argentina: bahia blanca

early in my visit to argentina i learned that most public transportation is done by bus, but there are also options for train rides...i wanted to try everything, and a night train ride to bahia blanca worked in my itinerary...
i boarded the train at constitution train station in buenos aires...my ticket was for second class...
the train was cold and dark...as i was waiting for the train to start rolling, i figured the lights would come on as we started moving...the windows did not close properly, and i'm guessing it's been years since anything was cleaned...this was one time i was not thrilled with my transport choice...

the train started moving, and the lights flickered on and off...i could feel the wind coming in through the windows, even at the slow speed, so i knew it was going to be a long, cold, ride...i looked around and saw that everyone else had scarves, hats, and blankets, so clearly they knew what was coming...as the train sped up, the lights got stronger...then the train slowed down again, and the lights got weaker...in other words, the lights were tied to the electricity generated by the train...ugh...
i was COLD when i got off the train the next morning...and tired, since i didn't sleep much...i don't feel the need to ride another train in argentina...

i was second class, there was one level worse than me, and one better...i can't imagine how much worse it could've been...and i'm curious what first class would've been like...would it have been so much better?
i took a taxi from the train station to the bus station in bahia blanca, bought a ticket for later that night, then stored my bags...
i wandered around bahia blanca all day, there wasn't much to see...it's just a town...(with a couple good bakeries, i stopped into almost every bakery i passed, hee hee)...the normal statue of a guy on a horse...a couple parks...

when it got dark, i made my way back to the bus station to kill time until my bus left...i was happy that i found a plug, and a wifi signal...the bus station was new and modern, i was more comfortable there than i'd been on the train the night before:)
my bus to bariloche left on time :)

lviv again...warmer this time around!

The first time i visited lviv, we spent one day in the city, and it was FREEZING...this time, i got to spend three days, and it was spring...lovely...

i took the night train to lviv, arriving at 0745...the train station was being renovated, so the main entrance wasn't open...fortunately, another side door was open...i took a taxi into town, though i figured out later that wasn't really necessary...if i'd had a full map of lviv, i would've walked...oh well...

i'd made arrangements to meet up with a friend at 10, but i was in the city center by 0800, so i just wandered...when cloe and i visited in february we didn't see as much of the city centre...we didn't see all the churches...the city centre is a UNESCO site, but not much was happening at 0800...i supposed most tourist areas aren't busy at that hour...

my friend arrrived on time, and we continued wandering, as our guest house reservation didn't start until noon...the guesthouse was great...really close to the university, quite small...quiet, we never heard any street noise...a garden out back...

after checking in, we wandered again...my friend had also previously visited lviv, also during a colder time of year...it was nice to walk with someone who had some idea of where we were going, but not too much...we both had places we wanted to see, but no real sense of urgency...when you travel a lot, you learn to appreciate what you do see, but not get super frustrated if you don't get to see everything on your list...

we started with a church not too far from our guest house...it's beautiful, but there is no place to stand to get a good photo of the church...the nearby buildings are too close...clearly they weren't think of photographers when the church was built...hee hee...the inside was nice...a bit like an orthodox church, but i'm pretty sure this one was catholic...st george's?

i think that was the day we saw a chocolate shop...i'd seen this chocolate shop during my first visit, but i didn't know there was an upstairs...wow...lviv handmade chocolates...YUM...heaps of truffles, bricks of chocolate, t-shirts, etc...it was awesome...and since i wasn't sick this time, i was able to appreciate all of it...it would've been easy to spend a lot of money in there...

over the three days we visited several coffee shops, and a few chocolate shops...i'm not sure how lviv got to be so big on chocolate and coffee, considering the beans don't grow in ukraine...that being said, they've done a great job...the goodies available in those coffee shops are some of the best baking i've had in ukraine! Our last afternoon in the city we spent a while in a coffee shop just on the corner of the square at the city centre...one of the best chocolate cakes i've ever had:)

Our first majour meal was at a brewery...soooooooo good...not surprisingly, i ordered too much...and that was after taking a long time to figure out what i wanted to order in the first place...the menu was comprehensive, to say the least...

