May 30th
Chernivtsy to Ternopil, Ukraine
2669 Miles traveled from London
We woke up at the flat where Alina and her husband Alex were kind enough to let us stay with their family. Svetlana, Alina's mother, cooked us some pelmini for breakfast, which is a very delicious dumpling with meat wrapped inside.
Alina took us around the town and showed us her university. It was amazing and beautiful.
They have a large pebble and stone area in the center of campus which I found out you are not supposed to walk on. I didn't know this until I stepped out on it to take a picture and saw the look of horror on Alina's face. The grass in the city is off limits too. That one I had the foresight to ask about.
We did a bit of shopping at the local market and put on our monkey suits (what we call our bike suits with armor) right before we left town. Putting on the monkey suits is apparently just like screaming out "Look at me! Everyone stare at me right now!" When we arrived in town we parked so J could go call Alina to let her know we'd arrived. We happened to park at a trolley stop. Unlike where we are from, every single bus here is bursting with passengers. Passengers who all stare out the windows. At us. Bus after bus full of eyes that just stare at you.
Personal space is a completely different concept here. It doesn't really exist. It's a 50/50 chance that someone who comes up to us will try to talk to us. Many of them seem content to just stand 3 feet behind us while we talk/eat/repair and not say a word. It's become common for us to say "Please just stand there and don't talk. It's not weird at all that I'm practically sitting on your shoes while I fix my bike," knowing that they have no idea we're even talking to them. The people's that do talk with us are always friendly but are so close to us that we know what they ate for breakfast. Culture clash, nothing bad.
Right on queue, the skies opened up and rained on us all the way to Ternopil. We had arranged a place to stay, but with the weather being as bad as it was it took us twice as long to get there and the people had gone to sleep. We stopped at a random gas station and met these guys.
A half dozen or so Ukrainian kids swarmed around us and we ended up hanging out with them for 3 hours at the gas station. They let us warm up in their car (which J took for a spin) and were genuinely friendly guys. We all danced to some Russian music blaring out of Andriyi's car. It's on tape, you'll see it. Don't worry. Andriyi (their equivilant of Andrew) lived nearby and was nice enough to let us stay at his place. He knew enough english to say "My house!" and made the gesture for sleep. There is no drinking age here and he was ripped. He was saying we could shower at his place and kept saying "Douche! Douche!" and dancing around like he was showering. After driving in the freezing rain for 5 hours, we ended up staying at the home of a sauced 17 year old Ukranian kid who's mom runs a full service day spa out of the house. If we had stuck around the next morning we were told we could have gotten massages, but we needed to get on the road. Talk about being pampered.
-Andrew
