I stopped off in Lviv to break up the journey and pick up some stuff I had left, which meant spending another night in the flat waist high in Christian reading. My landlady Nadya and her poor husband Borys invited me round for a cuppa that evening. We sat in front of a cinema sized television and I attempted to converse while they watched a loud and kitschy talent show. Allowing a suitable time to pass and having consumed enough tea for the month, I made to leave but it was not so easy...
"YOU WANT MORE TEA? TEA? BORYS! YOU NO LIKE TEA?" Nadya bellowed at me. Many Eastern Europeans who are not used to talking to foreigners automatically raise their voices and repeat the same words over and over again. I may have trouble understanding other languages but I'm not deaf or stupid!
"No, thank you." I said.
"YOU NO LIKE TEA?
"Yes, it's very nice, but I don't want another one."
"YOU WANT EAT? WHY YOU NO HUNGRY? BORYS WILL TO MAKE WATER TO TEA... BORYS!!"
The next morning with a couple of hours to kill, I took a walk around the old town before my train was due. I said hello to a girl just too pretty to ignore. I was glad to be back in Lviv where they speak Ukrainian which is similar to Polish. We strolled to the main thoroughfare together as she was looking for a t-shirt. Her make-up had been somewhat enthusiastically applied and reminded me of Liz Taylor's Cleopatra. She told me of her ambition to work in Human Resources and her aim to move to Moscow, I imagined Chekov giving me a wry smile.
We stopped at a Country Fair which had come to town. Smiley people presided over stalls galore offering such produce as cheese, wine, glass and peasant jewelry, pottery, local art and wooden carvings. Sooty blacksmiths manipulated red hot iron and traditionally attired babuszkas sold shawls and blouses. There were colourfully costumed 'cossacks' dancing and frequent firing of antique muskets.
It being time for me to leave the Ukraine, we bid each other farewell and with a womanly wiggle my companion walked away without looking back. A ravishing combination of wild black hair, a tiny waist and low cut hipsters which were met with red stilletto's on which she glided around effortlessly... she was every boy's wet dream. She turned down a side street, stopped to look in a shop window, and stepped inside.
Word of the week: Laska meaning sexy girl.
