walking to the rails

Because today is a holiday, the language school is closed today. But that did not deter my tutor and I, and we agreed to meet at her apartment for my lesson. She lives near the train station, she explained; get off the tramway at the Stepan Bandery statue, turn around, and my street will be right in front of you. Third floor, apartment #20.

I was happy to not schlep to the school; the only way to get to the school is on one of the hundreds of Lvivian marshrutki, whose organizational scheme remains somewhat mysterious to me. The trip to the school takes 45 minutes, assuming a correct marshrutka comes by in a timely fashion. The trip to my tutor's house takes about 10 minutes on the tramway (which I prefer just because), or maybe 20-30 walking.

We found the walking route to her apartment on accident. We set out this morning, in sprinkling snow, towards the train museum. I'd already scoped out our route: take the #2 trolley-bus two stops, make a right on Pasternak Street. Only, we found out after two #2s blew past us, that the #2 wouldn't stop at our stop today because, as a holiday, it was operating on the Sunday schedule. We should have paid attention to this detail. Instead, we decided to hoof it to the museum; it was only an inch or two on the map.

With Axel on my back, the camera on Mychal's (these things even out), we splashed through a lot of slush, past one stop, down the wrong street for a block before correcting our direction, unexpectedly down my tutor's street, past her building, then the second trolley-bus stop, and right on the unmarked Pasternak Street. This street was entirely snowed in; a building was going up, and, just past a wide plaza, the street was closed to traffic. At that moment, I looked to my right and saw the huge building, home of Lviv's Railroad Museum. Which was closed.

Plan B was a café, two espressos and a hot chocolate, buterbrod with cured fish, layer cake. We considered, but passed on the shot of vodka. It was only 10:30 am.

So, getting to my tutor's later this afternoon was a piece of cake. And I was happy to have the opportunity to see her home, an apartment in a 100+ year old building, constructed in the old style with all the apartments facing into a communal courtyard. Clotheslines stretched from the balconies across the courtyard, and we discussed the pros and cons of such communal living. I live on a street where neighbor's don't even stop by to request a cup of sugar; my tutor pointed out the disadvantages of the courtyard snoop who needs to know why #32 came home at 2am, #12 had big boxes delivered, and #27 never takes out her garbage.

We sat in the tiny kitchen, the two of us, our three books and five notebooks, four dictionaries, two cups of sweet, black coffee and a huge platter of cake ("Napoleon"), at a two-foot square table. Neighbors passed by in front of the kitchen window, a clock ticked comfortingly over the stove. Her one year old grandson slept the entire time while we discussed the Russian and Polish words in my Ukrainian novel, positive and negative personality traits, and why I was paying twice as much per hour through the language school rather than half the amount privately for her tutoring.