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OH MY GOD!
I headed out after escaping the annoying kid, to discover how bad the roads actually are. I had been told they were bad, but nothing, NOTHING, would have prepared me for this. Heading away from the crossing, through a small village of small wooden houses, who all came out to look at my bike, and stare as if I was a UFO. The road sign said humps in the road and 30KPH by each one. Now it was nice to be warned about these smooth regular shaped bumps in the road, which I can only describe as a white line painted on some rubble. Finally a petrol station came into view, very modern and smart looking with a shed offering to change money.
I parked the bike and got out my $ headed up to the window and was greeted by 3 non-English speaking admittedly good looking young women. I gave them money, they tapped out the quantity, exchange rate and resulting sum on their calculator. I smiled and nodded, at which point they got out a wad of cash from one of their hand bags and gave me the money. I smiled and waved goodbye, went outside and was greeted by about 6 men pointing at my bike and smiling. I got on quick, smiled and took off.
As I moved on down the road, a new horror greeted me; roadworks!! Yes they have them here too, with a twist. This particular part, they had taken the road up completely, not that you could tell, and the diversion was through a field, just tracks in the mud. I slipped and skated my way through unscathed, and headed on towards the town of L'viv to head south east.
Reaching the 'ring-road' of this town, I met the 1st heavy traffic. They are all mad, in their Ladas other such cars, with a high mix of expensive Audi BMW and Mercedes. I had to quickly learn that you may be overtaken at any time by a car being overtaken by another. This could happen coming towards you also or if passing another vehicle there is no guarantee there are not about another 6 cars heading for the exact bit of tarmac you are fighting for. Learning this, I quickly acclimatised to riding with 1 eye in the mirrors.
Now, I thought the road could not get any worse. It did, again! Turning to go through the town of Ternopil' I discovered yet more horrors:
1 - The road as wide as a runway, looked great, so I foolishly opened the throttle, to suddenly loose contact with the road, as the was none, they had just dug sections up all over the place. That was a lesson I learned quickly.
2 - The tarmac in places was squished up into ramp shapes, again, a lesson learnt the hard way, at least I got a good look way ahead from up in the air.
3 - Descending the hill, the tarmac had turned into what can only be described as steps.
Getting used to all of these 'features' I pressed on realising my short day of 350 miles was going to be the longest day in the saddle. Imagine how pleased I was when I saw a Policeman flag me down, he must have been thinking of how tired and in need of a break I was. WRONG, he started pointing and yapping on at me, apparently I was going 130 KPH in a 60 KPH zone, how I don't know. But following a phone call to my friend and passing the phone across, I managed to get away without being arrested or fined.
Finally I arrived in Khmel'nts'kyi at about 7pm local time, about 11 hours in all. The hotel was a little run down, but had secure parking. The room was very big and there was a nice warm shower.
When I had managed to clean the day away, I headed into the hotel restaurant for dinner. My friend translated the menu for me., so the first thing we tried was local beer. I was given the choice of Stella Artois, 1500 miles from home and I can find this beer, yet half the pubs in England don't sell it!
The next thing I tried was a kind of soup with meat and vegetables. This was very nice and flavoursome, nor borsch but the closest thing on the menu. The salad course came next, not what we would call salad, but much more interesting. Te basis of the salad I had was cabbage, with squid rings, and mayonnaise. This was obviously formed in some sort of bowl and turned out onto the plate. The closest thing to this in England would be coleslaw. On the top of this salad were 2 halves of some very small boiled egg, topped with caviar. As I was struggling to finish this, the next course arrived, a plate of some kind of potato cake, with sour cream. Quite tasty, but the salad and soup had filled me so I left a little of everything.
Following dinner, we caught a taxi into the middle of the town. By now the light had gone and the centre of the town was lit with the bar lights and ample street lighting. We walked through the central part of town and then out the other side adjacent to some recreational parks, which were amply lit with small groups of people sitting and talking, it all looked very pleasant.
One thing I noted is that there was a mix of cars. A lot of the cars we have been programmed to expect, Ladas and old Skodas, but there were also a high proportion of high end expensive Mercedes, Hummers etc. Apparently as the town has a large clothing market it attracts wealthy people to trade in the town, resulting in a small affluent section, and the inevitable house prices becoming out of reach for the majority of the town's population.
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