Krakow to Lviv

We left Krakow at 3am because we had heard that there have been up to 3 hour waits on the Poland-Ukraine border. The balance has changed to more people returning to Ukraine (to the relatively safe western Lviv region) than leaving Ukraine.

As it happened, we drove through the fairly haphazard border controls with no hold up. The first thing we noticed on the Ukrainian side were miles (literally) of lorries lining the side of the highway, which was only 2 lanes so made for fairly scary driving. On the Polish side was an equally long line of parked cars, waiting to be sold. We also noticed more potholes on Ukrainian roads than even East Lancashire!

The purpose of our visit to Ukraine is 2-fold: firstly, we drove our friend, Romana, home to Lviv (in her car) with her 4-year-old daughter, as she decided against coming to England in order to be with her husband and family. Secondly, we are on a fact-finding mission to see if there is a demand for the UK sponsorship scheme in Lviv, which has become home to a large number of refugees who have fled the fighting in eastern/southern Ukraine.

We'll be here until next Wednesday because that is when we should be able to get a lift back to Krakow in a vehicle that has been emptied of medical supplies. Returning by train didn't seem a very safe option, although someone told us that railway lines aren't targeted because it wouldn't be in the interests of the invading Russian forces to destroy the rail infrastructure.

We spent most of today making some useful contacts, thanks to Romana and our other friend, Sofiia, who returned to Lviv about a month ago and has just left hospital after an unfortunate accident. Tomorrow we hope to visit the largest refugee centre in Lviv.

We had a refreshingly welcome response from the Lviv volunteer coordinators in the main station. We spoke to World Central Kitchen volunteers in the refugee reception area in front of the station, in search of a translator for the next few days. We had some help from a volunteer doctor from Maine, whose colleagues will be travelling to the eastern front where medical help is most needed.

Lviv is a beautiful city, although very different from Krakow, and Ukraine seems much more of a foreign country than Poland - not just because of language and culture, but also in terms of development. The trams seem to date from the sixties or earlier - even the ticket franking system is non-mechanised. There are some cars about from the seventies. There are some lovely areas but some quite rundown, including our apartment with stairs that we're not sure will last our 5 days and a  rather interesting exterior!

We maybe got more of a sense of what the culture shock must be like for refugees moving from Ukraine to England, particularly for the few who had never left Ukraine before the Russian invasion.