Good Samaritans of L'Viv

I’m sitting here on a bus traveling 7 hours from L’Viv, to Kamyanets-Podilski. For the past 3 hours, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much harder it could have been for Matt and I to actually be on this bus, if it we’re for the sincere helpfulness of the L’Viv people.

It all started yesterday, after we saw a 300 year old local brewery and a 225 year old cemetery of not just Ukrainians, but Poles as well - one of many nations/regimes that have laid claim on Ukraine over the past 15 centuries.  You see we’ve learned a lot about this country, not just from our Lonely Planet guide and Wikipedia searches (sad sources for genuine history), but also from our friend, Marian, who waited on us at our fave coffee shop. I’ll come back to that later – it’s a story in itself.

Lvivske Museum

Lychakiv Cemetery

So, we exit the cemetery looking for an electric tram to take us to the train station to buy tickets for our next destination – a girl at the brewery museum said that you could indeed take a train. Confused, I tapped a middle-aged woman on the shoulder and politely said, “Excuse me?” in Ukrainian. After pointing at the tram stop sign and then back at the map several times, I managed to relay where we needed to go. She then walked up to a stranger and they had a 5 minute discussion on how to get there. In unison, they counted on their fingers all the different trams and finally agreed on a route.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite sure if I understood what they were desperately trying to tell me. Despite their efforts, I walked away with a question mark. “Was it THIS tram, STOP 6, or should we take TRAM 6?” As I weighed the options with Matt, little did I know that another woman came to wait at the tram stop and the woman I initially approached asked this stranger to help me out. She waved at me and gestured to herself. “I think she wants us to follow her.” And that’s what we did. During the tram ride, she made sure to keep an eye on us and eventually motioned for us to get off at the next stop and cross the street. She put up her fingers - SIX.

After arriving at the train station, we weren’t getting very far with the cash desk attendant, except to say that there were NO TRAINS to Kamyanets-Podilski. Whah? “TAKE BUS,” she says. We wanted to make absolutely sure, so Matt walked up to a police officer and asked if he knew English. Two seconds later, this bright-eyed, curly-haired girl pops out from behind the glass. “Can I help you?” Before you know it, we were behind the partition, with a myriad of helpers checking trains and possible bus routes to KP. There WERE trains, but none direct. She wrote down the bus station name and departure times in Ukrainian, so we could hand the paper to the clerk. Shortly thereafter, we had a bus ticket in one hand - and a Shawarma in the other.

It didn’t end there. On the way home, someone told us that we were on the wrong bus and should take 3A instead. Then this morning, we were at the wrong bus stop and this man directed us where to go. Incredible. Дякую L’Viv.

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