Updated: September 8, 2001
Carpathia, Ukraine
The past six days have represented a serious departure from my activities up to this point.
Well before dawn (3am!) on the morning of September 2nd, Paul and I awoke and grabbed a taxi to the Lviv train station. Our destination was Ivano-Frankivsk, where we would meet our guide, Slavik (who I found on the internet). He would be showing us around the Ukrainian Carpathian mountains for the next several days.
This was definite adventure. We were leaving the familiar confines of a city. We were abandonding Lada and her fluent Ukrainian/English translation abilities. We were trading it all for "Slavik." We knew very little about him at the time. As it turned out, Slavik would be just about the best guide imaginable, but also one of the strangest dudes out there.
Ivano-Frankivsk is sort of an overgrown farmers' village. It boasts 250,000 people, but it still feels like a village. Imagine Omaha plopped into the middle of Ukraine. There is not, I'm sorry to say, a great deal to entertain one in Ivano-Frankivsk. Luckily our sights were set elsewhere.
Slavik met us at the train station on our first day. We adjourned to his house where we were force fed yet another massive Ukrainian meal (stuffed peppers, mushroom cutlets, cake for dessert, and of course, pounds of bread) by Slavik's mother. Then we were off in a minibus we rented to the base camp for Hoverla, the tallest peak in Ukraine at 2060 meters.
At this point, I feel it necessary to try to introduce Slavik as well as one can introduce such a unique individual. First of all, I want to emphasize that Slavik is an extremely competent guide. I would recommend him greatly to anyone wishing to explore the region. That said, he is a strange cookie if I've ever met one. To begin with, he could prattle with the best of them. And when I say he could prattle I mean he could jabber about virtually anything for hours: nutrition (one of his favorite topics), Denmark (where he currently attends school), his sexual conquests, his employment in a Danish fast food restaurant, or some random conversation he had. Certainly no provocation is required to bring up any of these topics. He is also perhaps one of the most frugal people I have ever met. When we would board local trains he would have us give him a few kopeks (pennies in US Dollars) so that he could pretend we had no more money in order to save, at most, 25 US cents.
He certainly developed this habit living in Denmark, where a Ukrainian would need to save every cent just to get by (this became readily apparent in conversation). Nevertheless, this tendency was nothing short of comical at times. We were frequently forced to demand that he stop trying to save us money so that we could do something else with our time. We would have a difficult time every day convincing him that, yes, we really did want that more expensive type of cheese. Yes, Slavik, we know it's not the cheapest. Tell them we want it anyways. And so on.
Additionally, his capacity for eating knew no bounds. He was short: probably 5'8" and thin. From the moment we met him until we left each other five and a half days later I don't think I saw him go two hours without eating. I am thoroughly convinced that he woke every few hours during the night to have a snack. At first it was vegetables and fruit. At any given time you were more likely than not to see an apple, a tomato, or a cucumber being busily stuffed into Slavik. As our supply of vegetables ran out (I didn't initially understand why Slavik was bringing so much food from home) it became ice cream. Every market we passed demanded a stop so that Slavik could stock up. It was comical nearly beyond description.
Another unique trait of Slavik's: his seemingly endless capacity for confusion. Though he never steered us poorly or failed us in any way he often seemed like a deer in headlights. Things we had discussed a mere fifteen minutes ago seemed to slip from his mind with incomparable ease. When not being told what to do he froze. At one point we discussed for a long time how Slavik rather preferred communist rule (a story in itself). One reason was that he figured it wasn't so bad being told what to do. We quickly understood why. Plans were a jumble until Paul and I demanded order. He seemed to drift through life in a simultaneously cautious but clueless pattern. Nonetheless it was excellent and I wouldn't have had him any other way.
But to return to our trip…
Our first day at the base camp we didn't climb Hoverla, but instead took a three hour trail winding up and down mountain ridges to Lake Nesamovite, a gorgeous but tiny lake nestled near the top of one of the numerous mountains surrounding Hoverla. The air was very cold (10°C) during most of the hike and the sky overcast. Nonetheless, we were rewarded with some of our nicest views of the trip out over rolling, pine covered mountains. From our vantage point in the tree-free sub-alpine region we appeared able to see forever. The lake was far too cold to swim. Paul nearly offered me $50 to swim across the lake naked, but rescinded when it appeared that I was ready to disrobe and swim.
We spent a long night in the base camp. Slavik elected to sleep outside in a tent, which probably turned out to be a good choice. Our room was not heated (and it was damn cold out). Even more amusing was that Paul's bed broke about five minutes after he laid down. One of the ends of the footboard collapsed, leaving Paul sleeping on something of an odd angle. Try though I might, I couldn't help but be greatly amused. Paul was not so amused.
