hitching to lviv

it was a hot sunny day, and plenty of traffic going slowly past our extended thumbs on the road to ternopil. suddenly i notice the turkish registration plates on a truck and i glance up at the driver, mouthing the words...ternopil..lviv. he catches my body language and the brakes come on. "let's go", i tell alesea, quickly grabbing the pack and drum. we clamber up into the cab and are happy to find out that the driver, yasim, is driving to lviv! and happily, he can also speak some russian. "choot choot", he says. but with the dire state of the roads in ukraine and the fully loaded truck, it takes us forever before we finally make it to the outskirts of ternopil and a petrol station for the obligatory one-hour break for the truckers. alesea and i agree to carry on hitching, even though we feel bad about leaving yasim, as he has kindly agreed to take us all the way to lviv. we are convinced however that it will be faster if we seperate. so, reluctantly, we say our goodbyes to yasim who looks surprised but somehow understanding too. it's a fast dual carriageway but we get a lift to the ring road around ternopil. and here the traffic is fast too and it looks like we are probably going to see yasim driving by anytime now... and lo and behold, the turkish plated truck comes slowly to a stop besides us. we clamber back into the cab like erroneous children, and father yasim just looks at us and mumbles some words in russian and chiding us with this expression which said: "you see, you could have had some time to eat and relax, wash a little, drink a tea..." he drops us off on the lviv ring road and we get a lift taking us into the centre of town. and straight away we do some busking. it's not great money and eventually the police come, all serious looking and unfriendly-like and tell us to stop.