Carpathian Mountain Trip with Real School: Day 3

The electric train to Volovets (in the mountains) left at 7:10 in the morning and was about a 20 minute tram ride from our hostel. We decided to leave the hostel around 6:30 however, we were called at 5:52 in the morning asking where we were! We're asleep....it's 5:52!! We were informed that we were now leaving at 6:00 a.m.....good thing we are really fast at getting ready! What we didn't know is that the tram only starts at 6:00 a.m and therefore only passed by us going the opposite direction at about 6:20 and we all wondered if we were going to make it on time. Also there were street washing trucks cleaning the sidewalks so we kept having to run across the street to keep from being soaked! 

Finally at 6:40 the tram arrived and we all rushed on and hoped that it would take only the allotted 20 minutes we had to get to the station!

We all RAN and did make it to the electric train with moments to spare!

The countryside was just lovely:

The electric train, or "electritchka" took three hours to get us to Volovets where we were met by the owner of the base, or "baza" where we would be staying. Most of these places are ski resorts in the winter (I say resort very loosely) and in the summertime they are just lovely little places in the mountains where you can hike and do other things. 

I thought this fence made of skis was rather brilliant: 

The view from our room:

We arrived, settled and then headed straight to lunch which was a pepper soup and this:

 Not even the Ukrainians knew what it was! It was awfully scary looking but it tasted fine - very plain. My assumption was that it was manna - a kind of very bland but edible kasha with a parmesan-like cheese on top, with sausage. I wasn't too far off - they asked and it turned out to be corn flour with brynza cheese (like feta) and sausage. We were a little wary of the rest of our time because of the interesting way the food started out!

 The cafeteria where we always ate - the large turret on top had one big round table with windows all around.

In the afternoon we headed to the chairlift to get to the top of the mountain. Of course it was the safest chairlift we had ever seen:

It was never very high but it was very long! It was really fun!

The view from the top!

Looking for what everyone was telling us were blueberries and they translate as blueberries but are not blueberries......they're more like a very sour saskatoon berry.

Summer was more promising than lunch! Salad:

Sausage with fried onions and potatoes:

We tried to sit outside during the evening but it started raining:

 ....so we moved to a lovely veranda right in front of our room.