I made the mistake of wishing my landlady a Happy Easter, because it felt like the whole town was celebrating it, but she was like, "Easter was in May, bro. I'm an Armenian Catholic, and we loaded our baskets and waved our pussywillows weeks ago."
Up early and out into the action. Rings of folks stood outside the cathedrals while a priest sang in Latin through a loudspeaker. You could hear it from blocks away. It made me think of the Call to Prayer in Bosnia. I saw a priest dipping branches in water and sprinkling people's Easter baskets.
Those are going to be the holiest malted milk balls their kids ever ate.
The baskets were covered with an embroidered cloth, and I wondered if the contents were uniform, like a Passover plate or something. I've never met an Orthodox Christian. I'm guessing it wasn't Peeps in there.
Made my way back to the Old Town, with the camera this time. The light was blue and strange. I saw some magnificent rusty old lions with lover's padlocks fixed to them. I fooled around and fell in love with some strange black buildings. One, the Boim Chapel, was quite a stunner in person.
It was one of those jolt moments like when I saw the curving slope of the ancient streets in Warsaw. Clean, happy quiet city with only a few fussy priests running around and families getting ready for a big day of prayer.
The men all wore these traditional peasant shirts underneath sport coats. That was the uniform, a white shirt with serious embroidery in a stripe down the front and two little draw strings with puff balls at the end.
I like traditions like that, like when they wear paper crowns in England on Christmas. I'm sure those shirts are folded up in a drawer 363 days of the year. But once the messiah comes back, out come the shirts.
Got some coffee from a window. They pronounce latte like "lotta." I'd like a lotta coffee, please. Hee haw.
Found the famous Opera House. It's great, a fantastic piece of public architecture. An anecdote I read about it: The statue on top has a little belly and a doctor was convinced the model had been pregnant, but not just pregnant, exactly four months pregnant.
He asked the sculptor, and Skulpy was like, "I dunno, I didn't fuck her. Here's her address." So, the concerned party went down there where he met a woman with a kid, and he was like, "A kid, I knew it!" and she was like, "That's what happens when bodies start slappin'" and he was like, "Enough of your riddles, wretch, how old is the child! Speak!"
And she held up her fingers and was like, "This many!" and he was like, "And were you not the model for the statue on the opera house?!" And she was like, "Probably," and he was like, "My calculations were correct! You were four months pregnant at the time! Exactly four months!"
Word of his brilliance reached far and wide, and he became the most famous obstetrician in all of Lviv.
They had a long market stretching out all the way to a war memorial, so I walked through it. Honey and bread and trinkets and sausages. I bought something I thought was gingerbread but it was like a spicy Fig Newton.
Not a lot of street art in this town. They like it clean. I did see an old Soviet monument painted blue and yellow, (Ukraine's colors), though. I saw this in Bulgaria too (though not blue and yellow). Like, when the Commies ran things, they put these big statues and monuments in the center of town to honor their soldiers.
The people living there hated those soldiers. Thanks so much for beating back the Nazis for us and replacing them with something just as bad and maybe worse because we don't get the promise of a quick death. We'll just be standing in line for moldy turnips for the rest of eternity.
So, when Communism collapsed, most of those things were torn down and either destroyed or snapped up by hipster collectors. It's why there's a statue of Lenin in Seattle. The few that remain are often vandalized, which is understandable. They do some crazy shit to the Bulgarian one, but this one was just sprayed with the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
I didn't get a good picture of it. Alas.
Long walk down streets named after dead heroes, the skyline bristled with church spires. I had seen a sign for a cat cafe but I was worried it would closed. Most things that weren't the Fig Newton market were. I was having some difficulty getting transportation out of here.
Like, you don't want to be thinking about the next town without enjoying the current one, but if you wait too long you can find yourself standing on a corner begging the guys who build the gas pipeline for a ride.
Oh! I got a nice email from Sasha asking if I was going to accept his offer and meet him in his village. I told him I wasn't going to be able to make it there, and he said he hoped to see the US some day. He goes to a pig farming college that finds him work all over the world. He also wanted me to know that one of the other people in the car with us wasn't a pig farmer but was actually a mink farmer.
The trains out always seem to run at midnight and to spit you out where ever at 5am. With most rooms unavailable until 2pm, I wasn't looking forward to getting dumped and having to wander with all my bags for nine hours.
So, I wanted a phone to try and hook up with this dodgy car service I found. It's, like, Uber for hitchhikers.
Huge restaurant swarming with tiny kitties who have trees and ledges all over the place. They just slink around and jump on your table or hang out near your feet. I drank something called Becherovka and missed Ruggles. His sitters have been sending me pictures of him, and he looks like he's having a great time (the traitor).
