This weekend marked the fulfillment of something I started back in early March, when I reserved my spot on a trip to Lviv, Ukraine.

We left Warsaw at 10 p.m. on Thursday—the bus ride would take all night. At first I had two seats to myself, but then a conniving girl convinced me and the guy across the aisle from me—who also had two seats to himself—to sit together so she could sit by her friend.

Though I was understandably miffed for a while, that’s how I met Konrad, a nice German fellow who turned out to be my roommate and companion throughout the weekend.

Even though it was a night bus and we were presumedly all going to sleep the whole way so we’d be properly awake in the morning, the Spaniards would have none of that. Somehow they stayed up all night drinking and singing songs, and the rest of the bus therefore rested very poorly.

Among the highlights of the to-trip was our first pit stop, in which we parked at a gas station for 15 minutes so everyone could go to the bathroom. Well, it just so happened that this gas station was taking its daily 15-minute closing (so they could count the drawers) exactly as we arrived. After a terrible few minutes, they quit their shenanigans and decided to open up the bathroom for us.

Somehow crossing the border into Ukraine took 4 or more hours. Jeez. In any case, we all were accepted into the country, as if this were some sort of privilege, and wow—if you thought roads in Poland were bad, you’ll find Ukrainian roads are in a category all on their own. I suspect, in fact, that they might be better off without any roads at all.

So we finally arrived in Lviv around 10 a.m., and we unloaded our junk into Hotel Lviv, which proved to be a fitting receptacle for junk. Supposedly it was a 5-star hotel in the Soviet times, but even that I find hard to believe. I’ll let the photos of my room below speak for themselves. There were also rumors of bedbugs…

Anyway, after we’d gotten our breakfast and showered and whatever, we began our sightseeing at Lvivska Brewery, where we were promised a tour.

I imagined we’d be doing a tour of the actual brewery and see their actual beer-making facilities, but all we got was a semi-boring museum whose only consolation was free beer at the end. But even that wasn’t thaaat good.

Next we took a bus ride to the Lychakiv Cemetery, in which a million dead people and statues live. We walked around for a while with a tour guide telling us the stories of some significant lives. Pretty cool.

Fast forward to after dinner (around 7 p.m.), when Konrad and I lay down for what we planned to be a short nap, since neither of us slept well during the bus ride.

Fast forward to the next morning, when we woke up.

After a groggy breakfast, we prepared ourselves for more sightseeing: tours of the Opera, Old Town and the remains of Lviv Castle/the top of a very tall hill.

That night we crashed Club Metro, where they had pole-dancing transvestites and all.

The next day was a free day. Being proactive, Konrad had asked the tour guide on Saturday what nearby city she would recommend that we visit. She gave him directions to Truskavets, a town about an hour away famous for its natural springs of youthanizing water and a warning that we don’t drink too much from one of the springs (but no indication as to which one that might be) because doing so could result in kidney failure.

Around 11 a.m. we—Konrad, Martyna (Polish girl), Andrea (Spanish girl) and I—were finally en route to Truskavets. Well, on the tram that would hopefully take us to the bus station that would hopefully take us to Truskavets. No need to have been so droll, though; we made it in one piece.

After a maybe-two-hour bus ride, we emerged in the middle of nowhere. As far as we could tell, Truskavets consisted of nothing more than a roundabout crossroads with a hotel and three other buildings. The roundabout did have a fountain in the middle… Could this be the famous spring?

We walked around searching for any sign of anything, Martyna asking everybody we happened across (Polish is close enough to Ukrainian for basic communication) for any information regarding anything that they could provide in any way. We soon found out that people in Truskavets don’t know much about where anything is.

Eventually, we found a restaurant, which was our primary objective at the time, since none of us had eaten properly all day, and it was around 4 p.m. We had a fantastic meal: salads, soups, chicken and buttery vegetables; luckily our waitress spoke Polish. Even more luckily, we were just about the only people in the place, so she could spare a lot of time to tell us about Truskavets and what we could do there.

She gave us directions to the water springs, and we took off walking. It turned out that anything worthwhile in the town was a good mile or two from the bus station.

We came to the first of the springs, where we, obviously, tried some of the water.

It was really good—slightly sulfury. I felt healthier already. There must really be something to it; the spring was full of people hanging out and drinking from ceramic mugs, just as people in other cities might hang out at a tavern.

In time, we came to the other spring, which had water in many different “flavors.” Some better than others… (And one was positively awful.) After that, we searched in vain for the train station (which I’m still convinced doesn’t exist), and ended up taking a taxi back to the bus station.

Long day done, it was time to turn in. Martyna wasn’t so tired, though, and ended up going out with Konrad and some others for a midnight walk throughout the Old Town, where she attempted to incite a revolution, beginning by trying to convince a Ukrainian guy about how screwed up his country is.

The next day we had time for breakfast and a bit of sitting around, and then it was time to get outta Ukraine. It was a long bus ride, but it gave me the chance to finally finish reading Great Expectations, which I recently picked back up (after borrowing it from my dad about 6 years ago without ever reading). Really a great book.

So that’s basically what happened… I’m sure I left some things out. For instance, how annoying both Spaniards and Poles can be when they’re assembled en masse and left to their own devices.

All in all, it’s definitely an interesting place. Lviv would certainly be one of eastern Europe’s greatest heritage sites if it weren’t in such a dismal state of disrepair, but it has a certain charm as it is. At the same time, it’s totally weird (the reason might be a combination of their ridiculous alphabet and their 1980’s style).

The weather is wonderful, though, and there are some really beautiful parts of the city…. So how could you complain?

See more pictures here in my Facebook album.