Lviv

The overnight train takes you from the Former Soviet Union to Mitteleuropa. Cobbled streets rather than eight-lane boulevards, buildings fronted in plaster and pastel paint. Cake shops in vast multitudes, tea and coffee; might as well be Vienna at a sixth the price.

There's a nice hill which looks down onto the historic centre on one side and onto the Soviet side on the other; in fact, several acres of hill with an intriguing maze of unsigned paths around them. There's a certain kind of comfort in going from a city of Orthodox to a city of Catholic churches: I'm much less easy with Orthodox iconography, there's the constant vague fear that you're in the queue to kiss the icon.