A visit to Rivne
Last weekend a bunch of us went to Rivne which is a moderate sized city one hour away from Ostroh. I had left with the intention of buying Xmas presents for my family but of course got sidetracked on the way. Soon after we arrived (and after I chowed down on a breakfast of olives, bread, sausage, and a strange cheese) a young dude approached us. He asked if we were Canadians and it turns out he was on this program for 2002-2003. His name was Vasil and he was from Rivne so he took us on a little tour. The interested are invited clicking on the link below for a short and inadequate picture tour of the city.
Jeff and Joel were quite stunned to be actually in a biggish city in Ukraine. Traffic and stoplights!!
We started our tour at a nearby park that had strange and interesting statues. The park was quite clean, which is a change from the parks in Ostroh as those ones possess a large amount of litter and refuse. (Actually our Ukrainian participants hate this aspect about Ostroh. When we met with the deputy mayor most of the questions directed at him by the Ukrainians concerned the state of their historical sites).
As we walked around I saw a large fountain (sorry no pic!) of some huge dude with a sword fighting a three headed dragon. Near this fountain was a little impromptu market.
All of these vendors were selling old Soviet medals and memorabilia. Now these once treasured items have been relegated to the domain of interesting historical trinkets and curiousities. Vasil instructed all of us not to speak while looking at the items because if it was known that we were English the prices would be jacked up big time. One vendor attempted to trade Joel a Olympic games medal for his very expensive Pentax Digial SLR. Then he tried to sell us a medal that apparently only judges wear in Ukraine. Since judges are supposed to have these for life it must have been stolen. Anyways I managed to buy a medal commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Army for 5 grivnyas.
Afterwards we walked around the city and ate at a restaurant.
At this restaurant we had lemon and corn pizza. Which is surprisingly tasty!
The restaurant had these totally random logos all around the walls. Like this one:
Well that was about it - Rivne just struck me as any other mid-sized city. Except their icons were a little different then ones we see in Canada. Like this one!
This week I'm in Lviv for 4 days. I hear the city is beautiful and quite a big city. Hopefully I'll have a chance to do some exploring and maybe finally get those presents!!