CHRISTMAS IN LVIV – by Tania Priymak

Lviv is the oldest city in Ukraine. At all times it has attracted tourists from around the world. Christmas has a special charm here. Residents of the city carefully keep the old traditions and enjoy the new fun. For a month at Christmastime in Lviv people sing different songs. There are Nativity plays, concerts and many fairs and festivals. Everyone can buy products of traditional crafts and enjoy plenty of Christmas specialties, tastiest and most popular of them are pampuhy (small rolls such as a doughnut or donut in USA).

How to get there?

Lviv is situated in Western Ukraine and is a centre of the Lviv region. Distances to Lviv from major cities: / Distances to Lviv from border crosses:

- Kyiv 545 km

- Poland / Krakovets 73 km

- Odessa 749 km

- Slovakia / Uzhgorod 262 km

- Kharkiv 1085 km

- Hungary / Chop 253 km

- Donetsk 1286 km

– Romania / Porubne 290 km

The main international motorways to Lviv are

1. E-40 Shehini-Lviv.    2. E-573 Chop-Lviv.

You can find information about transfer here (http://russticket.com/).

Accommodations (http://www.ct.lviv.ua/en/tourism/hotels/)

1.Vienna (hotel)

Liberty Ave. 12, tel. 244-43-14, 244-43-15; city center www.wienhotel.lviv.ua

2.Grand (hotel)

Lviv, Svobody Ave., 13, tel. 76-91-70, 72-76-65, fax. 76-90-60; city center; www.ghgroup.com.ua

3. Lviv

Lviv, Chornovola str. 7, tel. 242-32-70, tel./fax. 255-00-19; city center

How to spend Christmas in Lviv?

For many people has become a tradition to visit Lviv during Christmas. Every year more and more tourists come here on holidays and the city has  a rich cultural program. Near the Opera House there is Didukh (this is the last sheaf of rye or wheat from the field, Ukrainian Christmas ornament).

During the holidays you can hear different carols and see outdoor mini-shows. In the Dominican Cathedral during all holidays until 1 February, the festival will have the “Great Song” during which 77 choirs will perform, as authentic, rural and as folk, vocal and instrumental.

You can also visit the ethno-rock-concert “Rock Carols”. The zest of winter holidays is an exhibition of ice sculptures.

If you’re tired, go to cafeterias in the city. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the service and atmosphere there. Also, you can enjoy delicious coffee during the singing of Christmas carols. Holidays in Lviv continue until January 25. In January the last “street” festival “Holiday of pampuh” takes place in Shevchenko’s grove.

By the way, you may also visit some interesting places or museums:

-          Pototsky Palace, phone: (032) 298-67-99

-          The Museum of Ancient Lviv Monuments, phone: (032) 272-28-86

-          Museum “Rusalka Dnistrova”, phone: (032) 272-47-96

-          “Glass Museum”, phone: (032) 272-06-71

WELCOME TO LVIV!

Some Words about the Appalachian Trail.
Through-Hikers (they) and Trail Crews (we) call it the AT.

-

To those who participate in it, the Appalachian Trail takes on a certain mythological vestment.  Its champions complete over 2,100 miles of walking, usually in the summer.  They move constantly.  Even during sleep when their minds and their dreams plan the next days progress – where to get water, where to rest and eat, where to make camp the following night.  During the months on the trail, through-hikers become part of it.  They lose their given names in favor of trail names.
‘Hi, I’m David’
‘I’m Lefty’ he says.
Our conversation stops there.
I’ve spent three nights on the trail, but I’m still an outsider.  My spirit shows that I have recently seen civilization and parts of me are still too clean.  I haven’t yet changed my name.

To the trail crew, The AT is something to work with, to change and manipulate. With basic tools and principles of physics we move rocks that weigh more than our teams of three to create water bars, check steps, and other erosion preventing trail features. The space around the trail is full of possibility.  A space to explore and search for materials.  We are trail makers, handlers.  To us, the trail is dynamic.

