The Beautiful People of Kaunas

On these back-country roads in these back-country countries, I see weird old bus stops in the middle of nowhere. They're all messed up but fascinating. Strange curves and patterned tiles. Prison bars and round benches. People use them. Where do the people come from? 

I dreamed of having the leisure to come back and photograph them, and then I thought it was sad that a project like that would have been a book once and would probably just be a tumblr page now. And then I looked to see if there were any cool photos online, and a guy had already done it. AND had published a book about it. AND it's a best-seller. 

That made me tremendously happy. I bought the book. 

Thinking about it because some of the photography on this trip is opportunity and location and some is energy. I saw an amazing building across the river, and I want to shoot it, and I have an hour before I have to be on a bus again, but... this is sort of the first day where I just want to sit a little. Like a person. 

I found someone else's heavily filtered picture of it. 

(not my pic)

Kaunas is a great town with an immediate difference in energy than Poland. Brighter, faster. The main drags here are called Laisves aleja and Vilniaus gatve, two long tree-lined streets scattered, smothered, and covered with cafes, boutiques, and amber shops. I can make up for my amber regrets!

God, amber. It was such a big deal to my grandmother. It made her crazy, She was crazy for sea gold. Like, I guess even real amber looks fake, so she had all these tests to prove the authenticity of it. I remember being a little boy and her showing me that when you rub real amber it makes static electricity, or something.

I gave one of my girlfriends a green amber ring and Grandma went out of her way to say it was synthetic. I found all sorts of evidence showing that amber comes in colors other than... amber, but she was like, "Lies planted by those who would sell fake amber!"

Thinking about it, because I'm wondering why it matters. If it's pretty and you like looking at it, why does it need to be "real." It's not like you'll later need to trade it to a soldier in return for a bag of rolls. 

In any case, these tree-lined avenues are gorgeous and stretch on leisurely for miles. And those miles are populated with attractive, stylish people. There is money here, and style. They have the tall, lean grace of Scandinavians but with an appealing edge. It's like their grandparents fucked a few Russians to get some stank in there. 

So, it's not the remote High Elf unapproachable beauty of, like, Norway, but a sort of punky, healthy, coltish attractiveness aided by an impeccable, casual style. Not overdone but not random. There are no dandies but no slobs. It's all the right leather jackets, the right sunglasses, the right accessories. 

On a sun-drenched Friday, Kaunas will break your neck. The people look like like fruit labels come to life. If I were a real man with desires instead of being what I am, something left behind when a pig coughed, I'd be lying on the white pebbles breathing hard and checking my bank balance. 

And they are everywhere. Draped over statues, stretched out on park benches, walking in pairs and packs. 

I'm staying in a hostel with a hallway decorated by past guests. It's cute to see their teenage wisdom on the walls, "Live your life!" "Follow all the dreams!" You kind of get the sense that the locals.... actually live that way. It's impossible to say, really. All I know is they were the first to kick the Commies out and they love basketball. 

There's a kitchen with dirty mugs. Bean bags, a foosball table. I have a big, private room, because I have body hair and a credit card. 

A lot of strange public statues. This is true of all the former Iron Curtain places, but these are... like there's a floating man and a super hairy man and a weirdo with a twisted horn. Very appealing. Also, curvy Orthodox churches. 

These places were all invaded by Western Europe during the Northern Crusades. Those are the Crusades that actually worked. Like, all those dudes who went to the holy land came back in a salt shaker, because the Moors knew which edge of the scimitar to shred them with.

But the gentle pagans up here didn't have the same level of organization, so they're still Christian to this day. Thanks, English and British fortune seekers!

You never hear much about the Northern Crusades, probably because they were successful and it's not polite to talk about it.

Had a very cool, long walk and tried some of the local fare. Big meat-stuffed potatoes, herring and sour cream, rolled meats on soft brown bread, bitters. I loved the cepelinai, a big, crazy dumpling. Like, I'm sure it bullies the perogi and pushes the wonton around. I've seen a few ravioli that could give it a fight, but it's heartier. If you don't count the fried things they call dumplings in India, the cepelinia might be the roughest and toughest.

Spoke briefly with some locals when I asked them for directions. Instead of just pointing, they wanted to know about me. I noticed in general that the people don't shy from eye contact here. And it isn't a warning or "the male gaze," it feels like curiosity.

I told them I was a playwright exploring the Baltics. They told me they were architects and layabouts. That's been something on this trip. I haven't met a man under thirty who has a job other than driver. The women under thirty have been lawyers and architects. I don't know if there's gender equity in Eastern Europe, but there's definitely diversity in the small sample size I've been exposed to.

I head to Vilnius today, a larger, artier, even more Lithuanian city. It's close, maybe an hour away, but they say it's pretty different. They better have herring and bitters, though.

Bialystok is a Party Town

"The President of the USA at that time was a Dutch Jew, his father a diamond cutter from Rotterdam, stole the Russian Imperial Jewels after the Bolshevik revolution, had to emigrate to avoid capture and prison sentence. Within ten years they were running the whole country. Had every important figure tied up - Walter Winchell, everybody. Their real name was Roszenfeldt."

The ride to Bialystok was in an eight-seat minivan. You can get anywhere in Europe in these things. It's just a matter of figuring out where they are. All of my usual scheduling tricks were like, "Sorry, no way to get to The B from The L. You can take a train to Warsaw and figure it out from there," but Jaroslaw was like, "There's a minvan behind the convenience store that leaves in an hour."

