Ukraine II: On the road again

Ok, I'm FINALLY writing the rest of my travel story from my insane drive to Ukraine last year. I've already blogged about the Oslo - Berlin - Poland stretch for Saturday-Monday here.

Tuesday I drove to the Ukrainian border, alongside miles of parked trucks waiting to get in. I was very happy they had separate lanes for cars. Upon arrival a soldier wrote down my registration number and the number of passengers in the car (1) on a small scrap of paper. Despite his instructions that I absolutely, positively HAD to keep this little piece paper, I managed to lose it in the ten minutes it took to travel the 50 feet to the border checkpoint. I never even left the car, and to this day I have no clue as to how I did it. Clearly I have a talent for these things.

The guy at the immigration control gave a weary sigh when I explained that I had in fact lost the paper, and he then had to get out of his booth, track down some more paper and then painstakingly write the same useless information on a new, tiny scrap which he then stamped in red ink. I was then waived through with no further information. Imagine then my surprise when I came to the last checkpoint and was told I had to go back and get a BLUE stamp on it - for CUSTOMS, you see.

So I backed up the 50 or so yards to the main buildings and tried to get me a blue stamp. This was easier said than done. None of the many soldiers hanging around spoke English, but fortunately I was not alone in my quest, lots of Poles and Ukrainians were also stuck waiting for it. After five minutes a grumpy woman finally emerged from one of the side buildings, still wiping the crumbs of her lunch from her ugly mug. Needless to say, none of the cars got even a perfunctory check, she just stamped a dozen pieces of paper and went back inside again. Also needless to say, the guys at the final checkpoint just glanced at my red & blue stamps and waved me through. There was no point to the whole procedure, it just had to be done according to proper rules and regulations.

I'll save you the tales of woe connected with driving into Ukraine without enough hard currency on hand, suffice it to say I was very happy and very hungry when I finally reached a city big enough to have an international ATM. Having filled up on food and gas I stopped and asked for directions to get back on the main road, and probably provided entertainment for the rest of the month to a couple of young people walking their babies in strollers. They spoke maybe twenty words of English between them, and the directions were given (and received) using a combination of hand signals and sounds that to an uninitiated bystander probably looked more like we were all having brain seizures at the same time.

Ukraine is generally flat and boring to drive through. Giant forests and huge plains pretty much make up the landscape, and the many tiny towns and villages are quite dull, grey and worn down. As in Poland I could see (mostly old) people walking their cattle to graze from the grass along the roadside, and some places they were selling their local produce out of buckets or carts. I'm willing to bet their style of clothing hasn't changed much for a couple of centuries.

I'd been told that the speed limit on the motorways was up to 120kmh (75mph), so as I was on a four-lane highway I felt safe in doing 110. Road signs are few and far between in Ukraine, but I honestly thought I was on a motorway until I came around a bend and was promptly waved in by a couple of police officers. It turned out I was in a "town zone" - marked exclusively by a Ukrainian sign, not a number - and had been measured doing 108 kmh in a 60 zone. In Norway this would probably have meant jail time, or at the very least I'd have lost my license. Here they wrote "150" on a piece of paper - meaning I had to pay 150 Hryvna (=$30). My lowest denomination was a 200 Hr bill, which the policeman promptly put in his breast pocket (aka his pension fund). I was then given a firm handshake and sent off without any change or receipt.

I later found out that even this small amount was way too much. Apparently, since they know the odds of getting a foreigner to appear in court, local cops never push the issue of traffic tickets to the point of actually issuing them - they will only harass you for a while. Therefore, one should always keep a 20 Hr note ready to give them after arguing for a couple of minutes. That way both you and the Ukrainian government save face and money.


From the border area - No trumpet playing allowed!

Brief update from Kiev

Yes! I made it here alive! Brief summary of the trip so far:

Saturday: Norway-Berlin. Found a cheap motel without any hot water, but since there was a huge gas station with showers just 200 meters up the road, that was no problem. However, the house party they were having in the basement until 1AM was.

