traffic jam

I was surprised to discover that despite the almost old-fashioned feel of Lviv, that the city does indeed get traffic jams. Yesterday evening, as Axel and I walked home after watching the skaters, we picked our way through the hundreds of cars jammed to a stop downtown. Today, we even had a chance to experience one from within.

This morning, after a fabulous, stunning, nine and three-quarter hour stretch of sleep, Axel and I took the tramway to the trolley-bus to Stryysky Park. On my map, the park takes up four quadrants, which I estimate to be about a fraction (1/3? 1/4?) of Central Park. (Hopefully some Lvivian will read this and set me straight...) It felt huge--multiple paths crisscrossed before us, young men walked by in groups, a solitary mother half-carried, half-dragged her protesting toddler, a skier whished by on cross-country skis. Axel and I headed directly to the brightly painted playground I'd noticed from the trolley-bus window.

There was no one else at the playground, not even a crow. Axel sat in the play truck, driving towards the fires burning in the distance. But there was no one to ask whether the fires were brush or warming huts for the lone skier, who passed us a second time while Axel climbed on the play structure. The park was reassuringly familiar--although painted in primary colors, rather than the "nature-like" tans and greens of our Oakland parks, the pieces are familiar (except for the merry-go-round, which, for some reason, you don't see at US parks anymore). Graffiti covers the structures, litter and beer bottles the ground--just like in Oakland.

After the park, rather than catching the trolley-bus, we walked down a huge hill (while I mentally mapped out a run to take one morning) to Stryysky market that was even more incredible than the three others I'd found downtown. Even though we only needed bread, I couldn't help but buy some pears ("Our pears, from Ukraine, perfect, sweet and crisp," promised the vendor) and dates ("finki"), animal crackers (thick, with tiny grill marks on the back), pickles, more tvorog (because how can you resist after the vendor has handed you thick bites of three varieties on her pen-knife?), and more pelmeni (tiny dumplings).

As soon as we walked into the market, Axel burst into tears. He had been under the impression that we were going to buy his toy firetruck ($1 trinkets here are his dad's Peet's fix at home). Both I and the pelmeni vendor tried to convince him that, indeed, toy firetrucks can be bought at the market (and socks, and underwear, and toothpaste, and cds, and whole chickens, dried fish, slabs of pork belly, dried fruit--in fact, what can't you get there?), but he was having none of it. But the pelmeni vendor did not give up; she told him to catch all of his tears in the palm of his hand, give them to mama, and then with them she would buy him a sweet apple pastry. Amazingly, after I translated this too him, he calmed down. But he refused the apple pastry we found on the other side of the market, insisting instead on a pouf that looked (and tasted) like a rum bun. The downside of all these sweet bribes is that 90% of them don't work--after one taste, Axel passes it back to me. And since I am constitutionally unable to throw out perfectly good food, I have to eat it. Thank god Mychal arrives tonight. So it was with the rum bun: Axel licked off the icing and passed it back to me.

It was too bad that the rum bun didn't work (nor the fried cabbage pirog, which I bought because I was told that it was "hot, tasty, fresh," (one out of three), because it took us an hour and a half to get home. The streets and the trams were packed, cars, busses, trams vying for space outside. Inside the tram, it was just as crowded but people were far more polite--a seat was found for Axel, hands grabbed my stroller and hefted it up, people smiled as Axel sang to his toy train (no firetrucks) for the entire ride.