kamyanets-podilsky

one of the advantages of living in europe is that people visit...much more often than they do when you live in asia...i think i've already had more visitors in 5 months here than i did total in 3.5 years of living in korea...hmmm...note to self...since cloe (my flattie) is from france, that means her family and friends are even closer than mine, so she's also had visitors...woo hoo...
this weekend, her brother came to town...he was in kyiv for a couple days, and since cloe is tired of touring around the city, we decided to go out of town for the weekend...one of our coworkers suggested her hometown, in the west of ukraine...it sounded interesting, and we figured, why not?!?! i love that cloe is always up for a weekend trip...
our train left kyiv around 1630 friday evening, which meant that we left almost straight from school...i'm not a huge fan of doing that, but oh well...cloe had purchased the tickets earlier in the week and had a small adventure in doing so...she opted to find a ticketing office near our school, which wasn't quite as obvious as it should've been...she ended up talking to quite a few people on the street and having a couple complete strangers walk with her to figure it out...then, though we'd really only wanted to stay one day, the way the tickets worked out we were there for two full days...more time to explore is how i looked at it:)...(granted, it also meant not going home at all during the weekend, and arriving back in kyiv early monday morning...hmmmmm)

the train left on time, but didn't arrive on time...we were supposed to arrive in kamyanets podilsky at 2354...intsead it was almost 0030 by the time we arrived...there were plenty of taxis waiting around, and we took one of them to our hotel...the hotel knew we were coming, thank goodness...the guy who gave us our room keys didn't speak any english, and didn't make any real attempt to communicate with us, but he gave us a note that had been written out, it basically told us to go sleep and come pay in the morning...woo hoo...so sleep we did...

breakfast was interesting...we were given four choices, though i only remember two of them...both mornings all three of us chose fried eggs and 'sausage'...i put sausage in quotes because it wasn't any sort of sausage that any of us expected...hard to describe...since cloe and her brother are french, they were disappointed by the quality of the bread...it wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't french bread...lol...there was rather tasteless salami and cheese for the bread, cloe and nathan didn't like that much either...breakfast also included tea and chocolate wafers...yahoo!!

we'd decided to do a half day trip to a nearby town called hotin (hotyn, khotin, khotyn, sp?) in order to see a fortress there...apparently the fortress has been used in several films...there isn't anything else to see there, but we figured why not...it's a small enough town that i knew if we didn't see khotyn during this trip, we wouldn't ever see it...the lady at our hotel told us how to get to the bus "station" (really just a spot on the street where a few matrushkas parked together) which turned out to be fairly easy...we hopped on a matrushka and waited for it to leave...cloe was soon deep in conversation with a local guy sitting in the seats in front of us, he told us when to get off the matrushka, and found us a taxi out to the fortress...

ukrainians are soooo friendly, and always willing to help out...(a huge difference from koreans in general...some koreans will help, but not many...nearly every ukrainian will try to help, even if they don't really understand what you're asking!!)...the taxi ride was quick, an easily walkable distance, so we decided to walk the way back...the fortress itself was rather small, and when we first walked in we completely missed the ticket office...whoops...probably because the sign announcing the kaca was rather small, and the taxi drove right past it...someone came into the fortress and told us to go buy tickets, so we did...there was no one checking tickets at the fortress entrance, i guess they just hope people buy the ticket as you're supposed to...i wonder if there is anyone in summer?

tickets firmly in hand, we walked back in and continued exploring...first, the church..a small, simple church...i didn't see any signs saying no photos allowed, so i took a quick photo inside...we were the only people in there at the time, i didn't feel as if we were intruding...
from there we continued along the path to the fortress...snow and ice (mostly snow) everywhere...everything white...since it was pretty quiet, we could hear the crunch of snow with each footfall...we could see the river, which was clearly frozen...beautiful...the inside of the fortress wasn't particularly exciting, but i loved it anywho...since it was small, we wanted to see every nook and cranny...

one of the towers had a small museum about torture used throughout history...it's amazing (fascinating and horrifying at the same time) what human beings will do to each other...how do people come up with ways to hurt each other? and what kind of person can do these things to another? sometimes the torture was purely physical...painful, and designed to be painful for as long as possible...sometimes part of the torture was the mental aspect...the fear of what is coming next, and how long it might last...eeek...
after climbing up every set of stairs we could find, we hoped to find a way down to the river, it would've been fun to walk on the ice...but the guy said it was closed, due to the snow/ice/cold...not surprisingly, they don't want people falling down a frozen path...i was tempted anywho, but for once in my life, erred on the side of caution...(this isn't at all common)

after exploring the fortress we explored the gift shop...i imagine it's a lot busier in warmer weather...still, there was some entertainment in what we could see...
instead of taking a taxi back to where we could pick up the bus, we walked...cloe and nathan hadn't paid any attention to where the taxi took us, but i had, and knew it would be an easy walk...and it was...chilly of course, as the road wasn't at all clear...there aren't many vehicles in khotyn, so the snow and ice hasn't melted or been removed at all...we could even see the gas lines in front of each house...i don't know why they're out in the open like that?