That's a thing. Google is totally fooled by these very old forums on very old travel sites. Like, if you you look up something easy like, "Is there a night train from London to Glasgow?" you get a page of ads and then a bunch of seriously old questions and answers, maybe six or seven years old. Is there even a Glasgow anymore? Are the people who asked these questions skeletons in a minivan?

Every place has "FREE WIFI" stickers, but the connection is a crime scene. You feel like wrapping your phone in yellow police tape after you've tried to check your email. But the people are all very nice and that's eventually how you get around.

I'm a little diminished today. Collections of tiny annoyances. Missing cords, storage issues, lost caps, tangled headphones, the incredible vanishing dental floss, work emailed me needing something, I haven't smelled Fernet in a few weeks. But, that's travel. It isn't like Indiana Jones was able to just get from Point A to Point Bialystok without swimming after a submarine now and again.

Each day is a technicolor miracle of green fields, sprinkles of yellow flowers, innocent animals, blue skies with the vibrance and saturation level pushed all the way to the right, and rickety farm houses built with the primary objective of assassinating you with love. O' those lonely houses in the lonely fields. You could live there forever and not need cabarets or metrocards. Just an old dog with a graying nose, a branch broom, and a nice woman to cook pancakes for.

And a few cats to keep you honest.

Each day, you circumnavigate roundabouts and feel the dizzy thrill of taking the correct exit, you cross brooks with weathered rowboats on the shore (tied with the slenderest of ropes), small villages with circus posters on the prison walls, children in uniforms holding hands in long lines, terminals, termini, billboards for yogurt, men smoking on benches, women doing the emotional load bearing.

Runaways, tall small businessmen, drunks handing pamphlets to drinkers, 24-hour flower shops, playgrounds, ruined buildings, Pepsi bottles.

You read difficult novels and fall in love with the illusion that you have understood them.

Bialystok was intended to be a quick stop. A mid-point to break up the push to Lithuania. It's a long vacation, but it's finite, and I used up my flex days at the Ukrainian border. I won't be going to Brest, Belarus to see this fucked-up Castle Greyskull fort I read about. I won't be taking a day trip to see the bison of Białowieża Forest.

I mean, I could, but the point of this trip was to see Latvia. So, I should probably go there at some point. Looks like it's going to be a quick sleep in Bialystok, early bus to Kaunus (Lithuania), two days in Vilnius, one day at the miraculous Hill of Crosses, three days in Riga (Latvia at last) and then I'll have to FLY in a PLANE back to Warsaw so I can fly in a plane back to Ruggles (Seattle).

So, I wanted B'stok to be over with quickly. BUT, it was a rewarding little town with an enormous public square and a charming, long, long, avenue lined with cafes and bars and pizzerias and ice cream, ice cream, ice cream.

The word for ice cream is Lody, and lord do they love loads of lody in Bialystok.

I ate mushrooms and drank coffee near the place where that kind-hearted maniac professor invented Esperanto.

It's kind of a cool place. Like the Old Town is integrated very nicely into the modern part to the degree that they're almost indistinguishable. So, like, when you're on the stones, you're mixing with locals and not just tourists. Sunglasses, rhinestone purses, large wristwatches.

My apartment was over an enormous bookstore. No internet, so I cleaned up and went out to explore. Weird old public statue of a king? Pushing a giant wheel? With a tin man dancing on it?

Strange churches and normal churches. Domes and spires. Police everywhere walking in gendered pairs. Strip clubs, casinos the size of convenience stores, boutiques. Nothing obscene. It was all happily and prettily bourgeois.

I had hoped to find a bialy. I've had a Manhattan in Manhattan and listened to Chicago in Chicago, but there were none to be found. The bakeries had doughnuts or get out.

Caught up with work at a pub with red vinyl seats called Little Hell. Drank Żubrówka with apple juice and helped the company. Fantasized about having a buffalo party with my friends back home.

Fooled around and found my favorite-ever mural.

Are you kidding me? The colors, the integration with the tree, the added element of the girl floating. It's a goddamn masterpiece of the form. I was assassinated with love for it, shocked by its beauty, felt like I was at once (and at last) living my life of chocolate.

Happy, sweaty walk back to the flat where I prepped for Lithuania with a nice history book and read Pegnitz Junction by Mavis Gallant until I knew darkness.

I want to steal everything, write everything, live everything, sleep everything.

Cock Bread in Kazimierz Dolny

Lublin is another of these Polish towns famous for having once had a large Jewish population. It's hard to read about what happened here, all around here. Like, it hardly seems real. It's like reading about the departure of the Elves to Valinor, the Undying Lands, across the sea to the west.

Except they were systematically murdered. Lublin's claim to fame is that it wasn't bombed by one side, smashed by the other, or ruined for revenge afterward. So, all the buildings and the Old City are the originals. It also has a concentration camp a very short bus ride away, the one they didn't bother to hide.

There was no pretending in Majdenek, none of this "work will set you free" nonsense. It was, get on the train, take your shoes off (we need them) and this way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen.

In any case, this was long ago (though not that long ago) and the city is a charming little mini-metropolis with every amenity and a castle courtyard that looks like a de Chirico painting.

The big deal this weekend is that The Cranberries are in town. I will be sorry to miss them. A shame I cannot... Linger.

My hosts here were marvelous. It's a cliche to say you're treated like a part of the family, but Jaroslaw welcomed me like his son. Frequent feedings, and he let me dig through a crate of his old Polish New Wave albums. I was quite taken with a group called Lady Pank. 