Sunday: Completely missed the intended exit into Berlin, which would have taken me to my hotel. Instead, through sheer dumb luck I ended up outside the Altes Museum, where I intended to go anyway. I spent several hours browsing through their wonderful Egyptian collection, and finally fulfilled my old dream of seeing the famous Nefertiti bust. It is every bit as stunning and lifelike as pictures make it out to be.

In the evening I hooked up with a couple of Dutch hitchhikers, who I'd agreed to take with me to Lublin, Poland (see hitchhikers). They were very nice people, and we had a pleasant dinner and conversation, much of it centering on the numerous similarities between Netherlands and Norway.

Monday: We navigated our way out of the road hell that is Berlin, and set off for Poland. T'was a long drive through mainly flat and boring landscape (there were shouts of joy every time we saw a hillside...) and a lot of jokes regarding the general standard of the Polish countryside. One of the Dutch suggested they could have been the set for Borat's hometown.

I dropped them off at their campsite and almost immediately picked up a couple of Polish hitchhikers. This turned out to be a fortunate move, since they were able to spot my hotel, whose sign was written in such a ridiculously embroidered writing, I wouldn't have found it in a million years.

I had dinner in the hotel restaurant. The food was quite tasty, but the waiter looked like it hadn't quite dawned on him yet that he would no longer be sent to Siberia for talking to westerners.

Off again

My travel foot is twitching, so I'm off again... driving to Ukraine Saturday morning! Stopping over in Berlin Sunday, on to Poland Monday, then off again to Kiev on Tuesday... then Saturday next week I'm driving to Odessa together with an Ukrainian friend and her colleague, then I'll start driving home Monday... going through Moldova, where I'll probably spend a night. I'll probably be back Thursday two weeks from now (if I make it back alive at all).

Travelblog: Northumbria

Wednesday I drove on to Lindisfarne aka Holy Island, which holds the dubious (in my view) title of "Cradle of Christianity" in northern England. The monastery here was one of the most important in all of England until the vikings raided their asses in 793, an attack commonly considered to be the first proper viking attack on the British Isles. The old Anglo-Saxon church was later rebuilt in Norman style, but that too is now in ruins (the proper state for any religious building if you ask me, which you probably won't).




One of the most important of these early morons/monks was St Cuthbert, who for large parts of his time here lived in isolation on this tiny island just off the coast of Lindisfarne. Mentally, I immediately renamed him St Nutbert.




Nice, pastoral image, eh?




The road between Lindisfarne and the mainland is often flooded. There are tables posted on either side to show when it's safe to drive out. The view at low tide:

Travelblog: England... and Scotland again

I drove on south alongside Loch Lomond, then across to Edinburgh before turning south again to Cornhill, a small place about 30 minutes west of Berwick upon Tweed (England). The hotel I had booked was an old manor house, very stylish and all, but the experience was somewhat ruined by a huge stain on the bed, which ran all the way from the top sheet down through several layers of blankets into the matress itself. Yuck.

Rather than pay the exorbitant £35 the hotel charged for a dinner, I ventured out to find some cheap pub grub. Within five minutes I found myself in the tiny Scottish border town of Coldstream which advertised itself as the "first real border toon" if I remember correctly. Here I had one of the best, positive surprises of my traveling life. I went to a cozy little pub called the Besom and ordered something called Moroccan chicken. This turned out to be possibly the best meal I've had on the British Isles. The sauce was honeybased and the taste was simply divine. I had just enough shame in me not to order a second full dinner, and settled for stuffing my face with their delicious cheesecake instead. If you're ever in the north of England or the south of Scotland, try this place!

Travelblog: Drive

The rest of Tuesday was one long drive... I decided to take the long route south, and drove all the way to the west coast, through places like Fort William and Glencoe. The Highlands are nice, and the landscape reminded me a lot of the Norwegian Highlands and the coastal areas of the north.

This is a memorial to British Commando soldiers, many of whom received their WWII training in the Scottish Highlands.




Them hills be STEEP.




You're mine, all mine. All the digestible parts of you anyway...




Is nice.

