Borderland Edition

Ah… mountains, snow, ice, chilly mornings, hot mulled wine and afternoon skiing. Now that’s what I’m talking about! After ten months of industrial pollution, I finally made my way back to the mountains. Slovakia is beautiful, I highly recommend it. The High Tatras of Slovakia are amazing. I spent a good three hours on the slopes snowboarding today, all for a whopping 12 USD. The hostel we are staying at is quite homey, run by a couple of guys from England who decided to give up the stress of life in the big city for the peace and quiet of the Slovakian mountains. That’s the way to live abroad if you ask me, quite different from eastern Ukraine…

Tomorrow we are heading over the Polish border, about 20 minutes away. We’ll spend another night in the High Tatras and then we’ll head to Krakow for a couple of days. It’s been fun traveling so far, even with a few late evening mishaps in the freezing cold air while missing buses or getting lost in foreign cities.

Hooray! I made it out of Ukraine. Though, just barely as I almost missed my flight thanks to super inefficient customs at the Kiev airport. This was after a 2 hour flight with Aerosvit (Ukrainian Airlines) in a commercial plane with a propeller. My seat was broken as was the intercom system. That made me a bit nervous, but I made it to Hungary on time. Budapest was nice, I ate at Burger King and Subway. I met up with my friends Joslyn and Allison. Now we are in Slovakia for a couple of days before heading to Poland after Christmas. It’s weird to be treated with normal courtesy again when I go to stores and restaurants, but I’m adjusting quite nicely.

Anyway, that’s the quick update. Enjoy your holidays.

It’s been too long, almost nine months in fact. But later this week I’ll be leaving eastern Ukraine for the beauty and majesty of the mountains of Slovakia and Poland. To say that I’m excited would be the understatement of the past six months.

If I don’t have a chance to update while I’m traveling, I will now wish you all a Merry Christmas (notice that I didn’t just say Happy Holidays) and a Happy New Year.

Yay! I’m leaving Ukraine. Finally, after nine months. But, it’s only for one week, just for a winter vacation. Later this month, I’ll be meeting a couple of friends in Budapest and then we’ll head off for fun in the snow and mountains of Slovakia and Poland. I’m quite excited. No, really, really excited. I’m getting a Whopper at BK in Budapest. Yes, that’s right. I’m going to visit the king.

I had to write about this. Tonight, my friend Greg and I were at the train station with Marina and another UA friend. We assigned Greg the task of exchanging tickets for tomorrow’s train to Donetsk. Instead, after a few beers, he said (translated into English for your pleasure),

“Good evening. I want to cheat the tickets for tomorrow because in the morning it would be better to eat.”

The whole line of Ukrainians were laughing, not an easy feat in the FSU. And we managed to exchange our tickets without a problem. Yay!