it was awesome, and i'm glad i got to try everything...bo is a chef, so he always wants to try different foods...this is one of three breweries in the city, all three have restaurants attached...we had another meal at another one of the breweries another day, but i didn't think it was quite as good...(and the customer service wasn't nearly as good)

at one point we walked for a while to find a playground cloe and i had seen during our winter lviv trip...it's in the middle of some bigger apartment buildings, and isn't large, but there is something about it that i just love...we ended up walking a lot farther than expected, at one point finding ourselves on a path near a church that had stopping points for the different times of jesus on a cross...finally, we found the playground...we ended up hanging out for a while, watching a few local kids playing pick up soccer...the kid who looked the youngest looked to have the most talent...it was a cement playing surface, but these kids were running hard!

We ate a few meals at a chain restaurant that has cafeteria style food...it's an easy to way to big or small, heavy or light, healthy or not...we also walked around a couple food markets...i don't know why it took me so long to buy homemade pickles in ukraine...made in a salty vinegar...YUM!!

we investigated a heap of churches...lviv could be called church town...it seems like every time you turn a corner, you see another church...they are mostly catholic, but there are a few orthodox as well...most of the churches are easily identifiable as such, but not always...we found one tucked behind another building, i wouldn't have seen it except for noticing a bunch of people coming out to the street...

we explored the jewish quarter, or what is possible to be seen now...lviv used to have a large jewish population...world war two wasn't kind to the jews in ukraine, as in much of the rest of europe...synagogue square is empty...a school that used to teach rabbis now has graffiti all over one of the walls...there are placards in one area, giving some history of this area, showing photos of past and future, as well as listing some plans for redevelopment...

there were a couple surprise rainshowers, thankfully we were only caught outside during one of them...i hate rain...it's the worst kind of travel weather...

our last day in lviv we started by checking out of the guesthouse (which consisted of leaving the keys to our room on the table in the kitchen area) and using a map we'd received from the tourist information centre to walk to the train station...we stored our bags, and walked back to the centre of town...we didn't do much that day, just hang out...the weather was lovely, and watching people was a relaxing activity...the night train that night took us back to kyiv, right on time...as usual, the work day wasn't fun after having slept on the train, but it's always worth it to get out of town for a few days...lviv is one of my favourite places in ukraine...a sentiment shared by many...

lviv au chocolate

cloe and i have already visited the hometowns of two of our coworkers, so we figure we might as well visit the hometowns of all our coworkers...lviv is the most visited city in ukraine, and is the hometown of the ukrainian teacher at school...bo and ben left me a brochure/guidebook/advert about lviv, and while reading it a week ago, i noticed a chocolate festival scheduled to take place this weekend...needless to say, a chocolate festival sounded perfect...who doesn't want to see 3 tons of chocolate carved into a city?!?! i suppose not everyone loves the stuff as much as i do, hee hee...
we left straight from school, and took an express train to lviv...it arrived a little late, and we took a taxi to the hostel cloe had booked...i'm glad she booked something, i really hate arriving somewhere so late at night, in the cold...fortunately, it's easier to find hostels in lviv than it is in almost any other city in the country...they seem to be allowed to have at least one sign, which seems awesome to me now...
our room was a double (both of us are over doing the dorm thing unless it's absolutely necessary - this was good because the guy who checked us in said many others staying in the hostel were out partying that night) with a photo of lenin overlooking the beds...a bit creepy, to say the least...the hostel was called soviet home hostel (i think) so there were old soviet items and photos all over...

the next morning we got ready, and made it out the door around 1030...no specific breakfast to speak of, oh well...our first stop was the ratusha, which is the bell tower in the middle of the big square in the middle of the city...this square has been given UNESCO world heritage status, the buildings lining the square are all old, and traditional...nearly all of them are 3 windows across; back in the day when they were built, you were taxed by the number of windows, and anything above 3 meant you had a lot of money...most of them seemed to be 3 or 4 stories tall as well...
i should've paid more attention, or at least had a better memory, but i didn't recall the guidebook saying too much about stairs...so it was a bit of a surprise to climb a whole heap of them to get to the top of the tower...a LOT OF STAIRS...we were both pretty winded by the time we got to the top...it was a nice view over the city...on a really clear day you can probably see quite a long way...as it was, we could see the snow covered roofs everywhere...interesting to see the churches all over the city...some of them green, some wooden, some golden...

