Diary of a November trip to Lviv.

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Saturday, November 18, 2000

Dear Friends and Family,

Thanks to a reminder from one of our "subscribers", I am trying to get back on the target one-per-month publishing pace.

Since we are not always certain that people we never hear from even want our rather bulky email Diaries, we are also including the following instructions, just like regular junk-email publishers: To unsubscribe, simply type "unsubscribe" in the title line and hit "return". Our completely unautomated system will then look at your rude message and remove you from our memory banks.

Anyway, it's been busy lately. At my work, we've been negotiating a renewal of our company's contract. The whole process took about ten times longer than it should have and sent us through various stages of not knowing if we had work for two days, two months, two years or forever. I still don't know where we ended up except that the "two day" option lost. "Forever" was probably never in the running but we certainly would not return until the US at least has a new president. How long could THAT take?

Speaking of the U.S. demonstration of democracy, it's very hard to explain to our non-American friends over here. We say (and believe) that this circus is a wonderful demonstration of what's RIGHT about the U.S. We have a visible election process. We have an active news media. If problems arise, we have the rule of law. And, despite the whole thing, no one is asking those disturbing questions that might be asked in other countries - like "I wonder whose side the military is on." Or: "Won't the economy and stock market collapse?" Or: "Wasn't it better with a 'strong leader ( meaning the last dictator)?" Or, "Was Communism so bad after all?" We laugh. We get ready for Thanksgiving. We carry on in the belief that something will happen and whoever wins the most powerful political position in the world, our lives will change very little. Only in America.

But back to our normal fare of Ukraine tourism and snapshots of our expatriat life. Fall has continued far beyond our wildest imagination. I don't think we've even had a freeze yet, at least not more than a degree or two in the middle of the night. No ice. No snow. No kidding! It hasn't even rained all that much. Everyone knows this will end but, at least for now, our winter weather is staying out of the way.

TRAIN TRIP TO LVIV

Last month, we took a weekend trip to Western Ukraine, to the town of Lviv (or Lvov in the old Russified version.) Those of you who have been with us for a couple years may remember that our first train trip was to Lviv. I believe I said something romantic like "the poor man's Orient Express". Well, we're at it again. Here are Marianne and me and our friends Marilyn and Marv just before we boarded our night train. Marv then rolled up his sleeves in anticipation of that traditional train pastime - eating and drinking. The trip is about 10 hours and we had small but pleasant two-person sleeping compartments. But sleeping only comes after sufficient snacking. We were lucky because Marv works at the Canadian embassy so they brought some excellent Canadian white wine. That's right, "Canadian wine". Who would have thought? And it was quite good - even by California standards and by Ukrainian standards it was wonderful. I wonder if our taste buds have adjusted to local conditions without our notice.

We arrived about 7:00AM and from the train station we went into town and settled into The Grand Hotel. The finest hotel in town and quite a nice place by any standard. Not Michelin 5-Star or 4- even, but plenty of comfort for us and right in the middle of town. Now we could start our tour. Some background first.

Lviv is reported to be the most Ukranian city in Ukraine. This is partially because the Soviet regime only took over the area after World War II. Between World War I and the end of "The Great War", Western Ukraine was part of Poland. Before that it was Austro-Hugarian, Polish, German, Lithuanian, etc. For a few short weeks in 1918 it was even a country called Ukraine but that ended quickly. Despite this, it has been considered a center of Ukrainian nationalism for at least a couple hundred years. Today, outside our hotel, there is a statue of the famous 19th Century nationalist Taras Shevchenko with his arm pointing to the more recent bronze monument called "The Wave of National Revival".

But we were not on a school field trip so we didn't let history get in the way of eating, shopping and just walking around in the wonderful Fall sunshine. Marianne and Marilyn had received tour insights from a fellow-teacher who had taught at the small (2-kids) International School in Lviv. We had useful restaurant tips and it turned out that we very much enjoyed just having a long afternoon meal, talking and relaxing from our normal concerns. Marianne and Marilyn managed to not talk too much about school. Marv was free from having to be an "official" Canadian as he apparently must be on many of his trips in Ukraine. Me, I could just take a break from trying to figure out if our contract was going to last days, weeks, months or years.

We shopped for handcrafts. The local outdoor market is smaller than ours in Kyiv but it has a few local items from Western Ukraine that we don't normally see. Marilyn and Marv bought a rug which caught their eyes. We liked it too but they got there first. In fact the rug came from Kosovo or somewhere near there in the old Yugoslavia but borders in this part of Europe are temporary lines so it could be considered as being just a bit west from Western Ukraine.

Mostly we just wandered around the streets. The sun was brilliant and walking around an old city was truly the best way to spend our mini-holiday. We ran across some little girls trying to cox a little kitty past the ancient door of their apartment building. The picture turned out to be one of my favorites as, for me, it captured the old and the young of this very-Ukranian city.

By the time our second evening was approaching, we had to make a "dash" to one of our target destinations - the old cemetery. I use "dash" loosely because we took the local street car and it hasn't really dashed in a hundred years. But it did get us close to our destination as well as close to a lot of folks who were just on their way home from long days of hard work. Interesting. Unfortunately, we ended up with little daylight for our cemetery excursion. After paying our admission fee, we had just enough time to have a picture taken at the grave of another famous Ukranian writer and hero, Ivan Franko. But we were not going to stay around for the ghosts and spirits to rise up!

Back at the Grand Hotel we cleaned up, packed up and caught our 9:00 PM train back to Kyiv. This time, we were too tired to party so we managed to sleep. A good thing too, since we arrived at 7:30 in the morning and everyone went straight to work. Marianne and Marilyn got to school right at the 8:00 reporting time - plus or minus a minute or two. Marv went to find out if Canada had any diplomatic crises and I headed out to see if I had a job. They didn't and I did. At least for now.

I hope you enjoyed our little story. A bit mixed up and rambling I know but that's they way we are some times.

Enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday and write if you get a chance.

John and Marianne

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Originally mailed November 19, 2000. Re-formatted for the web May 22, 2001.

This page created on a Macintosh using PhotoPage by John A. Vink.