Everybody Out

Przemyśl, an hour late. Just before midnight.

Then the immigration hall, and a whole train to put through it. Ninety minutes, and the platform let us go. Then on to Lviv.

Lviv at three in the morning. The station is a leftover from a long-gone era — high ceilings, long benches, the grandeur still in the stone. At three it is not grand. It is full of people with nowhere else to be.

I went out to find a room. Nothing. I came back to the hall.

At five the guards came through. Everybody out. They opened the windows, and the cleaners began the day.

So I went out to meet it — the sun, the first air of a city I had never stood in.

Львів. The entry stamp is red, and reads 22 June.

A few hours back in the hall, enough to doze. Then out again, and this time a room — until tomorrow morning. A shower. An hour of sleep.

Then the street. A language I had never heard. People unhurried, easy with the day — all but the ones in the cars, who drove as if the road were a track and the city the prize.

Day 2 — Räumen — Soil and Peace
Eastbound — Lviv → the Carpathians
© 2026 Michel Garand | Soil and Peace | CC BY-SA 4.0
stewardship@ubec.network