we checked out a grocery store (kit kats are cheaper in kyiv) then hopped back on a marshutka to kamyanets podilsky...we thought we'd explore part of the old town before it got dark, and eat...the map in lonely planet only shows the old town, so we weren't sure where we needed to go to get there; thankfully a couple people on the street pointed us in the right direction...
we got to the old town and quickly found a restaurant...the restaurant was listed in the guidebook, and cloe had thought it sounded interesting, so why not? a russian place, with completely russian menus...only we didn't get to see the menus...the waitress figured out quickly that we didn't speak any russian, she must've assumed we didn't read any either...i'm not a quick reader, and wouldn't have understood most of what i was reading, but i wish we'd had the chance to try...anywho, she got her mobile phone, called someone who knew a bit of english, and that someone sortof put together our orders...soup, salad, pork, potatoes and tea...cloe and nathan wanted beef, but that wasn't available...none of us was thrilled with what we had, but it wasn't bad either...the fun was in not really knowing what we were going to have...

after eating we walked through the old town...by that point it was after 1500, and you could tell the end of the light was coming relatively soon...and, it was COLD...maybe it just felt colder than it had because there was no one around...we saw only a few folks at this point...kinda creepy, but kinda cool at the same time...it was one of the few times i didn't have to wait for people to move out of the way to get better photos...there weren't people in the way to begin with!
the first thing we wanted to see was a cathedral...the gate we found was closed, and we figured we could see it the next day...the "souvenir town" was closed for the day (or for the season, we couldn't tell) so we missed that too...we found the dominican monastary, there was a service going on when we stepped in...

after the monastary we went to a small archeological museum...(the town has a redic number of museums, especially when you consider how small the town is!!)...very small...i don't know if we were the only visitors they had all day, or just that they'd gotten ready to go home when we showed up, and they opened back up...either way, they turned on the lights for us, and turned on the music...nearly every display had english and ukrainian information, which was neat...it's not a topic of particular interest to me, but it was small enough that i appreciated what i saw, and didn't feel overwhelmed with unwanted information...we also had fun with a few photos in the outdoor area...

from there we walked back to our hotel...i'd paid attention in the morning when we took the marshrutka, and i knew it was more or less a straight line...we stopped along the way, i originally suggested water...cloe and nathan did get water...i got ice cream...typical...
the evening's entertainment was something near and dear to my heart...bowling!!! we spotted a sign for the hotel across the street that said they had bowling...woo hoo!! after ben's visit in november and bowling with him, cloe was keen to try again...the first game was awesome...i was fantastic, if i do say so myself...i've definitely had better scores, but the fun was in my score being more than cloe's and nathan's combined...hee hee...i'd prefer to ignore/forget what happened after that...

the next morning we took our time getting out of bed, eating breakfast and making our way into town...we knew we had the whole day to see the town, and there wasn't much to see...we stopped first at a memorial with a tank...i think this is the third memorial cloe and i have seen with a tank in ukraine? nathan thought it was amusing, cloe and i thought "this is ukraine, why wouldn't there be a tank at a memorial?"
from there we kept going and made our way through the old town again, crossing the "turkish bridge" and entering the fortress...just like the fortress in khotyn, you can see several different architectural styles...not that this sort of thing matters to me...bricks, wood, stone...it was cold...very very cold...when we were in the shade we got really cold, really fast...at one point we had to go inside, because our hands and feet were FREEZING...sure, we'd been cold all day, but this was the kind of cold that is painful...the museum was the history of kamyanets podilsky...for being a small town, there was actually quite a lot to see...lots of handwritten notes/ID cards/reports/etc...i'm sure it would've helped if we could've understood what we could read...lots of photos, a few uniforms, etc...lonely planet says the museum is fantastic, or something like that...lol...

a few more photos after the museum, and we left the fortress...we'd wanted to stop for a coffee afterward to warm up and relax, but the place we wanted was closed for the season...howeva, in the courtyard was the sword of whoeva that guy is...you know, the one stuck in the stone...obviously, i wasn't able to get it out of the stone...clearly, i'm not the chosen one...
instead of that particular cafe, we ended up at a place called new york pizza...not bad, not great...the cake was far better than expected...there was an english menu, which surprised me, and the waitstaff was super friendly...at least my feet thawed while we were eating...

after pizza we were able to walk back to the cathedral we'd missed the day before, and we got to walk in just after the service ended...we got to see the inside (which was still decorated for christmas) just before they shut off the lights...a catholic cathedral, not the norm for this country...i think it is called st jehosaphat's...i don't know why, but it's a funny sounding name to me...i apologize in advance to anyone reading this with the name jehosaphat...say it to yourself five times quickly...orthodox christmas is 7 january, but catholic christmas is 25 december...i don't know which way this church was going, but either way, the decorations were long overdue to come down...oh well...
there wasn't anything left to see after the cathedral, so we headed back toward the newer section of town...we knew we'd have a couple hours to kill before heading to the train station for our night train back to kyiv...eventually we found a pizza place...two pizza places in one day, in a small town in western ukraine...hmmm...you'd think we could've done better...in warmer weather, that's probably true...but when it's -18C, the last thing you want to be doing in a strange town is wandering around after dark looking for food...the waitstaff at this place was super friendly, and helpful, we were happy to be there...they even called a cab for us when we left!! ukrainians are awesome!!

a night train back to kyiv, and voila, the end of a great weekend:)
a quick history lesson: kamyanets podilsky started out as a kyivan rus settlement...the town was briefly the capital of the ukrainian national republic...through it's history, the town/area has been ruled by the lithuanians, poles, russians, and ottoman turks...the germans used the old town as a jewish ghetto during WW2...with all the switching of rulers, it's a bit amazing that there is such a sense of ukraine in this area...