Travelblog:Loch Ness

Tuesday I bid farewell to Inverness and set off towards Loch Ness. After 40-45 mins I arrived at Castle Urquhart, which is a famous tourist destination. The old castle ruins overlook the Loch, and it's a pretty scenic place.




As proper castles do, it had a crummy little prison cell in the wall.




In one of the rooms, a pair of swallows had built a nest above one of the spotlights. The birds were precision flying in and out of the doorway, narrowly missing the tourists. The little ones where chirping and squealing their greedy little hearts out for the grub the parents were bringing in. I managed to get a pic of them in full hysteria mode, beaks wide open just as one of the adults come flying in. They look more like aliens than birds...




I spent a good 90 minutes out there before realizing that I'd forgotten to hand in the hotel keys. So back to Inverness to drop off the keys before setting off alongside Loch Ness once again...

Travelblog: More Inverness

After Culloden and the Clava Cairns, I drove up to a tiny village called Strathpeffer to have a look at the Highland Museum of Childhood. Spent about 45 minutes up there, a small but informative museum that shows you children did indeed have a life before Nintendo. The museum is situated in an old railway station which also houses some crafts shops, a wood carver and a small cafe. The surroundings are nice, and there are some walks to be had in the area. On my way back I stopped at a tourist information center along the highway and again showed that I can't be trusted with money. I bought no less than 21 calendars as gifts for friends and colleagues back home (in my defense they were discounted and really, really nice...)

In the afternoon I drove out to Black Isle (which is not an island, but a peninsula). My main goal was the clootie well just outside Munlochy: "The Clootie well, on the A832 just behind the village, is of much more ancient origin. It was originally the home of a fairy to whom a gift of cloth was given before drinking the health giving and luck bestowing water. The well was later incorporated into the Christian religion, and became known as St. Boniface's Well. The trees and bushes for some distance around are festooned with rags, and a visit into the trees beyond the well is a somewhat eerie experience."




Eerie indeed. It is of course incredible that presumably educated, modern people continue with this idiocy, but then people still vote Socialist, so one shouldn't be surprised I guess. When the reward is a percieved peace of mind, the human species has always demonstrated a frightening capacity, even desire, to be fooled.

After the clootie well I drove out to the cozy little village of Fortrose, where I had a decidedly overpriced and mediocre dinner at a local restaurant called The Anderson. Nice people, but their steak was partially burnt and the vegetables had a bitter aftertaste to them. Still, Monday was an eventful and busy day; a good start to my trip!

Travelblog: Inverness

Touched down at Edinburgh airport Sunday and had a very tense drive up north to Inverness. It takes some time getting used to driving on the WRONG side of the road, and the wind and rain didn't make the task easier.

The guest house was a nice little place, a privately owned house run by an elderly couple. Very nice people, and Inverness was a surprisingly nice town, not too big, with a genteel atmosphere. It is one of Europe's fastest growing cities due to its reputation for good schools, low crime and good job market.

One surprising factor was the local accent. I'd expected the usual unintelligible mumbling and throat clearing sounds, something like Glaswegian on steroids, but it's quite the opposite. The Inverness accent is actually the Scottish accent closest to southern English, and I had no problems at all understanding the natives.

Monday I drove out to Culloden battlefield, where the Scots had their hairy, blue asses handed to them by the Redcoats in 1746. The military campaign of 1745-6 was an attempt to bring back on the British throne the papist branch of the Stuarts, personified this time in "Bonnie Prince Charles", one of the most incompetent, self-important idiots ever to contend for the job, and that's saying something. His idiocy was a great part of the reason why the Scots were crushed, and good riddance to him... although when you think about it, the Kraut (Hanoverian) branch weren't much of an improvement on things. In 1760 George the 3rd became king and managed to lose the American colonies and even his mental health in a few years. But that's another story.

Some pics:

The battlefield as it looks today.



Our guide, Mike who was funny, knowledgeable and clever. I highly recommend paying the money for a guided tour.



Less than five minutes from Culloden is the bronze age burial site of Clava Cairns. These burial mounds are 3-4000 years old.