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...

can't get enough

winter here is cold...apparently this is one of the coldest winters ukraine (and eastern europe in general) has had in quite some time...i've seen a number of news articles about the effects of the cold on life in general...some of the statistics in relation to the homeless are disheartening, to say the least...
that being said, i live in a warm flat, and i have appropriate clothing for this type of weather...so i love it...i can't get enough...as far as i'm concerned, if it snowed 3 out of 5 days all winter long, i'd be a happy camper...granted, i'd be happier with a few more days of blue skies, but i'll take what i can get...i love that it snows, and stays cold enough that the snow doesn't go anywhere...the city has been covered in white for three weeks or so...woo hoo...

this weekend cloe and i went out saturday afternoon to take a few photos on the river...the dniester river, which is really close to our flat...it's been below freezing for more than two weeks, sometimes dramatically so...so the river is definitely very frozen...woo hoo...when we were out on saturday, i played in the snow and had cloe take a few photos...then we walked out to the middle of the frozen river and took a few more photos...they don't really show how very white everything is, or how cold it is, or how windy it was that day...(it was snowing sideways)...i made a snow angel in the middle of the river:)...the ice statue from a couple weeks ago was still there, it hadn't melted at all...i wonder how long it will be there...

sunday afternoon i went out by myself to take a few more photos...i figured a lot of the snow from saturday afternoon probably hadn't been moved yet...i made my way to the lavra, stopping first in a park and watching people sled down an awesome hill...another time i really wish cloe and i had a sled...it's fun to sled, and quite the workout to keep climbing back up the hill...there were heaps of people out there, despite the cold...ukrainians are definitely prepared for this kind of weather, which is fantastic...they not only have the proper clothes, they get out and enjoy the weather...
the memorial to victims of the '32-'33 famine (a man made famine, stalin made it happen on purpose) was perhaps more moving with the statue of the starving girl with snow on it...
from there i kept going down the street to the lavra, the monastary complex i know i've mentioned in a couple previous posts...i only entered the lower lavra, the area where you can see the 'caves'...since it obviously didn't snow inside, i had no desire to see those again...buuuut, there is another church, graveyard, and bell tower, and i knew they'd be beautiful...and they were...the upper lavra has some renovation going on, and it's the area where you have to pay an entrance fee, which i didn't much want to do...i've already seen it twice, and will likely visit again anywho...

after the lavra i walked along a main highway to a statue/memorial i'd seen photos of, but hadn't yet seen in person...until a taxi ride to the airport with cloe during the day, i didn't actually know where it was actually located...locals will tell you it's too far to walk, but it wasn't far at all...the photos didn't turn out well, with a gray sky and dark statue...oh well...the statue/memorial is supposed to depict the founders of the city of kyiv...3 brothers and a sister...or is it 2 brothers and their sister? what i know for sure is that the city is named after the eldest brother, and the others got hills in the city named after them...i wonder how that was decided...would i ever want a city named after me? probably not...
from there i walked back up the highway, through knee deep snow...only one person had walked through there previously, so there was no easy way to walk...it's just as much a workout to walk through deep-ish snow as it is to run/walk on a beach!!
my next stop was the botanical garden in the middle of town...snow covered of course...
from there to a roshen store...roshen is a local chocolate brand, you see their stuff ALL OVER the country...in pretty much every store selling chocolate, in every little corner stand...they have chocolate bars, toffees, individual chocolates, etc...i wanted chocolate toffees, and was really excited to get them...the store didn't have them!!! total heartbreak...booooooooooo...oh well, life goes on...i got a couple other types of chocolate instead, though they in no way made up for my disappointment....boooo...
at least i got a few good photos out of the weekend:)

i really miss this...a LOT

racing for fun...all the time!!

i miss running in korea...not that i went for any regular training runs, in fact i was quite the opposite...my friends teased me that i'm the only person they know who shows up to run a marathon with almost no training...as in, i've run 5-10 miles once or twice before a 26.2 mile race...and the majour factor in my decision to run the race is weather...if it's raining, i'm out...anything else, i'm good to go...i miss being able to run a race nearly every weekend of the year...living in a city of 20 million people has ups and downs, and being able to run all these races is definitely an up...

a wee bit chilly

though it's a bit fuzzy, you can sortof see the temperature on the thermometer...yes, it was -21C...that was this morning, just before we left our flat to go to work...state schools were closed because of the cold...but we're private, so we weren't...cloe and i waddle like penguins over the ice and snow that covers most sidewalks...i'm amazed i haven't slipped and broken any bones...yet...
i was told today that it's supposed to be colder tomorrow...