A Travelogue
[Author’s note: In the summer of 1992, my husband, Hal Cannon, and I were invited to be part of a three-week cultural exchange to Chernivisti, Salt Lake City’s sister city in Ukraine. We spent a few days in Prague before joining our group in Kiev. After Ukraine we traveled to Ireland and then met up with Hal’s daughter, Anneliese, for more adventures in France and Italy. These are some jottings from the Eastern European portion of our trip.]
We landed in Prague on a Sunday afternoon without a place to stay, only to learn that it was impossible to engage a hotel. But we had met two women from San Francisco on the plane, Bette and Ann, and they extended to us the kindness of strangers. They suggested we share their taxi into the city and see if their tourist agency could help. We ended up with a two-bedroom flat in the old part of town, near the river. It belonged to the woman who owned the agency and was lovely indeed, a third-floor walkup filled with antiques and lit by tall windows whose diaphanous curtains, we learned the next day, glowed like angels in the first morning light.
That evening we met Bette and Ann along the river and wandered together for a long time in and out of the twisty streets, admiring the architecture — much art deco, much art nouveau, and several examples of an intermediate style Ann identified for us as Jurgenstile. Each building is a miracle of details, surprising and often humorous but seldom restrained. The same building might have four shapes of windows, six styles of pillars, and three different doorways. Many buildings make use of the human figure, full or twice sized and sometimes, at the tops of buildings, four or eight times human scale. Bare breasted women and bare chested men hold up balconies and rooflines. Two fat little cherubs perched on the corner of my favorite balcony, obviously full of themselves as they grinned down on us.
The streets in that part of the city are narrow and almost all made of cobblestone. Only the barest strips of sidewalk separate them from the buildings and sound, with nothing to absorb it, is clear and travels a long way. Often we would hear the clop of a horse or the click of a woman’s high heels from around some corner and never catch up with it. That first night, as we returned to our flat after dinner, we heard a man and woman conversing in intimate whispers long before we passed the unlit entryway where they stood. They were so deep in the shadows that we never saw them, but their whispers followed after us for some time.
The next day we visited the Jewish Cemetery, a hilly area not much larger than a city block where thousands of Jews have been buried over hundreds of years. The graves are twelve deep and their markers, slim stones carved in Hebrew, jut up at every angle imaginable, a ghetto even for the dead. It is hard to describe the sorrow of the place. On many graves, people had left pebbles on small folds of paper as remembrances. The bare trees were thick with crows and dozens of the birds swirled above us, cawing all the time. We were told that there were no crows anywhere else in Prague. We looked for them elsewhere but never saw any.
The city had been so deserted on Sunday that we felt like we had it nearly to ourselves, but it filled up quickly on Monday and the streets were crowded from then on, booths of food and clothing and souvenirs lining the streets around Prague Square. The International Amateur Hockey Competition was in progress, and as Sweden made its way through the final rounds and eventually won, groups of partying Swedes swayed through the city at all hours, drinking champagne and singing “Olé, olé, olé, we are the champs, we are the champs,” an exercise in linguistic multi-culturalism that always amused us.
Crowded, Prague seemed less real: an elaborate backdrop for tourists with their cameras. Of course we were among them, but we had liked it better when we seemed rare appreciators of a lost city. St. Wenceslas Square was less touristed and we sat there for a couple hours one afternoon watching the groups of Czechs who gathered each day to remember the names of those who had lost their lives under the Communists, and to argue politics.
However crowded and noisy the days, we were always startled by the total silence of the city late at night. We left our windows open — it was May — and except for a group of lost but still celebrating Swedes that passed singing beneath our window one night, the silence was so complete we might as well have been deep in the country. But morning came early: we’d wake at 3:30 each day to the sound of hooves and carts on the cobblestones. Garbage collection sounds the same in every language and always seems to go on forever. Each night, we would notice two small trash cans, half full, on the street outside our building’s entryway and similar offerings in front of the three or four other doors on our block. We could never figure out what the garbagemen did with those few cans to make so much racket for so long.