from the ratusha we stumbled back down the stairs (i fell once, and nearly fell several other times) and attempted to follow the walking tour lonely planet has in it's guidebook...the tour started with a statue of shevchenko, the bard of ukraine...i don't know when he lived, but there is a statue of him in kyiv, and probably other cities as well...we also walked past a giant truffle in front of the opera house...a GIANT truffle...apparently the chocolate festival has inspired chocolate companies in town to build giant versions of their goods:)...we wanted to go in the giant truffle, but there were security guys in front of the door...too bad...maybe it was open later? we never did find out...
we took a right at the end of that street, and next tried to enter a church...not only is lviv known for having gbillions of churches, many of them are catholic, which isn't common in the country as a whole...howeva, since this area was once part of poland (i think) it is strongly catholic...unfortunately, this church was closed...(this ended up being a theme through the day)...it wasn't at all interesting on the outside...
walking up another street we wanted to see another church, it's doors were also closed, it was also particularly unappealing on the outside...boooo...our next attempt at actually seeing something was successful, as we found the street we wanted, then found a children's playground...a giant mural on the wall behind the playground was super brightly coloured, i loved it...the playground is built in an area that was destroyed during

from the playground our next stop was a marker in the middle of a very small park, denoting where a synagogue used to stand...not only is lviv catholic, there also used to be a large jewish population...unfortunately, most of those people either left during WWII, or were killed in the concentration camps...at least one area in lviv was a jewish ghetto, it's inhabitants killed in a massacre...unfortunately, this marker is one of the only reminders of lviv's former jewish life...in preparation for the EURO in june, the city government has actually destroyed some history, in an effort to have more hotels and such...how awful...
then we found yet another church...another closed church...

At that point we decided the walking tour wasn't really working for us...a lot of the tour was about churches, particularly the insides of churches...but none of the churches we were going to were open for us to see inside...so we stopped in a cafe (where i had a very yummy, very thick, hot chocolate) and plotted strategy...

cloe was freezing, and wanted to eat...i was keen for that as well...we also decided to skip walking up to a fortress of some kind, we figured we'd already seen the view of the city from the top of the ratusha...

instead, we decided to try to find the information office, then eat lunch, then go to a cemetary, then go to the chocolate festival...(which was the entire reason we came to lviv!)...we found both an official and an unofficial information office, we bought souvenirs at both...lviv is soooooo much better set up for tourists than any other place in the country...kyiv really needs to get its act together...on our way to try to get a discount card for a dinner restaurant, i spotted a cafe sign that had a choco boom...who can turn down a choco boom? Definitely not me...so we stopped again, i had my choco boom...chocolate on the bottom, then milk, then coffee, then cream...it looked so lovely...i don't really like coffee at all, so that was not so fun, but the rest of the drink was great...i think cloe had something with the word surprise in the name?

After accidentally seeing a second hand book market (at which i bought a ukraine guidebook – in english! - for the whopping price of 20UAH) and taking photos, then a church with a wedding in progress, we finally made it to lunch...an armenian place...tasty food:)...then the armenian church next door...though again, we weren't able to go inside...what's with this city?

Then we caught a marshrutka to the cemetary...the cemetary is mentioned in the guidebook, it's HUGE...if you ever go to lviv, you've got to see it...not many tombstones/gravemarkers there are "ordinary"...people buried there all seem to have larger than life representations on top of their graves...a few mausoleums too...
with the snow, it was gorgeous...i've heard it's amazing in just about any weather...it was quiet, that's for sure...(except for the sound of the snow under our shoes, which was pretty nifty)...i think there are some famous people buried there, but the only name we recognized was ivan franko (i think that's right?)...there are heaps of people with polish names buried there (not surprising since this part of ukraine was once part of poland) as well...we didn't see the entire cemetary, but we did see a lot, and at one point we realized we were freezing...again...that's what you get for traveling in the middle of winter...

after waiting what seemed like yonks (but was probably only 10 minutes or so) we caught a marshrutka back to the city center and started walking toward the chocolate festival location...i insisted on stopping in a church on the way there...it was open, so that was a plus...a service was going on, but we weren't the only tourists walking through at the same time...i don't remember what kind of church it was, but the inside had baroque decor...it felt...busy...an old lady yanked off my hat and jabbered at me, i really wish i had been able to understand what she was saying...

