should take the train to Lviv. But it turned out that there are no free seats on the night express.
So me and five girls spent the night in a hotel built during socialist era. There was a bar on the tenth floor. A few locals and the five of us. Warm champagne. And imagine it, the bar closes at ten o’clock. Fortunately, they were kind enough to give us one bottle to take away. We drank it in the room, although we had no glasses.
Waking up at three in the morning, as we had a van transfer ordered at four. The elevators are turned off at night, so you have to walk from the eighth floor to the ground floor. We wake up the receptionist and I go back to get the luggage that Monika is guarding in front of the elevator. The elevator reaches the floor, stops, but the door does not open. Monika is frightened and finds the floor hostess, who pulls me up through the ceiling of the elevator.
After all the vicissitudes, we finally drive off. Odessa at night, not a soul on the street, rare lights on. Right on the edge of the city the road was closed, document control. As if in some post-apocalyptic landscape, we drive in the direction of Kiev. After a few tens of kilometers, we reach the intersection where we turn left towards Lviv. There is also a driver’s rest point here. Farmer women, aged from hard work, sell dried meat products in the morning twilight. One of them sells me warm piroshki. She keeps them in a kind of kettle covered with a dirty cloth. An ember sparks beneath it. But the piroshki were delicious!
We continue our journey towards Lviv. Morning is waking up. The road is bad, with potholes, farm wagons, motorcycles with trailers on the side, old buses. Misleading traffic signs. They said that in case the Russians come.
Around noon we decide it’s time for lunch. But we were out of bread. We stop in the first village and visit the cooperative store. The driver told us to buy bread while he inspects the van. We enter and ask for bread. Xлеба нет, answers the saleswoman flatly. No bread. A moment later, the driver enters, surveys the situation, and says something in Ukrainian in a raised voice. The saleswoman gives him a nasty look, opens the drawer in the sales counter and takes out a loaf of bread. I buy a bottle of vodka, Vinnickaja, особакая, special, and off we go.
We stop a few kilometers further along the river, in a meadow. The drivers had home-grown tomatoes, water, dry salami bought in the morning and farm bread.
After a short rest, we continued our journey. As we approached the city, the traffic also thickened. The driver’s eyes are already red, visibly tired. In the late afternoon we arrive at the main train station in Lviv (photo above). We board the bus and head home…