I had seen posters for them in Greenpoint many years ago. I think they're like the Polish Rolling Stones or something, still touring fifty years later. 

Every time I passed by the kitchen I was given radishes and pepper, cucumber and pepper, cheese and meat, cake, coffee. 

For breakfast on the first morning, I was seated with the French couple he had told me about the night before, the Windtalkers.  They were in their 70s and spoke almost no English. Conversation was like trying to cross the Maginot Line.

My French consists of words I know from musicals and curses from cartoons.

"They want only marmalade," says my host, "but for you I make real breakfast." He brought sliced turkey, smoked cheese, tomatoes, orange juice, yogurt, and fresh rolls,

"Start here," he says, "and I will come back with coffee."

Our conversation became, ultimately, them pointing at cities on a map of Poland and my saying "C'est bon!" or "non!" The only words I know besides "soup of the day" and "sacred blue heaven!"

Bon and non. I laughed thinking about having bon-non-as for breakfast.

When I know English is someone's second language, I talk with my hands and make exaggerated faces. I realized after the third "C'est bon," I had been making parentheses in the air. They might have looked like boobs. "Torun?" Ah, oui, nice as breasts. "Gdansk?" Oui, Oui, beautiful breasts. "Poznan?" Alas, no boobs at all.

We finished up and I never saw them again. Bon chance, mon ami.

Took the small camera bag to the bus stop and rode to the Stare Miasto. You always go to the Stare Miasto wherever you are. Keep the Rynek on your right.

Sweet, quiet little walk around. The by-now-very-familiar layout of stone streets and colorful buildings with fascinating facades. Lucky statues and reminders of a long-ago siege.

I climbed a tall guard tower to get "sweeping views" of the Old Town. It reminded me of the minaret I climbed in Mostar (oh, Mostar!) and the tower in Split. Of course, in Split I had the tote bag of clothes Ruggles had pissed on.

I remembered that lesson. If you're going to climb a tower, drop your laundry off first.

I was the only one around. There were artifacts strewn throughout at different ledges and stopping point. There was a very funny statue of a bulging-eyed Steve Buscemi Christ. Breezy and beautiful at the top. Modern buildings and high rises rose in the near distance. It was interesting to see the boundaries where the old became the new.

I thought of that amazing Fitzgerald quote about the Empire State Building. How, when the Great Men of the City first climbed it, they knew despair, because they could see beyond New York. It meant that Manhattan wasn't the entire world.

Turns out the Stare Miasto in Lublin isn't the entire world.

Back in the streets, I saw a marvelous art project where they papered over the windows of buildings under construction with large scenes from a Breugel painting, The Dutch Proverbs. There would be a highlight followed by the saying it represented. I couldn't read a word of it. (But I knew the painting).

Churches with tasteful exteriors and crazy cat lady interiors. Kiosks selling magnets of the pope's face. Cafes with umbrellas and lounge chairs. I made my way to the castle. It was early morning, but teenagers drank beer and kissed on the stone steps outside. This is why we liberated this place.

I wanted to see the paintings in the castle chapel, but they only let a few people in at a time and only in bursts. I wasn't there for a burst window. I could have stickstuck around, but I wanted to take a bus to Kazimierz Dolny, a nearby resort town.

Next time, chapelpaintings. Found the little station, found the right minibus and waited. Wrote and read. The Bluest Eye.

There was a lot of pushing and shoving to get on for some reason. I reckon minivans are for the unruly. Otherwise, you would drive yourself. The countryside was pages from a Little Golden Book.

Drifting flower petals, huge crooked trees, green hills, and fields of rape. I'm sure someone from Switzerland would yawn at it, but for me it was magical.

An hour of beauty overload and we were in Kazimierz Dolny.

It's like a cute pocket version of the others but right on the river and stonier and castleier, It's the sort of place that has wells instead of fountains, you know what I mean? The big deal there is the rooster, and the bakeries have fought over the right to bake "cock bread," giant chicken-shaped rolls.

Big trademark battles over this stuff, and you could tell by the slight variations in the "tail" part. I'm sure I bought the knockoff version.

Climbed a hill with three crosses on it. My legs were like, "We climbed a tower earlier, brother. Art thou certain, thou wishest to climb yet more?" I silenced them with more climbing. It was nice up there, like Golgotha or some shit. Teenagers drank beer and picnicked at the base of the crosses.

This is why He gave himself.

Perfect cool breeze and glorious sparkling light from the river.I took a little tram to a gorge and to the Old Jewish Cemetery.  I found it very moving. The Nazis needed the tombstones to build things with, so they just tore up the cemetery and used it to shore up a bunker or build up a tower or slide under a wobbly table leg at a hunting lodge. 

The people were tools and their graves were material. 

At this memorial, they've built an enormous wall out of the recovered pieces of tombstone. It's haunting with a strange, sublime lightning crack in the center. 

Sober ride back to Lublin, a cheerful rooster magnet in my pocket. Jaroslaw's dog Lucy ate my rice cakes and licked my face and slept in my lap. He gave me coffee and told me about his troubles. Runs a cleaning service and wants to retire, but Poland has a law saying if you dissolve your business, you have to give all the employees three months of severance. He has 26 employees... "So, I stay open,"

Great sleep in the "rock and roll suite" of his home. Original pressings of Smiths records and Grace Jones for a lullaby. The hiss of vinyl, the pop of history.

