Art and Science in Celrà and Arrecife: Catching Up!

I just updated the post called “Travelling”. It is funny, when I read it I couldn’t understand it well so I am not sure how my readers followed it. So I re-wrote it explaining how I left Kharkiv in the evening of Wednesday for Kiev Boryspil, stayed overnight near the airport and then went back to the airport Thursday morning to take the Sky Bus into town. And I added a photo of me sitting outside the railway station wearing the hat that Marina gave me. It was intended as a Christmas present, not to be opened till the 25^th but I had no room in my luggage for the mysterious box so I asked her if I could open it then. So, for the rest of the journey, to Kyiv, Nezhin, Lviv, most of the time, I “carried” it on my head. With my long blond hair, I truly look like an artist. Or maybe a crazy poet.

I sent the photo to Marta and she noted my blue fingernails. I can take selfies simply by saying “sonrisa” which is a lot more convenient than setting a timer. I will let you guess what “sonrisa” is in Spanish.

I bought a sandwich and a Coke in the station and took the train at about 1.30pm. The journey was only about 1.5 hours and Marta was on the platform to meet me. We hugged and walked out of the station, both saying basically the same thing: that it was most odd having seen each other online for such a long time then here we were in real life. The same thing happened when I met Marina for the first time. She looked much younger than I was expecting and I joked that maybe she had sent her sister to meet me. Marta was as I expected to see her. We quickly got to like each other quite a lot. She checked me into the hotel (you can see a photo of my room) and we walked around the town and I’ve added a couple of photos. Marta complained that I was talking and looking at the ground too much instead of looking at the town. It was funny. We passed four churches in quick succession. So, after that, I paid more attention. The streets were very wide but there was very little traffic. The whole town was like that, lots of wide open spaces. It is a town, not a city. Marta showed me her flat where she lives now and also her new flat under construction where she hopes to move in soon. The builders keep on delaying the delivery date. It sounds like Spain. “Mañana”. It reminded me of when I was waiting for my flat in Spain to be completed; I was so impatient.

By the time we had walked around, talking all the time, it was about 6pm and we went to a small restaurant very near to my hotel for a meal.

It was
below ground and there were one or two small alcoves with tables and we chose one of those. Haha, very trendy but not very practical, the menu was on an iPad and we had to order by click. I just wanted a nice person to come along, take the order and explain that the meat dish included potatoes so we didn’t need to order a side dish. Sometimes technology overtakes what we humans actually need. I mean… a fridge that orders its own food? I can do that, for the moment at least. So, we ended up ordering more than we could eat so we asked for a “doggy bag”. A doggy bag is rather like asking for an autograph and then saying, “It’s not for me, it’s for my daughter”. It’s not really for a dog, it’s so that they don’t chuck the food away which is very sad. Unfortunately, next morning, that’s what I had to do.

Marta came to the hotel at 9am and we went together to the railway station by bus. We crossed the line and waited. We were travelling 3^rd class - it was fine. The carriage comprised bench seats more like a waiting room and we had our reserved place. But I wouldn’t want to travel a long distance like that.

We arrived in Kyiv 1.5 hours later and we had about two hours before our train to Lviv. We went for a coffee in the station and I’ve included photos of Marta and me. I don’t want to go on too much about our getting on well but it feels as thought we have known each other for years. And the age difference is irrelevant; it is about mental age - mine is much less than my actual years. And I make no apology for including lots of photos of her; she is a beautiful Ukrainian girl with a personality to match. But it is funny; in the photos in Lviv we appear like a couple but of course we are not (in the physical sense, bf/gf). But it felt like it. And for me that was just so nice, I cannot explain it. When it rained, we shared my umbrella and walked arm in arm (I did the same with Marina in Pisa, it was so sweet). I rarely felt like this when I was younger; I was not able to feel like this. I was for ever analysing, do I love her, don’t I love her…. Maybe I took after my father. Now I feel so much love, it almost overwhelms me. For Marta and of course for Marina also in Ukraine.

So… I have taken this post up to the time we took the train from Kyiv to Lviv and I will write about Lviv in my next post. But all the photos are here. We had a great time. We climbed the tower, we drank hot chocolate. It rained quite a lot!

I am writing this late on Wednesday (25^th) but I am very tired. I got back from Ukraine yesterday at about 5pm in Girona, had my hair cut (not much!) and then went to the Meetup group which I organise. And then I had another meetup this morning, Girona Grapevine.

