Lviv, Ukraine, March 2008

Patience, I was told. You need patience to travel in Ukraine. This isn’t a cheapjet central European destination and there are no stag parties or direct flights to Stansted. English isn’t a natural second language and the alphabet is cloaked in Cyrillic. These are the things that attracted me to Ukraine.
I flew into Kyiv and then directly up to Lviv or Lvov or Lwow or even Lemberg. This is a city with plenty of names and many previous owners. It sits in the far west and once formed part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before rapidly changing hands between Poland, Nazi Germany, USSR and presently Ukraine. The word Ukraine, means Borderland and Lviv was its literal definition.

It’s a pretty city with a beautiful main square and hundreds of churches. I rented an apartment above the Drama Theatre in the old quarter. Squeaky parquet flooring alerted my neighbours to my precise location at any time. A market filled the outside square selling wooden tankards and Soviet medals and in the evening drunks sang below my window.

Next to the Drama Theatre stood the Opera House, built during the Hapsburg years and gloriously ornate. Then, in front of the opera house; a pig! Its snout rooting in the grass as a crowd gathered. I bought a ticket to the ballet and sat dead-centre in the upper balcony, £5 well spent. The building gleamed inside and Swan Lake floated across the stage. This was my very first ballet and I was entranced.

This constant changing of hands has benefited Lviv’s café culture. Viennese espressos competed with thicker, sludgy coffees and Lipton’s tea, drunk black, was an everpresent. In the evenings I moved on to local lager or sweet sparkling wine from Odessa.

Under the watchful eye of Ivan Fedorov, Russia's first publisher, and backing against the Church of the Assumption was a book market. Tolstoy sat next to Thomas the Tank Engine alongside Reggie Kray's memoirs. I found two 1970s Soviet guidebooks, one with faded photographs of Lviv, the other with paintings of Minsk showing strolling couples in picturesque parks. In the former, Lenin statues kept an eye on proceedings and if you wanted culture where better than the Museum of Atheism, housed in a baroque church?

I stood for ages in the rain waiting for a marshrutka to the airport for the red-eye to Kyiv. These minivans hurtle around town following complicated routes. I deciphered the Cyrillic in the windscreen and flagged one down. Fifteen minutes later and we were still in the city. I double-checked with the other passengers, "Aeroport?" "Nyet!" came the chorused reply followed by furious pointing in the opposite direction. I jumped out in a dreary suburb, crossed the road and the rain fell harder. Eventually another marshrutka came along and this time my "Aeroport?" query was answered with nodding heads. I folded myself against the back windshield and passed my fare over many heads to the driver. My glasses steamed up. Finally, through a smeary window I saw a plane landing and squeezed out. Patience was the best thing I packed.