Lviv, 06:00. How did I end up here?

It all started the night before.
22:00. Krakow. The journey begins. The destination? Bra?ov. What’s a better way to arrive there than through the country of Ukraine? And so the story begins..
02:00. Przemysl, the ghost city. In a glimpse of an eye the people disappear to their sweet, hot and welcoming home. But not for us. Freezing cold with the backpacks as only companion for the night, we search for directions to the borders. We have decided to cross the Polish – Ukrainian borders on foot, but the single person on the station turns the head away. Are you crazy people he is wondering, and runs away too.
Desperate in the middle of the night we scan the place for hope. As a miracle a companion of university students offer us a place in the bus to the borders. We don’t even have the money for the 50 cents ticket and the driver is giving us the evil eye. A student interferes in Polish and he let us stay.
02:30. Borders. There is nothing here. Only a human line. Shadows in the night, remains of a glorious past. People in the edge of living trying to survive. Ghosts in the day, smugglers in the night. Seems like they tried to put all their life and hopes to this single bag on their backs. The only purpose; arrive to the other side.
Overwhelmed with fear we proceed. Is this reality or just a bad dream? Are those people the “bad” character of the fairy tale or just the victims from the “bad” characters of this world? They look us with surprise. They let us pass. We are the “Europeans”, maybe we have a possibility to cross these borders this night. Some of them may have to remain there for nights.
03:00. Ukraine. We crossed the borders. The so told bus for Lviv only starts at 05:00. We meet again the students that offer us a lift to the local train station. The lift? An old Volkswagen modified to a mini bus. 10 smugglers and 10 students hugging each other for find a little space and some warmth.
04:00. Train station. No city, no village, no settlement. Only a ghost post-Soviet train station. Fog everywhere. No visible life, only 20 people waiting in the middle of nowhere for the ghost train.
04:30. The train arrives. We travel in time and we enter a Soviet train. We cross the land and the train starts to fill with people going to their morning work. Dignity and poverty. What a great mix!
06:00. Lviv. We arrived. We look out of the window. A sea of people. A sea of workers parade to the factory.
Different country, different people.. What a world after all!