To Ukraine with Love

In the summer of ’09, my husband John and I took a train from Krakow, Poland to Lviv, Ukraine. When we arrived at the border between Poland and Ukraine, we had to get off the train in the Polish city of Przemsyl. There we walked to another train station because the gauge of the train changed. In this small city, there were two stations, one to go to and from Ukraine; the other to go and come from Poland and onto the rest of Europe. In other words, the Ukrainian side of the border so mistrusted the Polish side that they changed the width of the tracks to keep invaders from rolling into their country.

Past midnight we arrived in Lviv, Ukraine, a city covered in heavy darkness. Couldn’t they afford street lights? I wondered, sitting in the back of a taxi that sped through the winding streets, tires thudding over cobblestones, bouncing over potholes, of which there were many.

Our driver pulled up to a large building. On the top floor was our hostel, the Cosmonaut, named for Yuri Gagarin, the famous Russian astronaut. Still in total darkness, we rang a bell next to the door and waited. No one came. John tried the door. It opened. We stepped inside an empty foyer and were met by the odor of cat urine, so fierce my eyes burned.

“I’m not sure about this place,” I said to John, who had booked our room with ensuite bath on the internet. John ignored me. Cost came before comfort to my husband, an economist. Economist is another word for very cheap, I used to tease, but often the joke was on me.

Our physical presence in the foyer caused a light to come on at the bottom of a sweeping wooden staircase. A sign in English for the Cosmonaut pointed upstairs. We took the stairs to a door on a landing. Good news: the higher we climbed the more the cat pee odor dissipated. At the door on the landing, another bell brought a young man, bed head and sleepy eyed, to the door. He copied our passports, gave us the key to our room, pointed us to a balcony in the back, and went back to bed on a sofa in front of the desk.

We were gathering our backpacks and rolling cases when I sensed someone close behind me and let out a little shriek of surprise. Over my shoulder was an astronaut—no, wrong—it was a complete astronaut’s suit, like the ones in our Air and Space Museum in DC, with helmet, plastic front down, but without an astronaut inside. Behind the suit were framed photographs of handsome Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space!

Our strangely shaped room was off the balcony. While its bathroom would not pass code in the US, everything worked. We were exhausted and fell asleep.

The next morning, we went to the kitchen for our free breakfast. There we were greeted by Eddie, an Australian and owner of the Cosmonaut. When we asked what had brought him halfway around the world to Lviv, he explained, “I fell in love and married a Ukrainian girl. She refuses to live anywhere else so here I am.”

The huge breakfast table was crowded with young and old. Arthur, a Dane in his 20’s, was a UN soldier on vacation. Several beautiful Swedish girls smiled and practiced their excellent English on us. 65-year-old, Martin had taught American history at a high school in Chicago. Martin had been born in Ukraine, but immigrated to the States as a baby. He had always dreamed of returning to his native land and, thus, was here to buy an apartment in Lviv, where he planned to live out the rest of his life.

Martin was also an aging hippie, with a unique perspective of America. Over toast and coffee, Arthur asked Martin, “Who exactly was Stokely Carmichael?”

Martin said, “He was like a social worker with a gun.”

I laughed at Martin’s response and was impressed that Arthur had heard of Stokely. In our travels I was often amazed at how much the world knows about the USA, yet how little we Americans know of life outside our borders. This is part of my wanderlust: I want to get to know the world. Since my visit to Ukraine I have made it a point to read a little of their modern history about their famine brought on by Stalin, their battles with the Nazis and their terrible decades as a Soviet satellite.

On our first morning we needed to get some Ukrainian money (hryvnia). We went to the bank across from the Cosmonaut, put in our cash card and waited, but got no response. We panicked. John ran across the street to get Eddie while I waited at the ATM, hoping our card would reappear. Eddie came down and we all went into the bank, where Eddie vouched for us and we got our card back. He instructed us to look for ATMs that displayed the Visa/Mastercard logos. We did as he instructed and all was well.

Our first few days we took in the sights of Old Town, where its Austro-Hungarian heritage could be seen in the understated elegant architecture. Some of the Swedish girls wanted to see Lychakiv Cemetery, older than Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. They asked us to accompany them. We got out our maps and found the cemetery, which houses the graves of Ukrainian greats. Thus, it is part outdoor sculpture garden and museum.

One morning we had lattes with Eddie in the sunny garden of an outdoor café. “Why do you have Yuri Gagarin paraphernalia all over the hostel?” I asked.

His smiled widened. “So, the Berlin wall comes down in ’89 right, then Ukraine declares its independence in ’91. I was here in Lviv that happy day when the Soviets packed up and left. They threw away what they considered trash—Ukrainian historical items. They left Gagarin’s stuff by the curb. I couldn’t believe it! He was the first person in space. So, I picked it up and gave it a home.”

In 1961 Russia and the US were in a space race when Yuri Gagarin went into space. He got into a tiny module and allowed himself to be shot into the unknown. Travel is like that for me. I loved waking up in Lviv and feeling it call to me to explore. After all Lviv was the most exotic place I had ever been. Even their alphabet was different. They write in cyrillic. Slowly we fell into the rhythms of the city. Every day we woke, breakfasted, caffeinated at a cafe with lattes, and explored its churches, museums, and green spaces. In the evenings, we went to the nearby park, where neighbors gathered and skateboarders performed.

Fast forward to March 2022. I write this from the first floor of my house, where I have been laid up since foot surgery last week. I follow the war in Ukraine religiously. I pray for its people and its magnificent leader, President Zelensky daily. The Russian army looked so mighty in the beginning when they began to cut a path of death and destruction through this peaceful neighboring country. But Putin underestimated the unity, strength, and courage of the Ukrainians; he underestimated the reaction of the rest of the world. May Ukraine stay free.