Our car isn't insured in Ukraine, and new cars have been known to disappear there, so we took the 7AM bus from Presov to Uzhgorod. It took a couple of hours to reach the border and then the waiting started. First, the Slovaks took our passports and checked us out of the EU. Then we crept up to the Ukrainian customs office
where they took our passports again. Most people got their passports back, but a Ukrainian customs official got on the bus calling for 'Scott! Americanski!' so we took all our stuff and went into a small office for a personal interview with a very nice customs agent who seemed quite surprised that a couple of Americans would want to go to Ukraine for the day. After verifying that we didn't have any guns or drugs, he gave us our passports and we got back on the bus.
Ukraine has some nice socialist monuments
and some nice Orthodox churches (sorry about the lamp post)
We made our way up the the castle (more of a 'chateau')
where we could see the largest collection of preserved slugs in western Ukraine.
They also have a 'skanzen' (open-air museum) with the ubiquitous (in these parts) wooden church.
We bought a few souvenirs (mine are all the drinkable kind, one of which is described on the brewery website as "red, transparent, has scum without secondary inclusion") and headed back to the bus station. As we boarded, the driver asked for 2 hrivna apiece (about 50 cents) for the mandatory bribe for the Ukrainian customs agents. Getting out of Ukraine took even longer than getting in, mostly due to the Slovaks searching everyone's luggage for cigarettes. Apparently smokes are dirt cheap in Ukraine, but you're limited on the number you can bring in. We thought about financing our trip by buying a couple of cartons, but we don't know who we'd sell them to. Two hours later we were finally on the road heading back to Presov.
No comments:
Post a Comment