Ukrainean hospitality
by Polska
The great thing about accomodation in Ukraine is that it's not you who is searching for it - it simply comes to you embodied in some elderly "babushka" or "diedushka", plus it's really cheap - you pay like USD4/person/night. Still have in mind that you won't be really happy with it if you're used to 5-stars hotels with hot water... well, in practice it looks so: you get off a bus/train and imediately you notice a bunch of people with sheets of paper/carton on which it writes "kvartira" or "komnata" (in cyrylics, of course ;)); so you just pick yourself someone, make a bargain (usually there's no need for that even) and you go and stay at their place ;) as I say: it's convenient, still you'd better not hope for hot water. Still, I liked it - ot's good if there is water at all, hehe, just think about 5 days of hiking in the mountains without washing yourself...
just as a curiosum I'll tell you about one of our hosts: they were Tatars, extremely poor people, living in sort of a garage... still, in the kitchen there was a "podium" on which there were pillows, carpets and a small table, everything looking very turkish-like and exotic ;) and the best thing was the shower: it was a small wooden construction outside the building, and the hot water... well, as it was in Crimea, it was hot and sunny each day, so they simply put some barrell on the top of that construction and the water made itself warm during the day... nah, you would never invent anything like that, would you? :)))