The through-hikers’ path is linear
One foot in front of the next
They move in two dimensions along a line that we maintain
Energy is conserved at all costs
The space outside the trail is forbidden, left undisturbed by passers through
The trail is relentless, two thousand miles of law
Hikers file along it in search of something
and although they all walk the same path, what they find within is unique

Wearing orange hard hats, we are facilitators.  We step aside and accept thanks as they walk by. We manage small stretches to make the expanse of the trail possible.  We get to know every rock and stepping stone so that they may tread lightly through the forest.  We work the trail while they work something within and if we do it right, then the trail is an unnoticed guide through the wilderness.  It is a connection and a space of possibility whose unspoken rules uphold it.

On the trail we are behind the scenes and I feel the need to hide when hikers come so as not to upset the myth and call attention to design and the human hand.  Invariably they see us, greet us, and in a moment of presence I say, “have a nice walk.”

-

through-hikers have nicknames and fancy gear
high tech in nature
push and pull
in order to survive
the human buys

Drinking coffee this morning reminds me of Laurence and a brief conversation that we had on the topic.  As can be expected, his point was accentuated by has blunt and thoughtful delivery.  What follows is a summary, not related exactly, of what transpired.

David Whitaker: Laurence, I’m going to get a cup of coffee.  Do you want one?

Laurence Birdsey: Ya know. I used to drink coffee.  But I don’t think it actually helps me get any work done.  I just get frantic and think I’m doing more.  But in reality.  I’m not.

D: Like you get amped up on caffeine and type harder but not really faster?
L: Yeah.  Sort of.  Plus coffee really clears you out.  Your guaranteed to spend some time shitting heavily.

D: Not just #2, but #3 and #4 as well?*
L:

D: Ok, well, you just call me if you change your mind.
L: Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

David leaves and returns with coffee 10 minutes later

L: What’d you get.
D: The Peruvian.

L: That’ll ream you out.

*Numbers three and four are on the Honduran bathroom scale.  In the States we have number one or number two.  Hondurans have modified the scale to suit their needs.  Number three represents manageable diarrhea, probably the normal state of most defecation in Honduras.  Number four is described as un chorro de agua.  Google translate provides 10 definitions for chorro:
1.    jet
2.    stream
3.    blast
4.    flow
5.    gush
6.    squirt
7.    trickle
8.    puff
9.    effluent
10.    spirt

Agua, as you know, is water.

Goodbye Lake Champlain,
My bathing suit is still wet with you; drying on the backseat of the car.  Our summer week together was lovely.  I swam in you each morning and several times throughout the day.  You were always there, sometimes tranquil, sometimes grumpy. You never said no.  You couldn’t speak.

Occasionally, when I visited, there were others.  Young children and adults, jumping into you from docks and rocks, fishing in you from boats and from shore.  But you always had time and space for me.  We were alone when we shared the rain together.  It swelled you, sprinkling on my tiny head.

When I was young, your enormity intimidated me.  I feared your depths.  That they might choke me down at any moment.  I panicked and exited your waters quickly, unsatisfied with my experience, and exasperated by my own timidity.  But that’s not what you wanted.  I learned to take a part of you for my own, something that I could handle.  Knowing part of you was much better than not knowing the whole.

I learned too, to dive deeply, from your highest cliffs down to grassy depths where I was far away from my world. I felt graceful, looking up at your surface. My own buoyancy then propelling me upward.  Eventually breaking through.

You keep out the air.  Holding only enough to sustain fishes. And thus our visits must remain brief and therefore sweet.  Goodbye, Lake Champlain.  Soon you will become cold and frozen, inaccessible to my human flesh.  For now we must part but the season for our love will soon return.

–

Down from Burlington to the Berkshires in Western Mass, I drove on State route 100 through pristine mountains, inhabited by streams, lakes, and cyclists.  I took turns at a leisurely pace to the tune of Alasdair Fraser, Scottish fiddle champion.  Windows down, flooded with the Vermont summer, I stopped to change in a dirt lot for a swim in a crystal cool lake.

