A Hard Day's Night in Donetsk

It was supposed to be fairly straightforward: hop on a plane in Lviv, take a two-hour flight to Donetsk (with a stop-over in Kiev), and then ride a 2 hour bus back to my city of Lugansk. Upon arriving for our 8:00am flight and being told that the flight was probably cancelled however, we knew we were in for a much longer day. That's just how things roll here in the former U.S.S.R.

After 7 hours (!!!) in the Lviv airport terminal (which looks like it's no more than a converted winger shed with a bunch of homeless dogs sniffing about), and all incoming and outgoing flights cancelled due to fog and a runway that's too short, we were finally told that they would bus us to the next closest airport city two hours away for a flight to Kiev. We got to Kiev at 9:00pm, waited in line for TWO HOURS at the "service" center for them to sort things out, had to spend the night in a hotel, and then took the first morning flight into Donetsk, a mere 16 hours after we were supposed to have arrived in Lugansk.

Since Jacob's international flight was out of Donetsk the next day, we decided not to make our way to Lugansk, and instead decided to spend the day and the night in Donetsk. Although I was super disappointed not to have Jacob experience my apartment, city, and co-workers, things quickly seemed to turn around for us when we spotted this:

Behind those grey, Soviet apartment walls was this:

And then this:

A Beatles-themed hotel complex out in the plains of Eastern Ukraine? Yes, please!

Not only did this hotel have a cool cafeteria-style food market, it also had a huge bar (featuring the longest bar in Eastern Europe), karaoke lounge, and super gaudy restaurant with speakers built into each booth-back:

As gray of a day as it was, Donetsk turned out to be a nice relaxing stop on our forced layover. We even found a pretty decent American-style brewery with taps going directly to each table!

Needless to say, this was as close as Jacob got to my city of Lugansk (bottom city listed on the blue), which was super sad as my co-workers and I had a fabulous lunch and get-together planned for him. Major bummer.

After one major bummer came another: Jacob's return to the States and my return back to Lugansk. The end of our amazing vacation and reunion was a little tougher since we're going to be apart for six more months, but I'm so thankful to have these opportunities to travel and work abroad, and to hopefully apply that to our future dreams together.

Thanks for the greatness, hubby! You are superiorly missed.