The Grand Adventures of Anna Ravioli: Bukovyna Part I: Chernivtsi

Apologies for the excessive delay. I had some issues with my university and it took time to sort them out. Now everything is better, I hope, and there is time to talk about my trip to Bukovyna, the land of castles.

The train curtains even have castles on them.

The name "Bukovyna" may be familiar to you from our Ukrainian folk-dancing days. Bukovyna is a region in southwestern Ukraine, containing beautiful Austro-Hungarian architecture, castles, and pre-karpaty snowscapes. We saw all of these things during our trip. It was really a very busy adventure.

On a Wednesday, January 24th, I caught a night train. Talia and I were supposed to be on the same train, but we didn't manage to actually find each other. I shared my coupe with an old dude who snored excessively loudly. Plus, the train was exceedingly hot. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep. When I arrived in Chernivtsi on Thursday morning, I met up with Talia, as well as Joel and Charitie, who had come from L'viv and had arrived an hour or so earlier. The first thing we did upon arriving was try to find our hostel. This proved to be much more difficult than we expected. First, Joel hadn't printed out the reservation so we didn't have any confirmation number or phone number for the place. Then, when we checked our Lonely Planet guidebooks for the phone number, the man who answered said he didn't know anything about our coming to stay but that he would come to meet us. We thought that was a little strange, but waited for him anyway. When we actually met him, we found out it probably wasn't the right hostel, even though the guidebook said there was only one hostel in Chernivtsi. We thanked him and left, and went to an internet cafe to find the number for the hostel we had actually booked with. We didn't find out the whole story until we actually got to the right hostel, but apparently there had once been two hostels in Chernivtsi, both owned by the same person, and one had been run by the guy we first met, until they had a falling out of some kind, so now there was really only one hostel. However, that guy was still occasionally taking people in when he needed the money. It was all very sketchy. We were glad when we had finally found the right place.

For the first day, we just hung around Chernivtsi. It is a beautiful city which some call the "little Paris of Ukraine." It had a lot of the same Austro-Hungarian architecture as you would find in L'viv, but many of the buildings were kept up much better, and had been renovated and painted. The overall effect was quite enjoyable, though I still think I like L'viv better.

Chernivtsi's main square

The famous blue town hall is on the left.

Chernivtsi's main synagogue, which was converted into a movie theater after the Holocaust. Chernivtsi's Jewish history, while rich, is also pretty grim.

Our main stop of the day was at Chernivtsi's famous university, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.