A Scottish Fold/Russian Blue mix reminded me of him a little bit but was much less butch looking. A very sweet hour eating pancakes and watching kids lose their minds over the cats. Some adults too. One lady was sure all cats loved her and belonged in her arms. They didn't all agree.
I read a funny story about how back in the day it was the law in Lviv to know how to fire a gun, and they would have a shooting contest each year. The winner was called the Rooster King and would receive a living ox with gilded horns. How they must have shone in the sun! I wonder how that worked.
Left recharged and happy and took a long loop over to St. George (massive and blocky) and into a large park (fragrant and flowery). Pretty brownstones lined the way and each had unique and weathered caryatids framing the doors. I like the ones where it's some muscly dude straining, but the effortless angels are cool too.
Went back home and figured out pretty quickly I was going to be stuck here. I called the Armenian to see if I could pay for an extra night. She was like, "I can get you a ride at 11pm that will get you to Lublin at 4am." and I was like, "I can do bad all by myself!"
So, I paid her for another night. My schedule is pretty flexible. I paid her in cash, a mix of US and Ukrainian money. There was kind of an awkward moment when I was digging for the right change and she said, "People in Ukraine need money too!"
What she meant was, "It's ok, I don't want to take your last three hryvnia," but it sounded like, "What's taking so long?"
Read and wrote and slept.
In the morning (a two day entry!), I went back out to the Old Town. I felt pretty confident now, because, I guess I sort of know the place (or at least know my way around).
Bought a phone, a cheap little burner. It allowed me to make arrangements for a ride. The system works!
Had some cherry wine at a famous place. It was terrible, but the sign outside was gorgeous.
It started raining so I tried to hide inside the restaurant dedicated to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. He's the guy we get the word "masochism" from. The waitresses wear leather and carry goofy little whips.
I made myself laugh thinking, "Yesterday the cat cafe, today the cat-o-nine-tails cafe."
But! They told me to get out. "No room!" they said. I guess if I were actually a masochist... I would like that?
There's a great statue of Leopold outside. He's holding a pair of gloves out and there are strange hands all over his body. It's cool and strange.
Went instead to a "secret" bar designed to look like a revolutionary bunker. You're met at the door by an old soldier with a gun who demands the password. It was funny, cool, and I guess a little scary. I had read the password online (Slava Ukraini - Glory to Ukraine!) and knew it.
Then another dude gives you a shot out of a rifle barrel. it tastes like rust and honey, and then you get sent downstairs.
Had a day to kill, so I decided to kill it with poison, in the form of horseradish-infused vodka. I ate raw onion and did shots of the vodka in this dark wooden bunker and felt amazing. They also had a shooting gallery where you could pepper Stalin with bbs.
The horseradish taste made me think of Passover, and then I thought about the Easter Baskets from the day before, and then I thought, with the wood walls and the darkness that it was like I was INSIDE an Easter Basket and the rain outside was the priest's holy water.
I paid and looked for the exit but ended up on the roof where a boy was manning a large anti-aircraft cannon. Slava Ukraini!
Found my way down, and the square was in chaos. It had stopped raining, but everyone was soaking wet. It was Smingus Dingus Day!! Joan had told me about it a few years ago when I was in Poland, but it didn't happen. I thought it was one of those "Old World" holidays that only Americans celebrate.
It's the one where you dump a bucket of water on the girl you want to bone.
I asked my Polish coworker about it last week, and he was like, "They don't do that here anymore because of Global Warming" (!!!!!) "When I was a boy, we would soak each other all day, but now it's too cold and we would get sick,"
So, I thought I'd never see it, But I fucking saw it. They keep to the old ways in Ukraine where the Julian calendar sets it in a sensibly warm month.
The kids were really going wild, throwing long ropes of water at one another out of huge bottles.
The gutters were flooded. The street was slippery. Shouting craziness. I think it's gone from "soak your mate day" to "all everybody getting wet day."
I walked through the river of the old city, buzzed on "The Radish." and felt like a jazz musician in my sunglasses, striped shirt, and thin leather jacket. A little boy shot me with a squirt gun, and I made Frankenstein arms at him.
On the edge of the square, old soldiers sold their medals. It was like a Tom Waits song. "And everything's a dollar iiiin this box." I tied to get a dude to sell me his book of stamps but he wanted to sell the stamps individually. It will still be full when he dies.
Decided it wasn't a good idea to be a drunken jazz Frankenstein haggling in the square, so I went back home for sleep. I worked it out so that a dude is going to pick me in a supermarket parking lot tomorrow and drive me to Lublin.
Sounds as Lvivian as possible. Slava Ukraini, y'all.
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