Getting to Lviv: Arriving At Broyspil Airport

As soon as the doors on the bus from our plane to the terminal opened, people ran for the passport check. This was not the purposeful but self-conscious fast-walking of American travelers. It was running in wool coats, in hats, with bags, up a short flight of ice-covered stairs. It was 11:00pm local time.

I've only learned a third of my cyrillic alphabet, and spent most of the flight from Munich learning phrases to get through customs. Hello. I am here to vacation. My wife is in lviv. That's not mine. I need to speak to the consulate.

I took the green path for customs control, for folks with nothing to declare. Under a sign that informed in multiple languages that once you crossed a certain a white line it was your ass. I took all this in just as a guy in uniform intercepted someone who'd been on the flight with me. I waited for one of four other guys in uniform to do the same to me, instead they stared blankly. Eventually I followed a young woman who wheeled her carry-on bag around me, out the doors and marked "into city."

I was predisposed against airport taxi drivers. The guide I downloaded to my iPod suggested that they tended to charge higher rates than other taxi drivers, that some would switch currencies on you from 300 hryvnia to 300 dollars once they got you to your destination. As with any population being reported on primarily by American tourists, a grain of salt is probably in order.

The taxi drivers had an unofficial uniform of dark pants and bomber jackets. One followed me through the waiting area in the airport, and eventually helped me find the green phone for the Airport Hotel. In my mind, the green phone on the wall was a northern european bright green. Turns out it was more of an olive drab number glued to a column. The sign above it showed a blue terminal a few twists and turns of road and a red circle that was the hotel.

There were easily 10 more jacket-clad drivers outside. I deflected their offers with a variety of phrases. I tried the word shuttle and was offered a ride to Kharkov. Realizing that they couldn't understand my pronunciation of Boryspil, I settled on "hotel bus". Once I told them this, they all said "wait here". When the bus pulled into view, one of the drivers I'd spoken to shouted that it was my bus.