Now to Bialystok

The Citroën to Lublin

 "The naivety of those with something to hide - a crime, a disgrace, a drama - is that they imagine they are under suspicion. In reality, there's a strong dose of indifference in this world, enough that you can go off and die and no one will notice. In the case of Jews, their mistake is that they observe too much and thereby believe themselves to be under scrutiny." - Mihail Sebastian

The long night crossing ended up meaning I ended up staying an extra day in Lviv, and I was determined to escape. I liked it very much, but who wants to Lviv forever? It's pretty hard to get out, but I felt like I had cracked the code with this ride-share service.

My Armenian hostess was very helpful in translating for me on the phone. I would catch an early ride with no problem. All I had to do was get to the parking lot of a grocery store in the middle of nowhere and hope a blue Citroen with someone named Ivan showed up. Piece of Orthodox Easter cake.

Cabbed it over there with my very last hryvnia and just... sat on the cement with all my bags. I looked through my notes and found some details I'd forgotten.

Lost Lviv Notes: I saw an old woman, ancient, wrapped in black scarves and a headdress, hiding from the rain under a platform on a playground. It was strange to see. Perhaps a hundred years ago, she'd had a tea party in that same spot, and now it was serving her again.

Men playing bocce ball next to a church for firemen.

The locked Wi-Fi at the apartment was called uniggazwantfreewifi

When I asked my hostess if she knew the cherry wine I'd tried, she said no, "I like, ah, wine, but not from fruit. But grape is fruit, but..that is the normal wine fruit. I like the normal wine fruit not the wine from cherry."

Everyone gave directions as if they'd never been there before but had been picturing it all their lives. This was also true in Poland. It was like someone who hasn't been to New York telling you how to get around. "Oh, there's a subway to the Empire State Building, which is nice, and then you make a left at the Statue of Liberty in Central Park."

Mozart's son lived and worked here for a long time. He was a teacher. He had to have had a rough life. How do you live up to being the son of a mega-genius? You hide out in the Ukraine is how. You're not going to see that dude in Vienna where his dad's face is on the damn chocolate.

A lot of the young men had shaved heads with, like, a tadpole of long hair streaking across their skulls. It had the effect of making them look like Charlie Brown and like awesome punk cellists at the same time.

One of the clocks on a prominent tower is permanently ahead by five minutes to commemorate the time a monk pushed the clock forward to make the bells ring early to make the guards close the gates early. He, the monk, was in the tower and saw the Tatars approaching. He had no other way to signal the guards, so he thought fast, and it worked.

I think that's it. Really great visit in a really interesting place. I never saw The High Castle, but I wouldn't have paid to go inside anyway.

My tiny burner phone blew up because my hostess was very concerned I would miss the Citroen. I told her I promised I would let her know. This wasn't good enough for her, so she somehow tracked the driver down and told them I was early and all alone in the parking lot.

Five minutes later, I was in the back seat. I thought I'd be waiting another thirty minutes. Armenian grandmas get shit done.

The email from the driver was signed "Ivan," but when he shook my hand, he said, "I am JOHN! Ivan is JOHN!" I said, "Hello, John,"

Also in the car was a mysterious dude in this 30s and a Polish couple who asked for ten extra minutes to buy vodka and cigarettes to smuggle across the border. Much cheaper in Ukraine than in Poland.

It was noon on a bright, clear day, and I was happy it had all worked out. I expected to be in Lublin in the early afternoon.

While we waited, Ivan asked me about myself.

What do you do United States? "I'm a writer." What do you write? "Mostly plays."
Politics? Political plays? "No, stories mostly. There's one about witches in prison."
What? Where is this place? "It's, I made it up." Is it like a reservation, Indian reservation?
"It's like a jail." And this is a real place, United States? "No, no. It's not real. I made it up."

(Silence)

What kind money this make? "It didn't make any money."
It is same here for writer. No money. I have book.
"What's it about?" My life. All I see. I can't finish it.
"Because you're not finished seeing things, maybe."
Maybe. I show to friends. They say is good, but I hate it. They like, say is very good, but I look at it and want to tear it up.
"That means you're a good writer."

The couple came back with three bags full of vodka. Enough for the master, the dame, and the little boy who lives down the lane. They clanked happily in the back and we were off. Ivan blasted the song I Got My Mind Set On You as we tore toward the highway. That song is terrible at any volume, but we were moving, and it was unexpected, so I was in love with the whole situation. I clapped.

Ivan-Called-John was animated in conversation, his voice frequently lifting into a Seinfeldian register. Once we were on the road, he and the Polish guy were off to the races talking about... how to clean a fish? One weird trick that makes dentists hate you? The Brexit?

The Polish girl was named Agnieszka and she spoke very good English. There were a few gaps, though.

How did you like Lviv?
"It was very nice. I loved walking around, and I read a lot of interesting old stories."
What story?
Well...

I told her the story about the Rooster King and the ox with the golden horns. From her expression, it didn't look like I had told it well enough to be understood.

She asked, "What is awks?"
Sorry?
"You said awks, King gets awks. What is this?"
Oh, it's, uh, an animal. Like, a farm animal that pulls a plow. You know plow?
"No"

John got involved and I ended up drawing a picture that made them think an ox was a bull. And since I don't actually know the difference, I went with it. In their defense, I had drawn a ring in its nose. John wanted to keep going. He had an idea that he had seen this mysterious ox creature on his travels and that it was a hybrid of a bull and an ass.

He also said that there was no time to show me one.

