Day one

Well, we're here! We being my mom, who joined for the first week of the trip to see her parents' hometowns, and me. And what a crazy Eastern European adventure it's been so far. We started off in Chicago by getting to the gate just in time to board towards Newark (to take us to Munich and then Lviv, Ukraine). Minutes after we arrived there, the flight attendants announced that the flight to Newark was canceled due to a mechanical problem and that we would either have to wait 2 hours to board another plane (and miss our connections) or figure out a new plan to get to our final destination. We called our travel agent, who put a new itinerary on our flying records, which the flight attendant thankfully accepted to reissue. It was definitely a small lesson in flexibility and the utility of a travel agent. We got a quick bite to eat before our earlier-than-expected international flight, since now we would be flying from Chicago, to Frankfurt, to Warsaw, to Lviv. The only problem was, that by the time our flight to Frankfurt got moving, we were a little late, and when we landed, we only had about 45 minutes before our connecting flight to Warsaw was to depart. We tried to get off the plane quickly, but people seemed to stroll down the aisles as they made their way off the plane. The next 40 minutes was an adventure in itself. Many people claim that they've been to a country just because they've been to that country's airport, even if they never stepped foot outside. We had the opposite experience: instead of going into the airport, passing through passport control, moving through the gate, and onto the plane, we barely went inside. We were transported via bus to passport control, then sped off to a room down a hall and up a flight of stairs (up which we ran, since "you have two minutes!" said a flight attendant on the bus) where they checked our tickets, then directly to the plane. It was the most confusing 40 minutes ever, and we really had to trust the flight attendants and the people running ahead of us to know where we were going, since by this point, there were so many different kinds of people that you really didn't know what language to speak. Anyway, the plane turned out to be the right one, and we landed in Warsaw just over an hour later. It was not what I expected at all! The airport was very modern and, from what we saw of it, everything looked very clean and new and nice! Anyway, we spent some time there eating, people-watching, and converting money, and then we got on--you guessed it--a bus to get to our final plane that would take us to Lviv. This wasn't just any plane. It was a 48-seater (at the most) plane with two giant propellers on each side. This proved to be a bumpy and extremely strange plane ride, in which we slept pretty much the whole time, but we definitely felt like we were already in a very foreign country. As we approached Lviv, we got the feeling of, "now this is more like I thought it would look." Farms, old houses, and a tiny--and I mean one-gate-tiny airport confirmed that we were back to the old country. Back in the old country, by the way, minus our luggage, lost on the way. Minor detail? Anyway, after meeting Alex (our guide) and much of him translating Ukrainian into English (who speaks English around here?) we began our long drive to Stanislau, aka Ivano Frankivsk, a small city located near our first destination. The drive there took us through small towns, mountains, but mostly fields and fields--empty, or filled with haystacks, or filled with old Ukrainian ladies. On the note of old Ukrainian ladies, they love walking on the side of the road, but not just the side of the road, more like on the road itself. On the note of the roads, although they're two lanes most of the time (theoretically to allow one for each direction of traffic), anyone can use whatever lane he wants. And we did just that. Anyway, we spent the evening wandering around Stanislau buying socks and outlet adapters, and now we're going to sleep before hitting our first stop on the journey tomorrow, Kolomyja--my grandfather Joseph Birnberg's hometown. More later!

The main square in Stanislau

The (tiny) plane to Ukraine

Us after buying socks in Stanislau