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Diana Kot's travel journal. Some pictures www.instagram.com/catidiana Articles www.facebook.com/catidiana Videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHI8QPW7XQDwz4hwN2B7z-A
Maybe this theme is popular but I see it mostly in Spain - versions of popular mass market stores for men.
I think it's great. Finally a place where men can be fashionable, pose, take pictures, not pretend to be toxic masculine and not be afraid to be themselves.
Sitting in a cafe. A very handsome man comes in.
Me: "Oh, what a handsome man!"
A little later his children run up.
A little later his male partner comes up.
Standing in line at passport control.
First thought: oh, russians will now have to quarantine for 3 months to enter the EU, good.
And then I noticed that its talking about pets.
My host gave me the key to the basement of the house where the bomb shelter was set up and now for the first time I'm seriously thinking about how lazy I am to go down there.
Marry Christmas to those who are so delusional to believe in some good guy on heaven.
1000 days of war.
I am spending this winter in Lviv because of the surgery. I plan to be here until January 11 and I am already anticipating the hardness of life.
I have not seen winter for the last couple of years. After the evacuation from Ukraine in 2022. My winter of 2022-23 was spent in the south of Turkey. 2023-24 was spent in Spain. I do not have winter clothes, but fortunately we have a lot of second-hand stores, and here I am in a sweater for a dollar and jeans for 3 dollars.
In general, the situation in Lviv is, of course, the easiest in the country. We rarely have alarms and missiles rarely reach us. In recent days, the electricity has been cut off for 2-3 hours. This is bearable, but I have electric heating and by the end of the shutdown it gets cold. I don’t want to leave the house, but after the operation I am not very active anyway.
Today I went to a cafe. The electricity was cut off in the cafe. 5 seconds and the power supply system of this business center was switched to electric generators. And there is light again. That's how we live.
My dearest members of this channel always see the best photos before they appear on Instagram. But there will be others on Instagram as well, so it's time to subscribe :)
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But of course there are good news as well - I arrived to Lviv and I am living in my favorite Austrian house again. This time in the part with the fireplace.
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That is, I had to go through passport control twice in Cyprus and re-register my luggage myself. And everything would have been fine, but the departure of the first flight was delayed by 3 hours. And the hours waiting for departure from Israel dragged on forever. But in the end, I managed to do everything.
Passport control in Cyprus took 1 minute, the same amount of time to get my luggage. There was no queue at the check-in counter, at the luggage inspection they rushed everyone and didn't seem to pay much attention. Cyprus, I haven't seen you yet, but I like you already:)
And finally I'm in Warsaw.
Would I recommend you to visit Israel? Absolutely not. My entire trip was spent in the mood of "I know a more beautiful/bigger/cheaper/cleaner place in Turkey". Plus the terrible attitude towards the slavic girls from the local population, starting from interrogation with threats upon arrival, ending with digging in underwear upon departure.
So, my direct flight to Poland was cancelled and European airlines no longer fly to Israel. I had to rebook another flight, but more on that later. For now, I am incredibly happy to be leaving Israel.
By the way, now I can’t visit Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran and some other Arabic countries. But how will they know? Israel doesn’t put stamps in your passport. Instead, they give you this green piece of paper that you can’t lose. At the exit, they gave me a red piece of paper and took it right away. They kept this green one as a souvenir. I don’t know what that means.
And it wasn’t without the standard humiliation at the airport. They asked me personal questions again, after which they sent me for additional inspection, where all my things from my hand luggage were taken out and carefully searched.
Visited today a museum of Modern Art in Tel Aviv. Until the very end I thought that "Protected Space" was the name of some exhibition.
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Hiding from a ballistic missile from Yemen in a mamad, an Israeli apartment-type bomb shelter.
I don't know why I thought it would be fun to buy the kids a rocket-shaped night light.
I continue to explore the upside-down world of Israel. Today I learned how classes are numbered at school. So, if your child is in class "3a", it means that he/she is in their first year at school. That is, the seniority of the class is indicated by a letter. "a" - first-year pupils, "b" - second-year pupils, and so on. And the number is already the division into groups within one year of study.
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Tonight we are testing the viral red-light mask.
Or should I call this photo "how your woman looks like when you don't see her ".