After about ninety minutes, we got to customs at the border. It wasn't the same one I'd walked across a few days ago. Lublin is much further east than Krakow, so you go a different way. Ivan turned the car off. "Now we wait," he said, Is not so bad... only one hundred cars.

He wasn't joking. The line in front of us was about a hundred cars. We were going to be there for a very very long time.

And so we were. The sky was beautiful with giant clouds hanging over rolling yellow fields. Hawks circled. I read a novel about Romanian politics. It was good, and eventually I had time to read the whole thing. It's rare that I get to read a book cover to cover like that.

I would get out sometimes and stretch my legs. Ivan and the Poles went for a long hike. The Mysterious Silent copilot stayed in the car the whole time and listened to a playlist of club music. Weird techno-covers of No Woman No Cry and Forever Young.

And there we sat. For two hours. Three hours. I got out of the car. The Poles came back and got in. Then they got out to smoke. Other people in other cars went to far-off regions and came back with hot dogs in pita bread. The way the dogs stuck up from the tubed bread, they looked like lipsticks.

We entered the fourth hour. I had expected to be in Lublin two hours ago. By some miracle, there was a pocket of free Wi-Fi coming from somewhere. I was able to write my host and tell him I was running late. Maybe another two hours.

But two hours later, we were still at the border. Stretching my legs, unstretching them. In the car, up a hill to pee, back in the car, finishing the book. We all started to smell. There wasn't any water. Agnieszka curled up with her boyfriend in such a way that her soft haunch rested against my thigh. To my discredit, I didn't move away.

Female soldiers marched in the distance. I hummed Nikita to myself and cracked myself up. "Oh, Nikita, you will never know..." I started a Toni Morrison book. She's a goddamn genius. I love everything I've read by her.

On the side of the road, a woman let her long black hair fly in the wind. It was like she was underwater or falling. It was like what a cuttlefish does to confuse you.

If this were a movie, they would show cow skulls and you would hear the cry of distant carrion birds.

Eventually we edged closer. Sometime late in the fifth hour. It was time to take our passports out and no one in the car had ever seen an American passport. It was fascinating to them, and they sounded out some of the words on the inside cover.

It was very difficult to help them understand what "spangled" meant. They loved all my visas and stamps from around the world. The East Asian ones were of special interest, since so colorful.

It was nice. Their passport photos were in black and white, which I didn't know.

There was some candy in the car and we shared it. I hadn't had breakfast or lunch, and I'd been awake for ten hours now. Somehow, though, I wasn't hungry. I felt very stoic about the whole ordeal. The biggest concern was that I would be inconveniencing my host in Lublin. I had lost the Wi-Fi pocket.

At last, one of the Nikitas waved us through. Over six hours. The sun was setting. Lublin was lost.

On the radio, The Scorpions sang about following the Moskva down to Gorky Park.

John made a bee's line for the nearest Polish McDonalds. I didn't want to eat there, but "When in Poland..." I hummed the theme song and even the ones who didn't speak English shouted "I'm lovin' it."  A good laugh.

Had a Big Mac for the first time in decades. Tasted different. Fries were the same. Glorious. The best in the world. There was fried brie on the menu. Also McWiFi, so I was able to let the host know I hadn't been riddled with bullets.

Two hours later we were in Lublin. Hugged goodbye, shook hands goodbye, said goodbye and No Woman No Cry, and found a cab.

My hosts are a charming older married couple who love to meet new people.

They have two small dogs. It's a house with all the comforts of home. I was very happy not to be in a car anymore. My room has a giant bicycle painted on the wall.

They apologized for not having anything for me to eat and served me ham and eggs, Portuguese sausage, grapes, Turkish tea, and two slices of cake.

Juroslaw is the man's name and he told me about every dog he's ever owned. I got the whole history. Then he told me he loved the United States and had met some Navajo wind talkers in New Mexico at a museum. He disappeared and came back with an autograph book. "These are their names," he said.

He's fascinated with WWII and it was a treat for him to have met the men who had a code the Nazis never could crack. I liked how much he liked it.

He told me today was Constitution Day in Poland and that all the stores were closed. He told me they had more dream catchers in the house than just the ones I could see. He went away and came back with cheese and berries.

"I must tell you," he said, "The house is yours tonight, but there are also two French people sleeping here in another room. Will you have breakfast with them?"

I said I would. "It will be difficult," he said, "Because they say they speak a little English, but I think the word 'little' is not one of the English words they know, because they speak no English. We can't really talk with them."

I said they were as impossible to understand as the Navajo wind talkers, and he laughed and hit me on the back all the way upstairs to my bicycle room.

Easter in the Lion's Den

I'm left with the impression that the churches here are very active and a serious part of people's lives, but I'm also here during Julian Calendar Holy Week, and I might be seeing exaggerated attendance. In any case, it's very pretty, even for an atheist, to hear group singing and to see people dressed in their finery.

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.

But the burner phone places were all closed for Alternate Universe Easter. So, it would have to be the morning. But, do cats celebrate Easter too? Hauled my newtons all the way down there to discover... It was open. Glory!

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.

The Wettest Cheese in Lion Town

Lviv is a large and very pretty city with plazas, markets, and winding streets. There's a rewarding Old City and gorgeous architectural details and bursts of wild nature in the sprawling outskirts. Big parks and active cathedrals and friendly crowds.

The trams run on wires, so the sky is criss-crossed with the geometry of transportation, and that gives off a sort of San Francisco vibe which only deepens as you encounter the liberal views of the people. Is Lviv the Berkeley of Eastern Europe?

