Christmases and New Year in Ukraine

We again had 2 Christmases this year! We celebrated our first Christmas on December 24th with our American friends in Lviv, with a fun dinner party, white elephant gifts and games of UNO. The majority of Ukraine follows the Orthodox tradition and celebrates Christmas on January 6-7.

We travelled to visit Nika’s family in Uzhgorod for the Ukrainian Christmas and spent several days with Nika’s parents, aunt and uncle, grandmother and cousin (see the video pics). While in Uzhgorod we made our traditional trip to the Russian sauna and Rob as usual dipped into ice cold water barrel (also documented in the pictures below.)

We had a fun New Year’s celebration in Lviv with our friends. After a dinner party we went to downtown Lviv and enjoyed fireworks, music and sparklers.

Some other updates are that Nika and her coworkers opened a student counseling center at the Ukrainian Catholic University. There are pictures in the video slide of Nika in the therapy room and her new office, adjacent to the therapy room. There is a one-way mirror separating the two rooms and Nika watches her students through it.



We have had a very mild winter in Lviv, it has hardly snowed and stays above freezing. This has been great for us, as it makes walking outside much easier.

Merry Christmas!

We want to wish you a very Merry Christmas from L'viv! We're going to spend the holiday with some American friends we've made here in Ukraine. Then we'll travel to visit Nika's family in Uzhhorod for the Ukrainian Christmas on January 6th.

We don't have any new pictures to post, but we do have a video we made to celebrate the start of winter. We hope you enjoy it!

Last Week of Vacation

During the last week we visited briefly the following places:

France: Strasbourg - We loved this city and wished we had planned to stay longer than one night there. Strasbourg has many quaint streets, beautiful old buildings, and a great Cathedral. Our Servas host took us to a beautiful lights-music-fountain show in the evening. We have never seen anything like that before - it was amazing! Then, we saw a lights show on the Cathedral! We also visited European Council building and saw where European Union meets.

Germany: We spent one day in Baden-Baden (southern Germany), where we went to the baths that are built to model Roman baths. It was a relaxing 2-hour experience. The next day, we took a train to Bovaria, the southern region of Germany that has Bovarian Alps and the Neuschweinstain Castle. We spent two nights in a beautiful setting (Pfronten-Weissbach community), where our patio faced hills and the Alps. We took a day trip to the Neuschweinstain Castle and loved it. This is the castle that Disney castle is modeled after.

We hoped on the train and went to Salzburg (Austria) for one day. It’s a nice city but too many tourists. We explored the city, saw great flower garden, and strolled along the river. We did not have time to do day trips out of the city. Next, we headed to Budapest (Hungary), before returning to Ukraine.

Switzerland

We stayed 1 week in Switzerland, in a hotel and at the home of someone connected to our university in Lviv. We took day trips from Bern to Alps, Lucern, and Lake Geneva.

Bern: We took several trains to get from Corniglia to Bern, where Nika was presenting at the international meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research. Nika had a great time at the conference, she was presenting on a panel together with her advisor from Ohio University, Julie Owens. Rob also attended the conference and was able to observe Nika’s presentations. We took a day trip from Bern to Luzern, where we visited with Rob’s best friend from US who was in Europe at that time.

The Alps: We hiked for two days in the Alps in an area by Interlaken. First day, we took a train to Lauterbrunnen, then a lift card to Grütschalp, and walked to Mürren. It was somewhat clouded this day, so we did not get to see all of the snow peaks, but the views were still great. Second day was very sunny and clear. We took a train to Grindelwald and hiked up a path to the village of Bussalp. We got amazing view of mountain Eiger and many other snow peaks. We got back to Bern to a wonderful traditional Swiss dinner (potatoes and cheese) make by our hosts.

Lake Geneva: We took a train to Lausanne and explored the city. From there, we enjoyed a 3-hour boat trip of lake Geneva that took us by the Alps and the castle Chateua de Chillon.

Northern Italy (1 week) – the best part was Cinque Terra!

- Resting on the Riviera. After Rome, we took a several-hour train to get to Grosseto, a city close to the west-coast of the Mediterranean sea. We stayed for two nights with a Servas host (see www.servas.org). We spent a day laying on a beach, swimming and tanning. Our host, a retired plane mechanic, was very kind; he showed us other cities on the coast, Castiglione della Pescaia, which has a fortified medieval city on a hill, with beautiful narrow streets.

- Florence: Spent 1 full day here. Saw downtown, beautiful cathedral (the Duomo), the bell tower, and the baptistery. Saw a beautiful 13^th century church (Orsan-Michele), castle on Piazza Signori, the medieval bridge (Ponte Vecchio), and climbed the hill across the river to get to the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte (11^th c.). The big terrace in front of the Basilica offered the best view of the city rooftops and the Duomo (see pics on the video below). There were great fireworks in the evening there, over the river, as it was a festival.

- Cinque Terra: We spent 3 days enjoying this Italian Riviera coast. Cinque Terra is a national park which includes 5 villages on the cliffs of the coast and surrounding hills are covered in vineyards and olive trees. Most of the villages have a beach with clear water. We hiked between all the villages and spent two nights in the village we liked the most, Corniglia. We had to climb over 300 steps from the train station to get there, and then more than that to get down to the beach on the other side. We had a great view from our room and terrace, enjoyed walking down one main long narrow street of Corniglia, ate locally grown juicy apricots and peaches, and rested on the beach. I could stay there for another week, but we had to move on to Switzerland, as I was presenting at a conference there.

