After a night in the 'frontier hotel' just North of Siret still in Romania we entered Ukraine on Easter Sunday. The Roman-catholic Easter. Nice hilly landscape, and dressed-up Ukrainian ladies everywhere, highheels on gravel roads in the villages. We only realised later through the news that it was election day, the second round of the presidentials. You all know the result...
Our first stop, Cernivtsi, was a nice surprise. Very beautiful town with loads of old buildings, many still from the Habsburg era. We then continued cycling on the old trade route stretching from the Black Sea to Southern Central Europe via Kolomia and Ivano-Frankivsk. In Kolomia we paid a visit to the museum on the local (Pre-Carpathian) Hutschul culture and life, and the Ester egg Museum which claims to have 12,000 specimens of "Pysankas', the crafting (wax printing, painting, engraving, etc) of which is considered an art on its own.
In Ivano-Frankivsk, Heidi left by train for a Yoga week in Southern Germany and I continued '1on1.bike' to L'viv. After attending a blessing ceremony of the beautifully decorated Easter baskets full of Easter eggs just outside the church in the village Rava-Ruska just at the border with Poland, I left Ukraine, again on an Easter Sunday. The orthodox Easter.
Since the Ukraine-EU border controls work only with the number plates for cars (they kind of create a dedicated file with that number which is then handed over and over again to the next border stop - 4 in total, 2 times customs, 2 times passports), I had to wait for a car willing to take me 'on board' as 'passenger'. On Easter sunday morning, I had to wait a little while to find one. Unfortunately that car had an issue at the very last stop (EU customs) so I lost my 'host'...but was allowed to enter Poland anyway. Before the last gate opened I, pushing our tandem, had to answer the following intelligent questions (I swear, no joke): Where do you come from? Reply: From Ukraine. (From where else at that point in this security area?). Aha. Where do go now? Reply: To Poland. (To where else at that point in this security area?). Aha. How do you go there? Reply: By bicycle.
Cernivtci
Easter egg museum, Kolomia
In the Ukrainian part of former Bukowina