and then, we finally got to the chocolate festival...i could smell the fantasticness almost as soon as we were in the door...after we paid our entrance fee of course...i'm not sure what the point of the entrance fee was, since nearly everything else had to be paid for as well...hmmm...

the first thing we saw was two guys carving a giant block of milk chocolate...there was a picture of what it would look like when they were done, it was interesting to see how far they'd gotten...then we wandered...more than anything it seemed as if there were booths and booths and booths selling chocolate...chocolate in various shapes, filled donuts dipped in chocolate, melted chocolate served as hot chocolate, fondue, etc...there was an area on the second floor where kids were able to do crafts with chocolate...one lady was painting in chocolate...another man was creating a heart from liquid chocolate...there was a giant pyramid of chocolate macaroons...there were dresses, i think the idea was that they were inspired by chocolate? I didn't much like the styles...(maybe i've watched too much project runway?)...

after walking around the entire thing, cloe and i decided what we wanted to buy...(going in we'd both known we'd want something, but planned to see everything before spending any money)...i got the 'hot chocolate' and she got the chocolate covered donut...and when i say covered, i mean dipped in a pot of liquid chocolate, so there was chocolate EVERYWHERE...she took a photo as i started with my hot chocolate, and the caption she put on facebook is something along the lines of that being my last smile for a few days...she was right...i wasn't able to finish the entire cup (too rich, believe it or not) and didn't feel very good afterward...cloe loved her donut and went to buy truffles and more after finishing eating...

at that point i really wasn't feeling good, and knew i needed to eat something real...we thought about what we'd eaten all day, and realized i'd had a LOT of sugar/chocolate and very little else...a bit at lunch, but that was it...breakfast was sugar, then the hot chocolate at the cafe, then the choco boom, lunch with an ice cream dessert, then the chocolate fest...whoa...i eat a lot of sugar on a regular basis (much more than most people could handle, or would even want) but it was a lot even for me...so we started trying to find real food...

the first place we tried was a buffet (milk bar) listed in the guidebook...it turned out to be closed for the evening...next we tried the masochist bar (the original masochist (named masoc i think?) spent some of his life in lviv!) but the only open seats were right next to the door, and i was tired of being cold all the time...then we tried another restaurant which didn't have any open seats, even though we could see a few open places...finally we tried a random greek/pizzeria...success!!

the menu was huge, it took a while just to figure out what we wanted...or maybe that's cause i wasn't feeling so good, and couldn't think properly...we started with salad...a while later i moved on to soup, cloe had pasta...basically we used the time in that restaurant to wait until we needed to go to the train station...

again, ukrainians are super helpful and friendly to foreigners...the guy bussing our table called a taxi for us...how awesome is that??!! for me, the train ride back wasn't particularly great...i was still feeling poorly, and breakfast the next morning back in kyiv wasn't so tasty...actually, the only thing i had was orange juice...cloe had already started to tease me about chocolate...ugh...

on a side note, i ended up being very very sick later that day, i even called in sick to work the next day...yuck...the day after that, when i went back, (which happened to be valentines day) everyone kept offering me chocolate just to see the "i'm going to puke" look on my face...they're used to seeing me eat massive amounts of sweets, it was humourous to them to see even the thought of such things make me want to run to the loo!...not nice i tell you...not nice!!

it took me a week to eat anything with processed sugar again...it took me a week even to want to eat anything with processed sugar!! on a sad note, i didn't lose any weight during that week...how did that work? Argh...

chernivtsi (чернІвцІ)

cloe and i had been in ukraine for over two months, and really wanted to get out of kyiv...it's a great city and all, but we wanted to see something else of ukraine...so we were thrilled when our friend marie suggested going on a weekend trip...we'd never heard of the town she suggested, but hey, who cares? she said it was a town known for a university...fortunately, lonely planet had heard of it...there were a few pages dedicated to the town, including a map...woo hoo!!!
chernivtsi is in the southwest of modern day ukraine...over its history, it has been a part of other countries as well..it was once a part of the austro-hungarian empire, and you can still see this influence in the architecture of the town...the architecture is far more like the rest of europe than it is like kyiv/ukraine...

