UkrEthnoExp. Part III

August 19–21, 2009

Uzhgorod

A city on the Uzh River.

A touchingly provincial place. Even the Tragedy on the facade is weeping at the sight of the bas-relief with wasp nests and a muse kicking her neighbor in the butt.

The Soviet shop windows aren’t still here because of a heightened appreciation for history.

They’re still here because that’s how people still live.

Power lines are all mounted directly on building facades, like in Uruguay.

The TV antennas all look like sets of three squares of diminishing size.

These telephone workers claimed there was a communications cabinet from the 1700s in one of the courtyards. I left them mulling over when, exactly, wired communications were invented.

An insulator roost that will soon turn one hundred years old has survived on one of the rooftops. You usually only see ones like this in films and old photographs.

Another antiquity—a 1930 fire hydrant from Prague.

A typical Uzhhorod trash can.

A city payphone.

At this point, the reader may be thinking that Uzhhorod doesn’t have any truly striking details. But that’s not true. A striking detail did turn up—a convex enameled pedestrian crossing sign. A thing of absolutely incredible beauty.

Mukacheve

Resembles Uzhhorod with its power lines along the walls.

Other than that, it’s a completely independent provincial town.

All the streets are laid with cobblestones.

The concrete trash cans all have slanted tops, which make it easier to carelessly toss in a wrapper.

The metal trash cans also have slanted tops. This is how you make out the true face of a city.

For example, let’s say we want to figure out if Mukacheve payphones have a distinctive characteristic. We look at one model.

We look at another model.

And we have the characteristic: the payphone booths here are painted brown, and the phones inside them are positioned at different levels: some at a normal height, others lower down for children and wheelchair users.

A striking detail turned up in Mukacheve as well: a Ukrainian coat of arms painted right over the Soviet one on an old post box. In Russia, something like this can be found only in Saint Petersburg (everywhere, for some reason) and in Yelabuga (on one post box).

Berehove

A city that’s half-Hungarian.

Although it’s a stretch to call this place a city at all. It’s more like a small rural town embellished with one gorgeous European street.

The main landmark here is the monument to the heroic Soviet liberators (the size of the memorial complex is completely at odds with the size of the city). Little kids lay flowers at its base on one side.

Glory to the Red Army, the liberators of Transcarpathian Ukraine from the yoke of Nazi invaders

Big kids leave empty bottles on the monument on the other side.

By the way, few people speak Ukrainian in the country’s Transcarpathian (Zakarpattia) region. Russian is the most commonly used language, followed by Hungarian. There’s also a separate ethnic group here that calls itself the Rusyns. They keep trying to attract attention to themselves and complain about being oppressed by Ukraine.

Chernovtsy

A breathtakingly beautiful city.

With fantastically well-preserved early-20th-century architecture.

With courtyards like in Italy.

With trolleybuses like in Rivne or Yalta.

A local feature: all the trash dumpsters have at least one wheel broken off. This means there’s a habit of throwing dumpsters on the ground or shoving them against the curb here.

The most beautiful thing in Chernovtsy is the old utility poles. It’s difficult to determine their exact age, but they were clearly put up before WWII.

Kolomyia

Driving on by.

Kosmach

An absolutely idyllic place.

With an absolutely idyllic kitchen.