Usually at the end of the year I sum up my book and travel experiences. But this year was very poor in terms of books, apart from Harry Potter, I can only recommend Irvine Welsh's ‘The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins’.
As for travel - also not much because of job search and surgery. This year I visited the following places (italics – visited not the first time):
Spain: Barcelona, Figueres, Girona, Besalu, Baniolas, Sitges, Tarragona, Malaga, Torremolinos, Ardales (Caminito del Rey), Ronda, Setenil-de-las-Bodegas, Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada.
Gibraltar: Gibraltar
France: Marselle, Arles, Sent-Mari-de-la-Mer, Montpellier, Nimes, Avignon, Gord, Roussilion, Paris
Luxembourg: Luxembourg-city, Larochette, Bofor, Viaden
Belgium: Brussel, Gent, Brugge
Ukraine: Kyiv, Lviv
Poland: Gdansk, Warsaw, Krakow, Przemysl, Zakopane, Tatra National Park
Israel: Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, Eilat, Arad, Ashkelon, Ein-Bokek, various national parks including Dead Sea.
Autumn is the season when you can't decide what you want more - good coffee or pumpkin latte.
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Sometimes the day is just unbearably bad. That was my day yesterday.
1. My food was stolen at the guesthouse.
2. My train was an hour late.
3. My train neighbor was coughing badly the whole way.
4. I skinned my finger.
5. My phone charger broke.
6. My perfume burst and spilled in my suitcase.
7. Scammers tried to withdraw money from my card at night.
8. I started to feel sick, my lymph nodes are swollen and red.
In general, a very high concentration of unpleasant events. Does it happen to you that your whole day goes wrong? How do you cope?
Last night, two new things happened to me:
1. I visited Cyprus for the first time and
2. I did my first self transfer.
But first things first. My flight to Poland was cancelled and European airlines stopped flying to Tel Aviv. The only option was to fly anywhere with an Israeli airline and then see what happens. Buying tickets on the Israeli airlines website is quite an adventure. One company has a website only in Hebrew. Another has an English version with limited functionality, for example, you can’t buy luggage on the English version. Don’t forget that everything is from right to left. In general, after suffering, I bought a ticket to Cyprus, Paphos, and from there, 7 hours later, Ryanair to Warsaw.
I supposed to fly by Israir Airlines but for some reason I'm in a skyup plane.
Maybe I'm dead and traveling to heaven.
Everything is in English and Ukrainian all over the plane
I am reading the terms of compensation for cancelled flights from Wizz Air.
Compensation is not applicable in case of extraordinary circumstances for cancellation, such as an act of God. Wizz Air: God's will be done.
My flight is canceled.
For my birthday my friend Karolina gave me a wonderful gift - the last part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
For all those interested I have again compiled a list of differences between the book and the film. Although the 7th and 8th films follow the book very closely, this is more of a list of explanations of what was not clear in the film.
And for those who did not like this series of posts - it is over :)
Or maybe you want me to post information from some other books?
In Israel, it is much easier to find a person who speaks Russian than English. This is because there are a lot of immigrants who came to Israel under the repatriation program.
I remember when I was 10 years old, my classmate's family moved to Israel like that. And now a lot of people are moving. Because there are a lot of immigrants from the 00s, their children and new repatriates who are not very eager to learn the language, all sorts of Russian-language services are appearing.
And where would we be without a network of Russian stores. I was walking along the embankment and accidentally came across one. I was attracted by the huge flashing sign like from the early 2000s. The decor inside is appropriate. A very strong smell of sausage and very loud saleswomen with an accent like in Odessa. Buckwheat, condensed milk, all that. And this is not one store, but a large national chain.
Want an interesting swimsuit? Be prepared for an interesting tan.
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For the last few days I have been using public transport in Israel. I really enjoyed it. The best thing is that you can pay for all types of transport throughout the country with one transport card. You can top it up at the machines at the stations or through the app.
There are also no problems with finding your route - at the stations the information is duplicated in 3 languages: Hebrew, Arabic and English. And all the routes and schedules are on Google Maps.
I liked the Tel Aviv metro the most. It is very clean and comfortable. The trains are also good - they are quite clean and also have 2 floors! But there are some questions about the buses. They are dirty and quite tired - probably due to the eastern driving style of local drivers.