Our last stop in the Ukraine was at a small town whose cyrillic name is translated as something like ´Skola´.  It population was 6000 and it what was interesting for us, it was surrounded by high hills and mountains.

We caught the train there and when we alighted and began walking into town, we found ourselves in the midst of a backstreet market. Perhaps better said, a backstreets market. There was no clear beginning and end to the market. It was everywhere, in any street where people thought they had something to sell.

Arriving in the centre of town, we were met by a strange combination of modern buildings, old and run down ones, the town supermarket, and the vestiges of the communist era :  

And then finally, the main reason we came to Skola – to use it as a base for walks in the surrounding mountains…..