We caught the train to Lviv at 1.30. The Intercity trains are modern and comfortable and are arranged in compartments which seat 6 in 2^nd class and 4 in 1^st class, meaning that the seating is the same but the middle seat is not used. For an English guy, this is nostalgic because that is how trains were many years ago. We went to Lviv in 2^nd Class and came back in 1^st. We chatted a lot and Marta talked with the other people in the compartment while I studied the Ukrainian words which she gave me or listened to music. The time dragged a bit at the end of the journey because the total time is 6.5 hours and the train seemed very slow. Coming back, it was faster and took just a little over 6 hours.

We arrived at around 8pm. Lviv was shrouded in a damp mist, very misterious! We took a taxi to the hotel – all the streets are cobbled and there are many trams which gives the city and old-world feel. The hotel was called Eurohotel and was quite luxurious at the entrance but the room was quite small. I had phoned the hotel earlier to ask if they had a superior room and they said that they had already upgraded it to superior. What they didn’t mention was that they had changed my original booking of a twin-bedded room. The girl at Reception proudly told us about the room having a big double bed. I am sure it would have been really big, both the room and the bed but obviously we couldn’t accept that so we had to “downgrade” back to the original twin-bedded room. Sharing a room makes a lot of sense because it is cheaper of course and more sociable. It is cool! And we each have our privacy because we used the bathroom to change, of course.

We wandered around for a short while, bought some fruit juice for the room and had a meal in the hotel restaurant on the 8^th floor. It was enormous and luxurious and not too expensive. Marta chose a steak meal while I was away checking the reservation, it was excellent. And we didn’t make the mistake of ordering too much!

We both slept well and had a breakfast in the room of juice and sausage and bread which Marta had brought with her. It was fun, like camping out. Around 10am we left the hotel and walked for about 15 minutes down to the centre of town.

We had considered booking a tour but, in the end, we were just happy walking around. You can see photos of Marta by a monastery wall. We found a small tourist office in a tram as you can see.

Marta bought me a Lviv mug which I now use at home for tea. Thank you, Marta! The little office also served coffee, the smell was irresistible. I joked and said that it made people stay longer and buy more! The weather was fine and sunny, not too cold, I guess around 12c.

Marta had been here before but a long time ago.

For me, the highlight of out tour was the tower of the City Hall.

There were many people making the climb which was quite tough. I wasn’t going to do anything stupid like trying to impress Marta how fit and macho I was, she was impressed anyway. So I stopped briefly to rest a couple of times. The view from the top was wonderful.

We had a pizza and took photos of each other! When we came out, the weather had changed a lot and it was now rather grey and raining intermittently. We had no wish to go back to the hotel so we continued our walk around the city, sometimes using my umbrella, arm in arm. Like a couple of swells! We laughed a lot, Marta complaining that I was holding the umbrella in the wrong place.

Lviv is famous for its chocolate and I looked up the Chocolate Workshop in Google Maps. We had hot chocolate as you can see.

On the way back to the hotel, I wanted to buy Marta one or two red roses (I am not in love, song by 10cc) but she wanted potted plants which she could plant at home. So she carried the bag with the plants all the way back to Nezhin which was rather sweet. I hope they grow well!

In the evening we ate in the hotel restaurant again but because we had shared two pizzas earlier, we just had salads. The hotel was a little out of the centre so there was no choice of restaurants near by.

We slept better this night and next morning I went out to buy what I thought would be bread – we had seen a small shop on our travels. But in fact the shop was selling hot filled bread, I chose bacon and cheese and then bought two coffees on my way back to the hotel. I booked a taxi to the station at 10.30am and we arrived at the station in good time. The station had a smell which I have not experienced for many years, a steam train was puffing smoke into the cavernous space! Fortunately our train was electric!

It arrived on time, it was enormous!

I really enjoyed the journey back, the time passed very easily. As you can see, we shared a table by the window and Marta tried teaching me some Ukrainian. She also chatted a lot with our two (because it was 1^st class) companions. In Kiev and in the west of Ukraine, I hear Ukrainian. In the east, in Kharkiv for example, they speak Russian. I am slowly learning how to recognise the difference in the written text, Ukrainian sounds different.

When we arrived back in Kyiv, Marta checked if there was an earlier train back to Nezhin but she had to wait for the train which she had booked, at 9pm. So I suggested that she came back to the Ibis Hotel where I had reserved a room for myself. She sat happily planning her lessons for the following week. I don’t know if I said before, she teaches English. Then we walked back down to the station and had a super meal at Kamyusha (Камюша) which is a 50s themed restaurant, very cheap. The menu is made to look like a magazine (www.katysha.com.ua). If you visit the website, see those prices! In hryvnias, 30 to the euro. Some dishes are 1 euro. After the meal we went back into the station and found Marta’s train already parked and we said farewell with a hug on the platform and I went back to the hotel.

Here are some more photos!