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| Stage 2: Back in the USSR? or Falling in L'vov again, never wanted to... |
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| Not so much a mechanical update, more of a travelogue, from Bill himself: Team Update as at 14 08 05 0930 BST Message follows I'm on the internet and can do a proper updateSTOP. Still stuck in Lviv STOP Will end this stupid telegraph thing and write properly STOP So, another day in Lviv. We're actually starting to appreciate it, though. Lviv is the sort of place that generously rewards the expenditure of some time to discover its hidden depths. It's a UNESCO world heritage site, apparently, although the amount being spent on conservation seems less than we spend each day on comfort food in the Svit Kavy coffee shop. History seems to lie in layers here and the one benefit of Soviet and post-Soviet neglect is that, as the whole town slowly crumbles to the dust from whence it came, little remnants of the past are exposed, like fossils in a crumbling cliff. We have been scouring town for these and like fossil hunters, have come to appreciate small details..... Some early 20th Century Polish and Jewish advertisment text on the side of what was a brush shop, exposed due to a cliff-fall of plaster in recent rains. Interestingly, the tradesman who wrote it mixed cyrillic and latin letters in his Polish notice. Szczoty (brushes) became SzczotbI - same sounds, different letters. Does that mean he just didn't speak good Polish/Ukrainian, or perhaps does it mean that the two mixed so thoroughly that you could respectably switch languages in mid-word? The latter, I hope; A Polish language manhole cover proudly announcing that the town's electrical wires lie beneath. Unchanged since the 30's, maybe like the wires it still faithfully guards; Half of a Polish-era notice for petrol station on the side of a building, part-obscured now due to the Soviet office block that has parked on its forecourt A crumbling facade yields the word "Nafta", blinking in the daylight for the first time in two generations. Not a premonition of free trade, unfortunately, but a pre-war lamp oil advert. The Soviet era guide we bought proudly boasts of the fact that the oil lamp was invented in Lviv in 1853, although I think that mentions of oil lamps in the Bible may call that claim somewhat into question. A true jewel....the Armenian Cathedral. This has one of the the most amazing atmospheres of any church we've ever visited. It's tiny by Cathedral standards, but somehow seems to contain eternity and infinity within its walls. Ancient tombs abut ghostly faded murals and icons. The dark soot of countless candles merges with and darkens the indigo of a painting of the night sky. On one painted wall a bishop is borne to his resting place by a cortege partly of living, partly of ghostly, monks. The bishop and his bearers probably all lie right here, somewhere at the foot of the painting; maybe the painter too. The men who laid the physical stones of this building in the 14th Century were only beginning the construction - the true fabric of this place has been forged from generations of prayer and reflection and remembrance in a work that is still in progress today. I lit a candle for a remembrance of my parents and added another tiny contribution to the edifice of memory and the darkness of the night sky. This is the perfect answer to the Marxist folly that tried to drain the soul of mankind and fill its place with shoddy clockwork cynicism. This edifice of prayer is the perfect answer to the crumbling Soviet edifices of concrete. It has faced their "new world" of collectives and co-operatives and camps and killing fields and IT has endured. It has faced their scorn and their ridicule and their persecution and their fear and IT has endured. I somehow hope that, on their way to hell, Lenin and Stalin and Beria and all the others might have passed by here and been invited to "Gaze upon this work, you mighty, and despair".... Editor's Note: Bill seems to be in fine form despite the delays (soon to be resolved, hopefully, thanks to the imminent arrival of the dynamo). However, I had received a text message yesterday from Steve which sounded more downbeat: Lvov update. Coffee and cake by the square.Yet again. Some new pigeons made it into town last night so can spend afternoon naming them. More coffee to come. |
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| 15th August 23:45 Far be it from me to compare Steve and Bill to Hitler and Napoleon, but they found travelling east quite difficult as well, didn't they? The latest texts indicate that the new dynamo has been attached to the car, and with a fair following wind, they could reach Kiev by the morning. I suppose this whole escapade was never going to be easy, after all, but what else could go wrong? The volt regulator, the battery, the exhaust, the brakes have all been mentioned, and there's always the fuel leak....I believe that the furry dice are still in pristeen working order, however. |
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