The man himself
Framfor slottet i Kamyenats-Podilsky.
EN MANAD PA VAG OCH EN MANAD UTAN SNUS
I gar cyklade jag 127 km - det kandes i benen.
So this is how I look in front of the castle in Kamyanets-Podilsky
The two last days I made new records regarding distance. the 10th of November I made 111 km, which I celebrated with a vodka (my second for the whole trip). Then the 11th I had not really planned for a long ride, but I got a bit lost in search of the crystal cave and suddenly I realised that I either should go backwards 30 km or go forward another 60 to find a place to sleep. And even if I am not obsessed with reaching somewhere in particular, going backwards is really not my thing. So I ended up doing 127 km which I think is not bad for an old man on an old bike. Had to do the last one and half hour in the dark which I don't like at all. They have no street lights on the main roads here and even in the cities the lights are so faint that you hardly see anything. If the roads are fine it is less of a problem, but most of the time the roads are NOT fine. Anyway, I obviously had to celebrate the 127 km with another vodka. In addition I am now 1 month without tobacco and have not used the Nicotine patches for four days, so I think that merited yet another vodka.
I have now done 100 km in Latvia, 400 km in Lithuania, 600 km in Poland and some 400 km in Ukaraine by bike. Ukraine is so huge that I will do another 1000 before I am done.
I will stay three nights in Kamyenats-Podilsky. Get some rest, buy some things, plan the coming trip etc. It looks as if I will go 400 km on pure country roads until I reach Uman, where I plan to stop, visit a park and then take the train to Kiev and back again (Kiev is more North than my route). I still don't know if I will have some internet connection during these days. I expect it to be more or less ONE BIG FIELD. I am still pondering over if I should take the trip via Moldova instead. I could also take a brief tour into Romania. In the - childish - way I would "tick off" two more countries, leaving only Albania, Bulgaria, Spain, Ireland and Iceland as not visited by me. Also depends on the weather. It has been around zero in the mornings last days and I have almost got frost bites on my chin while myt chest is soaked in sweat. So I might fast track the trip southwards.
I have bought a English-Ukrainian-English Dictonary and train quite a lot, and make some progress. One problem is that a lot of people here speaks Russian and many mix Russian and Ukrainian. They are quite close, but pronounciation is different and some words are different and a few characters. It confuses me a lot in any case. At least I can manage a food order to some extent now. But I can't build any sentences. If I get to Kiev I have to buy some basic book for Ukrainian as the Dictionary doesn't tell anything of how to form a sentence. The guide book I bought in L'viv has a limited vocabulary. What intrigues me is that among the 200-300 words it has one of them is "rainbow". It is under the section where you have useful places to look for like the post office and the railway station. I just wonder how many tourists go to Ukraine and ask for the rainbow - and what the locals think about that!!!
