Wednesday/Thursday was a 27 hour travel day from Indianapolis to Khust, Ukraine. Not a single problem for our foursome as we flew from Indianapolis-Chicago-Frankfurt-Budapest. From Budapest we took the afternoon train to the border city of Chop. There we were met on schedule at 8:40 pm Ivan Yurishko whom I had not seen in two years. He then drove us the last 70 miles to where we were able to get a good night's sleep.

Ivan, as I had mentioned before, is an entrepreneur who has done very well . His personal and business example is a shining light in the community. He and his family are of great faith and way of life. His chief business is printing and selling copy machines. In this part of Ukraine he was, and maybe still is, one of the main suppliers of copy machines.

We had a one hour drive from Chop to Khust and then to where we stayed the night in the beautiful neighboring town of Shayan which is a developing resort area. It is renowned for its mineral springs and scenic beauty.

We normally stay at Ivan's home, but he is having major remodeling done and he arranged for us to stay at a retreat location called the Golubaya (Light Blue) Shayan at Shayan. The Ukrainian people are known for their extreme hospitality and placing us here is just another manifestation of how we are specially treated.

In the hour drive Ivan and I had a lot to catch up on. We talk on the telephone regularly, but it's not like being together. We talked about our families and work.

At the Goluba Shayan we had a special recipe for corn bread with ricotta cheese that we drank with Shayan sparkling mineral water. Lots of laughter and friendship.

We all went to bed

One more note about our train ride across Hungary. We came across a young man traveling from Nancy, France to Uzhgorod, Ukraine for an international chess tournament to be held between June 10-15th. His name was Cedric Paci, a Frenchman of Italian origin. He kept us company on the four and a half hour train ride across the agricultural Hungarian countryside to Chop, Ukraine.