our trip started with a night train from kyiv to chernivtsi...our lonely planet guidebooks say that a long distance train ride is a must do experience in ukraine, so we were happy to check that off our lists with this trip...i think our train left around 7pm? i don't remember exactly...our friend marie met us at school, then we went to eat...she then showed us where to go at the train station, and we also met two other ladies (luda and elena) who were coming along as well...3 of the tickets were together, but the other two were in two other cars, so there was some shifting to be done...neither cloe nor i had a problem with sleeping by ourselves, but marie worried about us, so she and elena slept in the other two cars...
a night train in ukraine definitely is an experience...due to living in germany, and various travels, i've taken my fair share of night trains...people on ukrainian trains eat quite a bit more, and they bring all of it...it's possible to order tea (more on that in a moment,) but there didn't seem to be any other vendors coming through the train...instead, people pack a picnic, usually quite a large one...i got the lovely smell of hard-boiled eggs, and various pickled salads...yippee skippee...while the five of us were hanging out and chatting, marie and her friends took out the food they'd brought...heaps of food!! biscuits, lollies, cheese, etc...they also ordered tea for us from the train lady...it's just lipton tea, but i loved the glass holders, and of course all the sugar:)...we sat up talking for a while, i was the first to lay down and go to sleep...night trains in ukraine give you sheets, a mattress, a blanket and a pillow...plus, the train is a comfortable temperature...awesome!

the next morning we all woke at different times, which didn't bother anyone...more tea from the train lady, and marie pulled out some breakfast food...our train arrived on time, around 0930...we exited the train station (after taking the picture to prove that we were there) turned right and started walking...this turned out to be the incorrect direction, which we found out after the girls asked a local...ooops...the intention was to walk to the university, as we wanted to take a tour...the local ended up walking us part of the way, to make sure we were going in the right direction...ukrainians are so nice!!

the university in chernivtsi is the reason the town is known in ukraine...(i doubt it's much known outside of the country)...the university was originally built as the home of the local rulers, the bukovyna metropolitans...at the time, the town was part of the austro-hungarian empire...you can see how it would've been the home of a family, albeit a very large home...there is a church in one section, and a giant marble hall in another section...not all of the university is open to the public, our guide had to unlock a few doors...out the back of the university is a lovely park, complete with a statue of the architect, a czech guy who also had a hand in designing vienna...(if i remember correctly?)...there used to be a pond of sorts, but when the soviets turned the 'home' into a university, they also messed with the aquatic system of this pond, broke it, and weren't able to fix it...so now you can still see where the pond was, but there is no water...it's a shame...

after the university tour, we took a tram to the center of the city...after that, our day was mostly walking around the city...the girls had a map with 'tourist' locations marked on it, and i'm pretty sure we got to almost all of them...every building of any note, every church ever mentioned...one of the churches is currently painted a pepto bismol sort of pink...(though the postcard of said church shows it in a nice off white)...another church looks what lonely planet calls "drunken"...the spires twist, and from any angle it looks as if they're leaning into the rest of the church...we saw the end of a wedding coming out of yet another church, an armenian church...i wonder if the theme of the wedding was ugly dress, because i strongly disliked the dress of every woman in the wedding party...that church itself looked way better than the pepto church...brick, with silver onions on top...we saw a VERY old church, it was tiny and wooden...we saw a building with lion decorations...we ate at a place called the chicken house...i bought postcards...

chernivtsi is definitely a one day town for visitors, i'm glad that's all the time we'd planned to spend there...though we did get plenty of exercise, walking all over the place...other than being chilly, the weather was good...in other words, it wasn't raining, and for me, that makes all the difference... 
our train back to kyiv left at 1900, we got to the train station in plenty of time...a dog decided to follow us most for about a kilometer, we didn't know how to get rid of it...the dog even crossed streets with us!! we were early enough that the train wasn't there yet, so we killed time in the train station coffee shop...(which definitely left something to be desired, but oh well)...the train ride back to kyiv had all of us in the same area, so no one had to move around to sleep...the same tea, the same heaps of snacks, etc...i love long distance trains in ukraine!!