Neither of us were very amused the next morning (least of all Paul who had slept very little) when we woke to falling rain. Our plan had been to scale Hoverla and work our way to a village on the other side where Slavik's girlfriend (who had been inexplicably brought along for an entire day of our trip) would catch a train back to Ivano-Frankivsk. She had to get to I-F that day because she had a train back home to Slovakia the next morning.
However, in the rain soaked conditions (and due to Paul's complaints of an injured knee) such an epic trip seemed out of the question. Thus, Paul and Slavik and I (Slavik's girlfriend, who may be the most boring person on Earth, elected to remain behind) geared up in our most waterproof outfits and set out to ascend Hoverla in the drizzling rain and charming mud. Our plan (and, for once, our end result!) was to climb, return, and try to hitch out to the closest village.
The climb was great. It was spiritually enlivening, physically invigorating, and aesthetically wonderful. Part way up the mountain the weather cleared up and we got some more fabulous mountainscapes. However, these disappeared towards the very top of the mountain as we disappeared into the cloud cover. Our last 100 meters or so of ascent were in pure clouds. We didn't get a view from the top, but we had some damn good hollers of joy (as well as declaring that since we were now at the highest point in Ukraine, Paul and I clearly owned the country).
It was awesome.
Returning to base camp we spent nearly two hours trying to hitch a ride out. At one point, Slavik had supposedly convinced a bus of tourists to take us part of the way. However, I suspect they merely said OK because he was being annoying. My proof? As we gathered our bags to go get on the bus, it peeled out of the parking lot about as fast as I've ever seen a bus move and drove off before we could get there. Slavik was less than pleased ("I find that mother f**ker and punch him in the head"). Paul and I were slightly less miffed…after all, OUR girlfriend didn't have to be in Slovakia in 24 hours. Anyhow, after another hour or so of sitting we finally received a ride from some wealthy Russians staying at the base camp who took us to the nearby village of Verokhta.
Verokhta is a pretty typical small Ukrainian village, graced by a train station (for a train which literally moves slower than a reasonably bike), a few bars (where we drank a couple bottles of Odessan Champagne: $1.20 a bottle), and a convenience store or two. We stayed in the attic of a villager's home in a very pleasant room that only costs us $1 per person. After paying $10 for a shitty room at the Hoverla base camp we were ecstatic. Our home came complete with heating (yeah!), gruff Ukrainian villagers beneath us, a well appointed outhouse (complete with newspaper clippings of Schwarzenegger on the wall), and of course, a cow. We respectfully declined the offer to milk the cow (though we did take the opportunity to moo in its general direction).
Over the next few days we basically village hopped (sometimes hiking, sometimes by super-slow train) and climbed a few more mountains. On our last night in the woods we finally had nice night weather and decided to camp instead of homestaying. We hiked about half an hour out of the nearest village at the time and ended up in a great site near a stream where Slavik made a fire (after Paul and I's bumbling attempts failed) and cooked some of the best damn soup I've ever had (cabbage, porridge, macaroni, chicken bouillon and tomato paste…don't knock it till you try it). We slept next to our fire under the full moon and bright, starlit sky while Slavik elected to sleep in his tent. When I awoke around 5am my eyes flew straight open and I was rewarded by the sight of four stars arrayed in a square shape framing the opening in the pines which was directly above my head. It was a sublime moment.
That day Slavik's father picked us up from the village and returned us to Ivano-Frankivsk via two destinations: a monastery out in the woods, and a trail out to two neighboring waterfalls (where Paul and I took freezing cold showers much to the amusement of the observing Slavik). We spent the night in Ivano-Frankisvk looking for nightlife, which was unsurprisingly lacking. Remember, I compared the place to OMAHA. Still, we had fun walking around unlit city streets with Slavik. Eventually we ended up chilling on a gazebo with one of Slavik's many local acquaintances who doubled as one of many local drug dealers. We had a few smokes and listened to the dealer ramble non-stop for an hour about who-the-f**k-knows what in Ukrainian. Unfortunately for Slavik, he actually had to pay attention. Paul and I mostly giggled.
After that we returned to city center hoping to have a beer at one of the outdoor tents, but found that everything in Ivano-Frankivsk apparently closes before midnight. Naturally. We made our way back to the local university dormitory, which was doubling as our room for the night, and proceeded to pass out on what I believe to be the creakiest beds ever created.
The next day we did virtually nothing but wander idly around Ivano-Frankivsk before catching our train out. It was here that Paul and I said our goodbyes. I took the train as far as Lviv where I met Lada. Paul remained on the train which was throughbound to Kyiv, where his flight for the States departed from. Hugging Paul on the train station is the last I will see of one of my best friends for about a year. Luckily, Lada, England, and lots more travel are around to keep me distracted. I am not distraught.