Continuing on, I thought of the pounds of blueberries I had just picked.  Waiting patiently as a gift for my next host.  Resting in the cooler. Ready to be eaten by a fruit-starved trail crew.

My unoccupied passenger seat (Sam was in Cape Cod) was briefly occupied by a large and sweaty stranger who was hitching; homeward-bound after work; he had lost his license for selling drugs.  After two miles, a fork in the road signaled our departure from one another.  The brief occupation of my privacy sweetened the rest of the day; calling attention to the freedom of driving alone.

Then I parked in the Berkshires of Massachusetts and gathered my things for several days on the Appalachian trail.

At dawn I stand at the water’s edge
a foot above the surface
whose rippled mirror reflects the pink of the first rays of morning sunlight

The scene develops in my eye
as fish rise
and idle boats shift
I notice ripples that over centuries have smoothed the stone on which I am standing
the lake reaching out of the lake

I feel cold
sleep still clings to the corners of my eyes
the light in the sky and the light on the water increase together

I dive
the cold pink surface explodes around me
envelopes me
I exist in that moment
swimming
as part of the lake
and the reflection

The important thing about Baltimore is that it is the Greatest City in America
It says it on the bus benches
You can sit on them
and you don’t have to believe what they tell you
But the important thing about Baltimore is that it is the Greatest City in America

–

The Douglas Family welcomed us as though we were 5th and 6th siblings.
Doing away with stuffy, formal interactions, we dined as equals
Tales of ourselves and our adventures
we explained what we had been doing while away from home

My comfort there reminded me that Baltimore wasn’t on my radar in the slightest before I met Tim and we had only really become friends in the last three months of the previous year in Honduras.
Moving from nothing in Baltimore to having family in Baltimore in the space of spring and summer is a powerful experience.

–

We danced on marble dance floors during the day
and at night we danced wherever we could
Abraham Lincoln turned convive

–

The symmetry of the National Mall
Unifies it’s buildings
into the grandest monument of them all

–

I arrived in DC
hungover
at night, it’s evening around 7:30
It’s Tony of course
Two shots of whiskey and two Natty Bo’s later we finish dinner at a local pub
It’s his friend’s birthday
and thus we celebrate by going out
Drinking without question, it becomes the act
the main focus
the reason for the birthday
Guided by the collective drinking consciousness we return to the bar relentlessly
Inhibited only
fortunately
by last call and the cab ride home.

On the couch I am unconscious
as drunken acts continue around me into the early morning.

At nine am, “it’s time to move the car,” Sam says
with empty pockets
still drunk
I find my feet
a coffee and a pastry
remedies
A bike ride solves problems
and I float effortlessly through DC
Its people my theater
I watch with disconnected amusement
Feeling untouchable
Pleased just to move through each moment
Nursing self-imposed ills

It’s an excellent start to the night when you’re eating someone
thank you Freud

It’s an excellent start to the night when you’re eating some of the best pizza you’ve ever had and a fifty-something power mom – a stranger – offers you a bottle of wine for the fine price of a kiss on the cheek.  Not that you wouldn’t have kissed her anyway but who could resist such a sweet deal?

Not to mention your with best friends.  The kind of pick-up-right-where-you-left-off friends with whom you’ve had countless adventures.
You’re ready for more.
Let it begin.

Wine finished
Pizza boxed up for late night snacking
We buzz home and get down to business
We slip into revelry-adventure-mode, the unspoken goal of which is to surprise ourselves with what we can get into and away with
shots
show (see description here)
Dancing hard, we meet a couple between sets, as new to Atlanta as we are.

Soon they are invited to our house to shotgun beers and to dance more.
The bass is heavy
Songs perfectly chosen
I bruise myself on the floor and sweat.
I am soaking wet.

We
show
Them
the foundations on which our friendship is built.

Couple departed
Shirts come off and the dancing intensifies
Sam controls the music as we lose control of our bodies.

Seamlessly drifting towards and into words
we banter into the night
and as the conversation dissipates
sleep finds us