Here are a couple more pictures from Rome (the Forum & St. Peter's Square):

European Tour (Part I)

Rob and I traveled around Europe for 4 weeks this summer (June 14 – July 11th). We spent 2 weeks in Italy, 1 week in Switzerland, then visited Stasbourg (eastern France), took a bath in Baden-Baden, Germany, and saw Neuschweinstain Castle (Germany). After that we made our way home by train via Saltzburg (Austia), Budapest (Hungary) and finally Ukraine. We flew into Rome, and then used Eurail passes for trains to get around Europe.



Rome (1 week): We stayed all week at B&B, which was a cozy apartment with shared kitchen, and gave us coupons to eat breakfast at a local coffee shop (coffee and croissants, apparently typical Italian breakfast). It was a great residential neighborhood close to the Coliseum.

What we love about Rome that it has layers of history, which are often preserved. Many of the current building are built upon previous ones, and we were able to see “the underground” Rome! For example, one of the highlights of our trip was a tour of necropolis underneath St. Peter’s Basilica, where St. Peter’s bones were found in 1970s.

Things we saw and explored in Rome:

• The Coliseum: toured in the morning and came back to see beautifully lit up at night
• The Palatine Hill (ruins of emperors’ palaces) – spent hours exploring this large hill.
• The Forum (central square of ancient Rome’s life) – has triumphal arches, ruins of temples, surviving temples and ancient house of Senate.
• Spent a day biking the Via Appia Antica (Appian Way) – an ancient Roman road, which is a 10-mile long archaeological park, lined with ruins of tombs and monuments.
• Early Christian Catacombs of San Callisto – on the Via Appia, we took an underground tour of catacombs. This was very impressive, as we walked on first century streets and walls to each side were lined with openings where bodies used to be.
• The Vatican. Saw the Vatican museums – most impressed by Sistine Chapel. Then, spent hours exploring inside of St. Peter’s Basilica (saw Michelangelo’s Pieta), climbed to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica – amazing views of the Vatican. Best part was taking a tour of the Scavi – the necropolis (cemetery) underneath St. Peter’s, where bones of St. Peter were uncovered in 1970s. Rob booked this tour 2 months in advance. Again, like in Catacombs, we walked on first century streets and looked into the burial rooms, where walls were lined with holes.
• The Pantheon - one of Nika’s favorite things in Rome. This is the world's best preserved building from ancient times, which is a temple to all gods built by Romans in the 1st century AD. Walking into the Pantheon is amazing, as the dome is huge. It baffled me to think that it was built in the 1st century! Michelangelo studied the architecture of the Pantheon before building the dome for St. Peter’s Basilica.
• Day trip to Ostia Antica, well preserved ruins of an ancient Roman port/city. Entire lay-out of the city is preserved, some walls are two-stories high, also ruins of an amphi-theater, baths (with beautiful mosaic floors), cemetery, etc.
• Explored different squares (piazzas) of the city. Saw Trevi Fountain, Spanish steps.
• Explored the Travestere district of Rome, which is on the other side of the Tiber rive than downtown Rome. Visited a beautiful church of Santa Cicilia in this district. We took a tour of finished excavations underneath the church, which was a home of an early Christian wealthy martyr. I was amazed how well-preserved the lay-out of the home was; we walked along wide hallways and saw many rooms.
• Saw many beautiful churches, one of which is Basilica of St. John Lateran, which was the first church of the popes from the 4th century till 1300s. Also the site of the first Christian church ever built in Rome.

Cork, Blarney, & Moher

Rob and I spent 7 days in Ireland (April 22 - April 29), and also saw Krakow, Poland on the way back. We loved Ireland, and you will see whey when you look at the pictures below. To our surprise, we did not get rain while in Ireland. It was mostly sunny with some cloudy days. I even got sunburned! We used buses to get around Ireland, as they have a good bus system. We also rented bikes for two days of exploring the Dingle Peninsula.

Day 1: We flew from a city in Poland into Cork, Ireland on April 22nd. We got into Cork in the evening and explored the city in the dark. It is a pretty city in the south of Ireland with about 100,000 people.

Day 2: We went to the 15th century Blarney Castle, located outside of Cork. The castle is well preserved, and we climbed to the top of it. There is a tradition that if you kiss Blarney stone at the top of the castle, you will have a gift of eloquence. See a picture of Rob kissing the stone in the slides below. The castle has beautiful parks around it, and we spent hours enjoying the sunshine, green grass and blooming flowers and trees. When we got back to Cork, we attended an evening Easter service.



Day 3: We took an early morning bus from Cork to Liscannor, a small seaside village located close to the Cliffs of Moher. We wanted to hike the Cliffs of Moher, which are the tallest cliffs in Ireland. We got into Liscannor in late afternoon and walked around town to find a place to stay. Because April is not a very touristy season in Ireland, we did not book housing in advance, except for a hotel in Cork. We found a great bed and breakfast in Liscannor. Once we left our backpacks at the B&B, we went to hike the seaside for several hours.



Day 4: We headed to the Cliffs of Moher in the morning. It took us about 3 hours to hike to the cliffs, as we had to walk to the hill that leads to the cliffs and climb it. We approached the cliffs from the southern point, which is called Hag’s head. This area has a signal tower built in 1806 during Napoleonic Wars to watch for the coast for any sign of the French. The Cliffs of Moher rise from the Atlantic Ocean to a height of 702 feet and extend for a distance of 5 miles from Hag's Head to the northern part of the cliffs, where the visitors’ center is. We had a great time hiking the cliffs; we saw fields of green grass and dandelions at the top of the cliffs. We walked on the path past the cliff to get to a small town (one street only), Doolin, for the night. We walked 14 miles that day!!! Tired but happy we arrived in Doolin around 5 p.m. We found a place to stay and headed to the only pub in town that had great food and live music (see video below).