December 25, 2013
Christmas in Lviv: Part Two: The Queen of course
I awoke on Christmas morning and couldn't wait to leap out of bed to see what Santa Claus had brought me, which I eventually found the energy to do at about ten o'clock. Presumably because of the recent trauma in Slovakia, all he had managed was one sock, which isn't exactly what dreams are made of. But there was a pretty blonde girl busy knitting a second one for me, which kind of is.
Hanna's friend Dasha was visiting us for Christmas Day, as she was stopping over on her way from Belarus, where she lived, to Romania, where she would spend New Years. I say that she was visiting for Christmas Day but because Ukraine and Belarus are both Orthodox countries they actually both celebrate Christmas on the 6th/7th of January and give and receive presents at New Years, so it wasn't really Christmas Day for anyone except me. Even so, Dasha had brought me a great present of a children's alphabet book which was perfect to help me learn those funny letters. She also had a really nice camera and promised to take some photos of our day.
Unfortunately we were not able to stay in the nice apartment any longer and so Christmas Day was also moving day for us. As I loaded all my bags on the bike I noticed that I had a slow puncture on the front tire which was now half deflated and that my headset was also quite loose. This meant it was a real pain to push through the busy streets. Trying to walk through these streets without bumping into anyone is quite stressful enough, never mind trying to do so while pushing a 100-lb bike with a wobbly headset. It was only supposed to take twenty minutes to get to the new apartment but it ended up being more like an hour. "Worst Christmas ever!" I was moaning to anyone who would listen.
When we finally got to the apartment the guy who was supposed to let us in had already left and so we had to wait for him to come back. Over the previous days Hanna and I had been talking about the possibility of her cycling on with me from Lviv but we weren't sure because she didn't have a bike and also, winter in Ukraine isn't the nicest time to start bike touring. So we had decided that we would let fate decide, and I joked that if we 'found' a bicycle by chance then it would be a sign that she should come with me. Lo, if this wasn't a Christmas miracle but there was a bicycle sitting beneath our apartment window, unlocked and just waiting to be taken. And it was Hanna's size too!
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The man came back and let us in to our 'apartment' and gave us the tour which took all of five seconds. At this point I will stop referring to it as an apartment and start calling it by a more accurate description of a cupboard. The advantage of our cupboard was that one could easily do the cooking and washing up from bed and the only real disadvantage was that Hanna, who is the most clumsy person in the whole world, kept bumping into things every 30 seconds.
But we made the most of it and we all crammed into the room and had a jolly fine Christmas. The girls did their best to make a traditional Christmas dinner although because we are vegetarian and because we only had one stove point and no oven to cook it with, it was essentially a vegetable hot pot. And very delicious it was too. We played games and we ate too much chocolate and we went for a walk to a park which didn't exist and we even watched the Queen's Speech, to which Hanna's first reaction was "Who wrote that then?"
"The Queen of course Hanna, the Queen."
Today's ride: 2 km (1 miles)
Total: 11,196 km (6,953 miles)
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