After the first night in a real bed I noticed that iam more exhausted than expected. So there was not that much about sightseeing in Iwano Frankiwsk, instead I spent the day with reading, sleeping and eating. There are also always a lot of things to organise in a city like buying new provisions, plan the next route thus there is faster internet, writing new blogposts…
Thus there was no laundry machine in the hostel I repurposed one of the waterseal packsacks into a laundrysack. I filled it whith cloths, dirt, water and detergent, rolled it over the floor of the shower for ten minutes and brown floods flushed out.
On monday the 12th of august I got everything on the bike again and noticed only than that the nice chief of the hostel is a photographer too and before I started we chatted about photographers stuff for a while. After Iwano Frankiwsk I cycled again two days in flatlands, the carpatian mountains always on the right.
In almost every village eastern of the carpatians there is a monument reminding to fallen soldiers of worldwar I/II. Often they are an aesthetic place between arts and dissolution.
One highlight of the trip happened completely unexpected. I was taking photos of one of the monuments when a lady came to me speaking a little bit german. Galina Chitan is an author and the librarian of Vyshnivtsi. She has an degree in literature studies and got for one of her eight published books a medal. All that she told me while she gave me a tour in her library and I had a cup of well-water out of the metal bucket next to her writing desk (the draw well is right next to the library). She is a kind of chronicler and also collects old stuff from the village. The most beautifull for me was the image of a saint where a painted flower arrangement was damaged. In lovefull handwork Galina cutted out flowers from catalogues and glued a new arrangement on the picture. When I left I got her current book with a personel dedication as a present. Both of us are very happy that we met.
So finally the mountains went closer again and the road started to climb. For three days it was quite rainy with 12 degrees and constant drizzle. Everything was damp all the time and getting into the wet and cold cloths in the morning became more and more an overcoming. But dry cloths in the evening are more important and to save weight I only have two sets of cloths with me, so there is no alternative. Following the course of the river Lybnytsya I reached the highest point of my trip in the 15th of august at almost onethousand meter.
