ukraine: klevan

from kyiv, susannah, marina and i took a marshrutka to a city called lutsk...we spent the first day of the long weekend in lutsk, but this post is about klevan, where we spent our second day...
we bought tickets for an electric train to klevan, it was the only way to go between the two cities...the ride was quite smooth, but there was very little air circulation in the train compartment, so it wasn't super comfortable...the aisle between the seats was quite wide, something i haven't seen previously...for some of these folks, it was clearly a regular train ride, they knew how to entertain themselves...kids, sang, old men played cards, people walked and talked with different groups of friends or family...

when we got off the train in klevan, (the interior of the train station was really nice, especially when considering how small the town is!)we initially started walking in the wrong direction, on the wrong side of the train station, oops...fortunately, we figured that out pretty quickly...
we switched around, and followed a path along the train tracks...soon enough we came along a very small cabin, the guy inside was some sort of guard...i don't know what kind of guard...marina asked him where we could find the so called 'tunnel of love'...

the 'tunnel of love' isn't a real tunnel...there is a set of train tracks going through the forest, and trains used to go very regularly along these tracks...over the years, the trees grew over the space where the trains went, tying themselves together...sortof...i don't know when, but at some point the trains stopped going on those tracks, but the formation of the trees stayed...
it's now called the 'tunnel of love', and is quite picturesque...this tunnel of love is mentioned on a couple 'top natural sights in the world' type of blog posts, so i wanted to see it, so did susannah and marina...what is not mentioned in any guidebook or blog post is the MOSQUITOS...they are EVERYWHERE in this tunnel...if you stop moving for just an instant, they attack you...even when you're walking, they still try to attack...is there anyway to prevent being attacked? i wonder if long clothes would've helped us much...hmmm, something to think about...

our original plan was to walk at least half the length of the tunnel (the full length is 6-7km!!) but all the mosquitos changed our plan...i'm not sure we even made it 1km...ugh...we did manage to take a few photos, but it was tough...standing still was a challenge for both the poser and the photographer...as we got out of the tunnel area we realized it was susannah who had been favoured by the mozzies...
from there we walked into the area of town in which we'd first headed...we followed one street until we got to the center street, and eventually found a couple cafes...

klevan is NOT a tourist town, most people only go to the tunnel and there aren't even many of those visitors...we waited for one of the cafes to open, then had lunch...soooo cheap! while waiting, we took a look at the memorial that was put up 30 years after the end of WWII...a bit strange to see a memorial marking the 30 yr anniversary of the war, but it was as big as we've come to expect in this quirky country...
our server at lunch told us of a church and a fortress we could also visit, but we realized we didn't have enough time...(there was only one train back to lutsk, we knew we had to be on that train)...we walked toward the fortress, just to see how far we could get in 20 minutes...the walk back went faster, for whateva reason...
that was our trip to klevan...we all decided we want to go back, but would prefer to do it when there are no mozzies...which probably means in the dead of winter, when there is heaps of snow on the ground...