Over There

By Volodymyr Kish

I have been in Ukraine for close to two weeks now and have been both impressed and depressed by what I have seen.  Over the next few weeks, I will try and paint my own personal picture of the reality of life here, but for this week, allow me to present you with a few random things that have made my visit interesting.

In Lviv, in the main square (Ploshcha Rynok) that houses the city hall, there is a most interesting restaurant called Kryivka that has become renown throughout Ukraine.  Most of it is underground and consists of a complex of cellars made to look like the underground bunkers that the Ukrainian partisans (known as UPA) used to hide in as they waged their underground struggle first against the Germans and then the Communists. 

You are met at the entrance by an appropriately dressed partisan guard with a machine gun who greets you with “Slava Ukrayini” (“Glory to Ukraine”).  If you correctly reply with “Heroyam Slava” (“Glory to our Heroes”), you are admitted.  If you don’t reply correctly, you are not admitted and the guard threatens to shoot you in the kneecaps if you don’t leave.  On successful admittance, the guard pours you a shot of the house horilka (vodka) from a canteen and you are shown the way down into the bunkers.

The interior of the bunkers consists of rough wooden furniture and benches with assorted guerrilla paraphernalia and weapons as well as blown up images of old photographs of partisans in action. From time to time, there are sirens, raids, swearing in ceremonies, and occasional shootings that are better experienced than described.  You can pose for pictures with the partisans armed with a variety of weapons.

The food is exquisite basic Ukrainian peasant fare, well executed, if you will pardon the expression. My favourite was a whole strand of kovbassa served dramatically on a wooden plank.  Kryivka is as much a theatrical experience as a restaurant, and should be on every Lviv visitor’s must see list.

On a somewhat different note, it was obvious as I travelled throughout Kyiv and Western Ukraine that  much effort is being expended getting Ukraine ready to be one of the co-hosts of the Euro 2012 soccer championships.  A new airport has been built in Kyiv.  The main soccer stadium there has been revamped and a huge new stadium erected in Lviv.  The host cities are being spruced up with landscaping, and roads that have been badly neglected for decades are being fixed and repaved.  The main highway from Kyiv to Lviv is now a joy to drive on rather than a challenge.

There is still some question as to whether everything will be ready on time.  For instance, a considerable amount of road work is still being done between between Lviv and the Polish border. One of the things I noticed as we manoeuvred through this construction was that the workers and equipment were all Turkish.  In a country that is plagued with high rates of unemployment this seems oddly curious.

The lack of work is particularly prevalent in the smaller towns and villages, with most of these experiencing a drastic flight of young people to the cities, or even more commonly, to other European countries in search of work.  My father’s village is now mostly populated with pensioners.

I noticed one exception to this in my mother’s village near the Polish border.  Here there were still many younger folks.  They have remained because of the close proximity to Poland.  Most of these young people carry on a thriving trade in goods smuggled in and out of Poland, apparently enough to make a decent living.

This trip has been a tiring and at times an emotional one, and one which I will be describing in more detail in the coming weeks.