I slept in on my first morning, a rare luxury and much needed, and went out to tick tock along the cobblestones. I was a clockboy keeping time on the streets. It was a Saturday, so folks appeared to be at their leisure.

There's plenty to see and endless church spires, so it was a little hard to designate a landmark. The street names are mostly in Cyrillic, and though there are frequent helpful street signs in English, they were never exactly where I wanted them.

Which isn't their fault. I just want them all the time, because I am awful with directions and something weird has happened to my short term memory over the last few years. When I have a map, I just shred it pulling it in and out of my pocket, and sometimes that old devil takes control and spins that map around.

If you can pronounce the Cyrillic alphabet, you absolutely recognize the words. It's just a matter of remembering/learning. The trick I learned in Bulgaria is that the word рестора́н means "restaurant" and you see it everywhere, so it's a frequent reminder.

You know what it means, so you can be like, "Right, the P is an R. You pronounce C like S and H is an N." It has most of the "traitor" letters in it, and then all you have to do is remember that the "strange" letters are pronounced like the Greek letters you know.

So, the P sound they surrendered to the R shows up again as pi. 3 is a Z. They love math so much, it's part of their alphabet.

However, like anything unfamiliar, it's easy to just blank out.

Blanked out over to some little carts where I bought some Ukrainian Easter Eggs as souvenirs and poked around looking for vegetables. Found a glorious sort of farmer's market with gnarly old carrots and deep green cucumbers. Bought a sack full. Everyone chattered away at me like I was a person.

Everything was pennies. The biggest concern was that I would have too large a bill. Like, I didn't want to look like a gangster with a fat roll of cash. But having anything over $5 looks that way. The Monopoly man there to buy parsnips for a laugh.

A woman had some white squares on cloth. Some was obvious feta cheese, dripping wet, and some was more solid-looking and less wet. I bought a big square of it. Big cheese fan here, and why not try the homemade local stuff.

There wasn't any bread around, and that seemed like the best companion for this wet cheese, so I decided that would be the quest. Find some bread.

Chewed my carrots and explored. In all these places, you look for the Stare Miasto (which means Old Town) and the Rynek (which I thought meant square but means "marketplace"). The Rynek in Lviv is smack in the middle of the Stare Miasto.

I had gone out without the camera on purpose. The point here was to just explore without the "tyranny" of documentation. I dearly love photowalks, they're almost the whole point. But on this day, after that long border crossing, I just wanted to be. Just find some bread and have a relaxing morning.

Of course, I took notes for things I would want to see later when I was armed. One of the churches had a marvelous studded green door that I instantly decided was my favorite in the world. I bought a magnet that looked like a lion with ribbons in his mane.

Lviv is named after a dude named Lev who ruled under the name King Leo. So, lions are everywhere. They work them into every design, and the park benches have little winged lion emblems on them.

There were some bakeries and some people selling baked goods in the street but no bread. What they had were these special holiday haystack cakes (apparently a famous Orthodox treat) and long bricks of, I presume, cinnamon snacks.

It's funny how you get obsessed with small stuff when you're traveling. Like, getting a nice loaf to go with the cheese was my idée fixe. Gorgeous cathedrals all around, a city dripping with history, interesting locals, and would have tossed them all for a sack of rolls.

Made my way past some interesting statues based on Greek gods. I love how all statues essentially look alike. Saints and gods, just bodies, but the little symbols tell you who they are and fill them with meaning. It's just a stone lady, but.. dogs....it's Diana!

I get emotional thinking about how the world was before writing. Someone had to tell you what the dogs meant, and maybe it was slightly different depending on who told you.

Found a little market and went in for bread. Big glass counter full of... meats and endless fish. Just, all sorts of tiny, oily fish. Terrifying and beautiful (and gross). Gasping mouths and void-like eyes.

I pointed to something that looked like a cutlet but might have been a fried egg. The lady (who spoke no English), picked up two burrito-looking things. Sure. I nodded and she wrapped them up for me. Pointed again to the cutlets. A fist full of cabbage. Sure. In the pile. Cutlets? Fish. I really didn't want the fish, so it was the first time I said no,

God, that plastic glove heaped with those silver bodies.

She only let half of them fall out. Fine. Fish. Pointed again to the cutlet and it worked. Cutlet!

No bread. Headed home with a bag of vegetables, a sack of meat and fish, and the centerpiece, that marvelous dripping square of mysterious cheese,

Got a little lost, because that's what I do. Giant metal men on horseback, huge towers with golden flames on top, bright velvet giraffes in front of a toy store.

On the road home, a woman was selling pussywillows and herbs and had a bag of what looked like a sliced baguette. Fortune! I walked up and asked for it. It was a heavy bag of perogi. Like, forty of them. I know perogi, I know what they look like. And yet... I was bread mad and everything I think I see becomes a slice of bread to me.

Bought them anyway. Enough food for a minivan full of pig farmers.

Back home, I laid it all out on the table. Wooden eggs, a pyramid of food. I put one of the burrito things in my mouth. Some kind of savory fried meat. I put the fish in the fridge so I didn't have to look at them.

Unwrapped the cheese. I'm the kind of dude who eats a brick of cheese like a candy bar. I sometimes slice it if I'm sharing, but if it's just me, I hold the cheese and I bite off chunks,

Grabbed it and my fingers really sank in. Would I need... a spoon? Was it like... soggy feta or...

It was butter.

I couldn't write a better punchline. A long, wandering journey with the single purpose of finding bread for my cheese, and it ended without bread and, it turns out, never even started with cheese.

