Introduction
Day 1 - San Francisco to Prague
Day 2 - Kyiv from the air
Day 2 - Boryspil International Airport
Day 2 - First Views Of Kyiv
Day 3 - Guided Tour of Kyiv
Day 3 - Kyiv - On our own
Day 3 - Night train from Kyiv to L'viv
Day 4 - L'viv with Father Ken
Day 5 - Radekhiv
Day 5 - Vytkiv
Day 6 - Trip to Kolomyia
Day 6 - Halych
Day 6 - Ivano-Frankivs'k
Day 7 - Bazaar at Kosiv
Day 7 - Between Kosiv and Kolomyia
Day 7 - Kolomyia
Day 8 - Zvenyhorod
Day 8 - Back in L'viv
Day 9 - L'viv with Orest and Vitali
Day 10 - L'viv - Morning walk with Dad
Day 10 - L'viv on my own
Day 11 - L'viv with Dad
Day 11 - Night train to Budapest
Day 12 - Budapest
Day 13 - Budapest
Day 13 - Szentendre
Day 14 - Homeward bound

TRIP TO UKRAINE
September 19 - October 2, 1999

DAY 10 - L'VIV
Morning Walk With Dad - L'viv Train Station

Map of area between our hotel and central train station

Tuesday, September 28, 1999

Our arrival at the L'viv train station had not provided much of an opportunity for either exploration or photos, and since I am a rail fan, I had to go back. Dad was free, so the next morning I persuaded him to accompany me on my expedition. It was drizzling, but that stopped soon.

I liked this sign for Intertrans, the Ukrainian transport authority.

At the station.

I enjoyed exploring the station, which was clean and well-maintained. Unlike the Kyiv station, though, the one in L'viv was quiet both times I saw it.

When I told an English rail-fan friend that I had visited L'viv, he sent me this scan of an antique postcard showing the station circa 1910. It looks much the same today, but differs enough that I asked around and another rail-fan in Europe emailed me as follows:

On March, 26, 1904 Lviv Railway station "Ploshcha Dvirtseva" was built by the Polish architect W. Sadlowski. It has been said that it was the largest railway station of it's time (however I could find no sources to confirm this). The construction of the station was during Austrian Hungarian occupation. During the second World War the railway station was destroyed and rebuilt in postwar time under the Soviet occupation, probably utilizing the original design as a guide.

I asked my cousin Roman Senkus, Managing Editor of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, what "Ploshcha Dvirtseva" means, and he replied

It's derived from "dvirets'," the Western Ukrainian term for railway station (cf. Polish "dworzec"). So "Ploshcha Dvirtseva" means "(Railway) Station Square." Elsewhere in Ukraine and in Russia the word for railway station is "vokzal," from the famous railway station Vauxhall.

They were actually expanding the station! You can see the area under construction, on the far left of the bottom photo. (Keep in mind that I am from the US, where trains are considered dinosaurs or oddities. We do not expand our train stations, we turn them into shopping malls.)

Streetcar terminal at the train station.

A relatively new church on the way back to the hotel.

Church of St. Olha and Elizabeth, completed in 1911, and named in memory of Austrian Empress Elizabeth (L'viv was within the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time.)

Exterior view of St George's Church and the Metropolitan's Palace.

It was mid-morning on a Monday - Note how few cars and people are in view.

CLOTHING - People dress more formally than in the States. I think this is partly a matter of tradition, a European prejudice against casual dress in public, but may also be a matter of economics - they simply cannot afford casual clothes, or cannot afford to look less than their best. Perhaps it is also a holdover from Communism, and a time when it was dangerous to be different.