Osa´s Med School and Ukraine´s Patriotic Heart

Downtown near the center.
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Lviv City I am proud to say (Osa) is officially included to the UNESCO List of World Monuments of Architecture.  I have quoted below a poem written by Taras Shevchenko, one of Ukraine's greatest poet, artist and thinkers of the 19th century. I actually had to recite it in a Ukrainian heritge festival during my years there.

My Testament

When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears Into the deep blue sea The blood of foes ... then will I leave These hills and fertile fields --

The sculptor who designed the Statue of Liberty did some work in Lviv. His repertoire seems to be a bit limited!
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When I am dead, bury me

In my beloved Ukraine,

My tomb upon a grave mound high

Amid the spreading plain,

Another picture of a street and buildings in downtown. The required horse-drawn carriage of all downtowns has arrived!
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So that the fields, the boundless steppes,

The Dnieper's plunging shore

My eyes could see, my ears could hear

The mighty river roar.

Plosha(plaza) Mitskevicha and a statue of him. He apparently brought the printing press to Lviv and around his statue very appropriately is an outdoor bookmarket.
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When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears

Into the deep blue sea

The blood of foes ... then will I leave

These hills and fertile fields --

This is a view from up the tower by the mayors office. The green domes shown here on the buildings are a distinguishing feature of many of the churches and official buildings in the region.
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I'll leave them all and fly away

To the abode of God,

And then I'll pray .... But till that day

I nothing know of God.

The Central train station where we arrived at early in the morning
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Oh bury me, then rise ye up

And break your heavy chains

And water with the tyrants' blood

The freedom you have gained.

The very dilapidated 'tramvai' that is characteristic of much of Eastern Europe.
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And in the great new family,

The family of the free,

With softly spoken, kindly word

Remember also me.

Ivano Franko Lviv University.
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This was Osa´s first trip back to Lviv since she graduated from Med School so she was very curious to see how much things had changed.  Ukraine´s neighbor Poland had been admitted to the EU and it apparently was having a big impact in Ukraine driving up prices, etc.  I will leave it to her to share her perspective on change.  I, however, will share my perspective as a tourist.  Lviv looked a lot like Budapest with even less restoration work or modern construction.  We have seen a kind of continuum from Vienna to Budapest to Lviv in younger development.  The downtown of the city had great energy in its central square which was clean, surrounded by great old buildings, and full of people drinking.  And drinking.  And drinking some more...  Every country seems to have an innate desire to boast about how much alcohol they consume.  If the number of people wandering the streets with beer in their hands is any measure, Ukrainians are definitely in the lead!  Ukrainians as a general rule though seem to be very reserved if you don´t know them.  Not a lot of smiling faces or joking around with strangers.  When you know them, or have an introduction at least, then all of their saved up niceness comes out!  We visited a woman who worked where Osa stayed in school.  Lacking language skills but wanting to pleasant I complimented her on the pictures she had on the wall through Osa.  She immediately took them off the wall and tried to give them to us!  (Lesson:  No specific compliments in Ukraine...)  There are a lot of signs around that show the economy is struggling to grow.  Particularly for eldery folks who seem ill-equipped to adapt to a capitalist job market and are living on pensions that no longer buy much at all.  There aren´t any easy answers for them.  Government help requires taxes to be collected which can only be collected if the economy grows and that usually takes years if not decades to really change much.  It looks like there are going to be a lot of miserable people in Ukraine for a while.

Visions of Lviv
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Something that came as a real surprise is that there is a strong anti-foreigner sentiment in some of the lower classes.  Foreign students at the med school all reported cases of being attacked or beaten up by groups of young Ukrainian guys.  They don´t seem to attack women physically but if you are a guy and not white enough to blend in, you have to watch out.  Considering that while I was there every person I saw who wasn´t a student was white I found it pretty confusing.  Apparently they think foreigners are taking their jobs, money, and/or women.  Since logic and reason (if only from a numerical standpoint if nothing else) make this impossible in any real sense, the only conclusion I could draw is that it is a typical young male reaction to wanting to wage war against the fact that they are dissatisfied and don´t know how to respond.  Why the conclusion world-wide seems to be "form a small group and look for someone to beat up" I have no idea.  Ukraine picked foreigners since they are easy to spot and out-number I guess.  Somewhat ironically there is emulation of neo-nazi groups with shaved heads, the occasional spray painted swastica, etc.  My history might be a bit off but I think Ukraine was pretty well run-over by the Germans in WWII.  A more appropriate icon of killing, repression, and xenophobia for them would seem to be Stalin.  But what do I know...