I was woken up with a start on Wednesday morning by a load alarm, followed by a voice over in Ukrainian which I couldn’t understand. I left my room, seeing that others had done the same, and I asked someone if they knew what was going on. They didn’t know either, but we headed downstairs and it turned out to be a faulty alarm exclusive to the hotel that had gone off. I definitely felt very awake after this, having mistaken it for an air raid alarm!
I followed a similar routine to Tuesday, going first to the Pasta Café to package meals then doing some more camouflage netting. In the afternoon, I walked around the city with one of the volunteers who showed me some more points of interest. He took me to an air raid site where civilians where there had been civilian deaths. A sign had been erected, surrounded by candles and flowers, that showed black and white photos memorialising the casualties. It was chilling when the volunteer translated the sign for me, revealing how recent these deaths had been.
On our walk back from this, we entered a grand church where a service was being carried out. What attracted me to it was the huge fresco I could see from walking past, and when I went in, I was bowled over by the painted ceiling.
The contrast of the bleak and the beautiful is disturbing, you can only really understand this with first-hand experience of the city.
Lviv – Friday – food packaging and camouflage netting