The butter was delicious. I dipped the cucumber in it. It was that kind of party.

Rescued by Pig Farmers

"I received two punches during today's lectures and got eight pages of notes. Good value for two punches." - Mihail Sebastian

Getting back to Tarnow from Zalipie was just supposed to happen. And it did. In retrospect, that was an important missing link in the transport chain. I could have been sitting on the side of the road for hours, potentially. But just about 20 minutes after I got to the shelter, I heard that old minivan a'rumblin', I hitched up my skirts, showed some leg, and I was aboard.

Easy ride back, easy train back to Krakow. The train had Wi-Fi, so I didn't read. My Instagram had been hacked and someone made me follow, like 150 random companies. Spent most of the ride deleting them. It was nice to have something mindless to do after all the travelmath.

Pulled in and figured, since I was at the station and would have to leave again in just a few hours, I might as well buy the ticket to L'viv right then. Which was a good thought, because it turns out international tickets need to be bought at a special desk and the special desk closes early.

The special desk room was filled with shady characters. Fagin's boys, disgraced soldiers, unhanged murderers, etc. When it was my turn, I was told the midnight train to L'viv was sold out. Record scratch!

It was the only train. The next one would be midnight the following day. For whatever reason, there's only one way to get there and it's only late at night. I had read, though, that you could do things the hard way and take a train to the border, walk across and take a taxi to L'viv.

This seemed sketchy, but not like, I don't know bribing an official or anything. It was just going to be uncomfortable to haul my bags around in the dark, and there was a lot of uncertainty about the exact process.

I went ahead and bought the ticket for the border town of Przemysl. I tried to make puns like, "I'm no prize myself" out of it, but nothing satisfied. At least the ticket was cheap. Like, maybe $10.

Then I hauled my eyebrows back to the apartment to finish the last day of work.

The office was very generous to let me work from here for a week, and I was kind of selfish about the way I conducted myself. I met my obligations, but without any flair. I love the job, and I work with cool people, but I placed adventure and personal pleasure over complete dedication.

Did they notice? Is it cool? In any case, the actual vacation started... now.

Charged everything, packed everything, set my out-of-office emails, and headed into the unknown.

Train to Przemysl was hellishly packed. Bunch of drunk baldies and mean moms. I guess everyone was headed home to Ukraine for Easter. It was the same train as the L'viv one, but only fifty or so people are allowed to stay on the train at the border. Everyone else has to fuck off at Przemyl.

So, after a weird three-hour halfsleep, I fucked off at Przemyl.

It was around 2 AM. Fine little dark little stony town. I understand it's nice during the day. It was all blurry red lights and long slashes of smeary yellow lights.

I sang snatches of my all-time favorite song: "Cold streets, grey town, early morning, no one around. Cold streets, grey town, it's bound to get or bring you down."

The way to cross the border is to take a cab to ANOTHER little town and walk across. But I half-hoped the Magic School Bus would just float up offering rides to L'viv. I also held out hope some of the backpack people would be from California or something. But taxi after taxi took group after group away, and I was left alone. There was another train advertised as leaving at 4 AM, but... would it be sold out?

There was nothing for it but to just jump in. I'd already dipped my toe by coming this far. Took the next cab to Medyka (it's in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship, dontcha know). He charged me a lot of money because what was I going to do, not pay it? Call the przolice?

I mean, it was a long ride and it was, like, $17. Would have been a lot more in the US where cabs are insane. I often wonder how people from Europe budget trips to, like, New York. It's a month's salary to get from the airport to the parking lot of the airport.

Taxis in Europe are very very cheap. $17 might be the most I've ever paid.

It was the middle of nowhere. There was a dark little gate and a sad little bar. Drunks smoking in front. I could see a highway in the distance with a long line of trucks, It had to be the border. Is that where you walked across?

Had to ask for help at a miserable grocery store. Bought some water and a security guard farted out the directions. Turns out it was the dark little gate the driver had let me off in front of. He was an honest thief.

It looked like the entrance to a closed park, but I walked through it. Creeping up on 3 AM. Mind mostly crunchy with nosleep. Just wandered Virgil-less through whichever malbolge it was. Probably the one where people who do the minimum at work are sent.

Got to a sad little office where a line of hopeful people waited for their visas. When it was my turn, the guy looked me up and down, flipped through a few pages and stamped it. Krick, krack, get into my sack.

Was that it?

Funneled down another path, the others shuffled along with me. One guy had a bicycle and bullied everyone the way some healthy people do. A lot of cyclists are like this. I think the mindset is:

"You are all sick fatties doomed to die a greasy death, whereas I am actually living my life. I'm not going to let the french-fried shadow of what a person can actually become stop me or even slow me. My life is important. Yours isn't or you would be on a bike."

Stumbled along in the barely-lit dark to another shed where there was another checkpoint. I was the only American, and it was a real surprise for the guard lady. She couldn't believe it, had to call for backup. Another lady came and was like, woah, I thought you were joking. The looked me up and down. Looked at the passport photo and back at me. Photo. Me. Photo. Me.

One of them rubbed it with her nails.

I was close to dreaming, my brain was an ether-soaked cotton ball, so I started to worry about the striped sweater I had in my bag. It's a Russian Navy sweater, and Ukraine doesn't like Russia. What if they went through my bag? It would be like trying to bring a Marlins jersey into Tampa.

