Berlin to Odessa Day 15: Chernivtsi (Чернівці)
After leaving Kolomyia we biked and biked and biked. No shortcuts today. The highway is a fairly good road, it is normally pretty eroded off to the side and has many bumps and potholes closer to the edges but overall it is a very ridable road.
I mentioned before about horse traffic. There are some horse carts that trot along the side of the road, they seem to replace the tractor traffic we saw in Poland (there are some tractors here too).
While this picture may look staged, I simply asked Graham to stop and turn around as the cart passed by us, this is just along the highway.
We've also seen a large amount of enormous, delicious looking watermelon by the side of the road and being transported in huge trucks.
Today was an especially hot day while riding and I had a huge craving for watermelon. So we bought one and ate it whole by the side of the road.
There was a woman who controlled a rail crossing where we were eating. Every time a train passed by she had to bring the traffic barriers down, sound the warning siren, and give a visual signal to the train that it was safe to cross.
There weren't really that many trains passing by so she came over and talked to us in broken English, asking us about our bikes and expressing the usual "you are crazy" sentiments toward our journey.
A little further on, we arrived in Chernivtsi.
Our host is Pasha, an electrical engineer who works for a bridge building company.
Due to the very hilly nature of the city and the condition of the roads, we left the bikes for the day and Pasha took us on a grand walking tour of the city's parks and squares. The weather was too nice to contemplate going to a museum.
Chernivtsi is 600 years old and has belonged to Austria-Hungary, then to Romania, then to Turkey, then to Germany, then to the USSR. This lends itself to a diverse architectural style throughout the city where you can see 17th century buildings from Austria-Hungary next to ones from the Soviet era.
At night we tested some fine Chernivtsi microbrews and went to a club as well. I was hoping to hear some of the Ukrainian ska or really any Ukrainian music that I've heard just walking around the streets since I've been here. The mix was pretty frenetic and I think they played one Ukrainian song. Furthermore, there was some guy on stage behind the DJ the entire time who was half-singing, half-yelling into a microphone the entire time. I have no clue what he was saying (the only thing I understood was "Go crazy") but I'm sure it was nonsense. But the crowd was good, the decorations very cool, and everyone was dancing, so it was easy to get into.
A quick note about Ukrainian girls and women: they dress up as if they are going to walk the runway at a fashion show for Louis Vuitton. Painted on pants and hip-hugging dresses are the norm just for walking out of the house. Add this to the natural beauty of Ukrainian woman and it makes for a very distracting day since in every direction there are women dressed this way. Furthermore, they are all wearing 5- or 6-inch heels and walking deftly (or with great difficulty) through the hole-ridden streets and sidewalks.
I was interested in how they would dress in a club if that's how they dressed to just go to the grocery store. Well, as you can probably imagine, the dresses got shorter (not sure how this was possible) and the heels got longer (making it almost impossible and certainly impractical to bust any move outside of a hip sway).
I mentioned before about horse traffic. There are some horse carts that trot along the side of the road, they seem to replace the tractor traffic we saw in Poland (there are some tractors here too).
While this picture may look staged, I simply asked Graham to stop and turn around as the cart passed by us, this is just along the highway.
We've also seen a large amount of enormous, delicious looking watermelon by the side of the road and being transported in huge trucks.
Today was an especially hot day while riding and I had a huge craving for watermelon. So we bought one and ate it whole by the side of the road.
There was a woman who controlled a rail crossing where we were eating. Every time a train passed by she had to bring the traffic barriers down, sound the warning siren, and give a visual signal to the train that it was safe to cross.
There weren't really that many trains passing by so she came over and talked to us in broken English, asking us about our bikes and expressing the usual "you are crazy" sentiments toward our journey.
A little further on, we arrived in Chernivtsi.
Our host is Pasha, an electrical engineer who works for a bridge building company.
Due to the very hilly nature of the city and the condition of the roads, we left the bikes for the day and Pasha took us on a grand walking tour of the city's parks and squares. The weather was too nice to contemplate going to a museum.
 |
| An oversized bicycle (more like a trike) in the Turkish Square in the center of the city. |
Chernivtsi is 600 years old and has belonged to Austria-Hungary, then to Romania, then to Turkey, then to Germany, then to the USSR. This lends itself to a diverse architectural style throughout the city where you can see 17th century buildings from Austria-Hungary next to ones from the Soviet era.
At night we tested some fine Chernivtsi microbrews and went to a club as well. I was hoping to hear some of the Ukrainian ska or really any Ukrainian music that I've heard just walking around the streets since I've been here. The mix was pretty frenetic and I think they played one Ukrainian song. Furthermore, there was some guy on stage behind the DJ the entire time who was half-singing, half-yelling into a microphone the entire time. I have no clue what he was saying (the only thing I understood was "Go crazy") but I'm sure it was nonsense. But the crowd was good, the decorations very cool, and everyone was dancing, so it was easy to get into.
A quick note about Ukrainian girls and women: they dress up as if they are going to walk the runway at a fashion show for Louis Vuitton. Painted on pants and hip-hugging dresses are the norm just for walking out of the house. Add this to the natural beauty of Ukrainian woman and it makes for a very distracting day since in every direction there are women dressed this way. Furthermore, they are all wearing 5- or 6-inch heels and walking deftly (or with great difficulty) through the hole-ridden streets and sidewalks.
I was interested in how they would dress in a club if that's how they dressed to just go to the grocery store. Well, as you can probably imagine, the dresses got shorter (not sure how this was possible) and the heels got longer (making it almost impossible and certainly impractical to bust any move outside of a hip sway).
Position:пров. Ентузіастів,Czernowitz,Ukraine
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