They let me through. Would there be any more checkpoints? Noap. There was only the darkness of whatever they call this side of the border.  I was legally in Ukraine and 80km out of L'viv. If the taxi had been shared or the usual price, I would have done the whole thing for under $20. Pretty amazing, really.

BUT, the luck I had in filling in the missing transport link back in Zalipie didn't hold up here. Here, I thought for sure there would be obvious minivans or buses or cabs eager to take walkers the extra 50 miles to the b'ig c'ity, but... I guess if you're walking, you're a cheapskate, so they don't figure on a payoff.

It was also, like 3:30 and they were probably just now slapping their prostitutes out of the boiler room.

So... I stood on a corner and watched the trucks I'd seen on the other side slowly make their way through. Watched sadly as comfortable-seeming tourists yawned in their bus seats.

A currency exchange cart I thought was closed was actually open, but the lady who lived in it was asleep. She was beautiful (as all sleeping people are). She had a little fleece blanket. It was like a fairy tale or one of those robot Fortune Teller machines. After some other dude woke her up, I felt cool with handing her some money and getting some hryvnia.

It's pronounced GRIV-NA (I think).

I looked at the colorful bills and said, "'Ello, Grivna, fine day on the king's road."

Because of the war, the currency has crashed, so $1 is 25 UAH. Which meant it would be next to nothing to get a ride into L'viv, but there was no ride. In a kind of patient desperation, any time a car stopped near the dumb little building where I waiting, I made a hopeful face and said "L'viv?"

I guess I was hoping they were cabs, but in almost every case, they were just people. And they had only stopped to piss on the walls of the building I was standing next to. It was the border piss building.

Most people just shook their heads, and you know, if some foreigner in San Antonio was like, "Austin? Austin?" he wouldn't get to Austin.

One dude was like, "NIE!" which, if it doesn't mean "no" certainly had all the implications of "no." I went back to my corner and tried not to get peed on. I wasn't totally out of hope yet, just sort of weary and clumsy feeling.

I felt a tug at my sleeve. It was NIE man. He said "L'vov" to me.

A note here. This place is called Lviv, L'viv, Lvov, Lwow, and all kinds of shit. I don't know who makes the rules, and the way he said it wasn't the way I had asked, but it was a miracle in any case.

Another note. The general rule in Eastern Europe is: Young guy in track suit, cool. Old guy in regular suit, cool. Old guy in track suit, danger. Young guy in regular suit, danger.

This guy was in his 50s and in a track suit. I thought of that great line in 1984, when Winston has picked up a girl for the evening:  "When I saw her in the light she was quite an old woman, fifty years old at least. But I went ahead and did it just the same."

Driver had told me to go away once and was wearing a track suit, but I went with him just the same.

As it so happened, a passenger in the back of the van assumed I was American or European and asked the driver to give me a break. He, the passenger, sat next to me and told me his name was Sasha. He spoke very good English.

We were off to Lvivovow. I was relieved and felt extraordinarily lucky. I don't think I was in any danger on that corner, but it wasn't comfortable, and I would have had an encounter with a drunk at some point.

The sun was coming up and everything was limned in a dark, dark blue. The sky was like one of the domed churches of Santorini.

Sasha told me that they were pig farmers who had been on the road for several days. They worked in Denmark but were home for the holidays. As we bounced through a big pothole, he said, "Ukrainian roads!" and smiled.

He told me the driver, who was drinking cognac out of an airplane bottle, claimed to be uncomfortable driving in Germany because the roads were too nice.

He told me about the fighting in Crimea and how the country was mad at the government for not spending more money on the war. I thought, but did not say, that it was the opposite in the US.

"There is no money, so everyone gives. All the grandfathers knit socks for the soldiers. All the grandmothers give their last tomato for the soldiers."  How I loved both of those images.

He told me the driver, our driver, would regularly deliver food to the front lines. "Sometimes just an onion."

When the driver lit a cigarette and reached into his bag for more cognac, I laughed, and Sasha said, "Do not worry, he has been driving for forty years."

I was invited to meet Sasha's girlfriend in another town, He hadn't seen her for six months, and they only had a few days together before he had to get back to the Danish pig farm, but he offered to use that time to show me around their village. Jesus. He'd already rescued me.

Oh, they charged me $4 for the 90-minute drive. I'd say that canceled out the cab.

When they dropped me off, he said, "I hear your voice and tell driver to help you, because America help us, so we help America." It was touching. They sped off, drunkenly swerving toward the potholes on purpose.

And now I had another problem. I was at my apartment, but it was 5:30 and I wasn't expected until 7. It was cold on the doorstep. The door opened and a very old woman with a mop beckoned me in, She was cleaning the hallway tile and wearing a uniform. Did she work for the state? It was so peaceful watching her work.

I was happy to be inside and climbed up to the apartment number. The stairs were marble and slippery. It got dark inside when the State Mopper left.

The apartment number I wanted wasn't there. I pulled out all my notes. I was in the wrong building.
Slipped on the stairs and the wet tile, back into the street. Found the right building. Figured out the code lock, went up (more tile, more marble, more darkness),

When I got to the door, my host stepped out. I thought I was way early, but the time zone here is an hour ahead! So I was only a little early, and so was she.

She showed me everything and on her way out made sure I understood that the little plate of Armenian pancakes was for me.  "There is no meat!" she said, "Only herbs! You understand herbs?"

I did. I understood them in bed.

I slept in my clothes, clothes which had been in a train, cab, customs house, piss building, pig van, and now a strange bed.

Hello Ukraine and Good Night.