In Kiev, joined up with the sixteen other members of our Sister City group from Salt Lake, we visited an eleventh century monastery whose whitewashed walls and gold domes we had seen from far away. The buildings were built on three levels of a steep hill and the entire place had a wonderful sense of calm. As our guide told us, it was a “very saint place.” We listened to a small chamber ensemble play under a pergola in a grassed area, a holy place, we were told, because of its connection with St. Mark.
With the legalization of religion in Ukraine, the monastery had only recently been reconsecrated and monks were everywhere in their long black robes and their long black hair and beards. Many were old but an even larger number, it seemed, were young and there was an excitement among them, an almost scurrying energy, that we would notice in other churches.
In the church museum was an exhibit of works in microminiature by Nicholas Syadristy. Under strong magnifying lenses we saw a flea wearing gold shoes, an intricately carved chess board resting on the head of a pin, and a detailed replica of the Santa Maria, three and a half millimeters in length, so real it looked like the wind had filled its silk sails. It is said about Syadristy that he once sneezed and lost three years’ work. At the center of the exhibit was a framed portrait of Lenin, perhaps eight inches by eleven, rendered by copying his entire collected works in microscopic letters.
We made our way down to the catacombs and paid two coupons apiece (less than two cents) for candles, then walked slowly through the low, narrow corridors cut deep into the hill, past the bones of saints. The corridors were whitewashed and marked only with crosses people smudged in the ceiling with their candles as they left. While we were underground, a service started in the chapel near the entry, and the voices of the choir floated down to us.
It seemed we were always hearing song in Kiev. One night, a small group of us joined Lucy, our tireless guide, in a walk to the upper city to see the Parliament and Katharine the Great’s summer palace. The streets were mostly deserted and it was easy to believe we were the only people out that night until, near the top of a very long hill, we heard singing somewhere in the distance. We puffed our way to the top and saw, just disappearing around a corner, two women singing as they herded a group of small children.
One night, we were taken to hear the premiere performance of the first opera ever produced in the Ukrainian language. We were all tired at that point — our hosts in Kiev, like our hosts later in Chernivisti, made sure we were never bored — but we were excited, too, at the prospect of witnessing such an historic event and the chance to see the Kiev Opera House. When the curtain opened on the first act, the entire audience gasped at the sheer richness of the scene — a peasant village filled with forty or fifty singers in bright and richly embroidered traditional garb, the rugged Carpathian mountains in the background, and the whole scene infused with the rich inner glow of late afternoon light. The set had the life of a Breugel painting and I believe it was the single most satisfying stage moment I have ever experienced. But alas, the music itself wasn’t very interesting, the opera house was warm, and we had eaten such a big dinner. We all had trouble staying awake. After the second act, Hal whispered to me that he didn’t think he could take anymore and I agreed. We begged off with headaches and left to find our way back to the hotel.
We thought we knew where we were, but when we stepped outside, we realized we had no idea. We had no map and no facility with the language; virtually no one there speaks English. We decided we better not risk it but couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the performance. There was a tea room on the third floor where everyone gathered between acts, and we decided to see if it was still open. The door was closed but not locked and we could hear voices inside.
The tea room itself was deserted, but much gaiety came from the kitchen. We decided to stand at the counter and make some noise, and in time a young woman came out, surprised to see us. We motioned toward a bottle of champagne and she laughed and served us.
We drank quietly at a little table but the party in the kitchen grew louder. Soon it spilled out into the tea room, and a group of four women took up a table. They had a bottle of brandy or cognac and they were laughing. Soon a young man joined them, and then a couple more women. They were having such fun, and we enjoyed their pleasure and their song so much, that we decided we should give something back to them as we left to rejoin our group. We went over to their table and sang “Wyoming Home.” This delighted them; they sat us down and gave us glasses of brandy; one woman put her arm around my shoulders and hugged me the whole time; everyone started singing and laughing some more. They had no English, we spoke neither Russian nor Ukrainian, but we knew each other intimately and we sang for a long time. Suddenly, an older woman burst through the door, scolding loudly. Hal and I looked at our watches and realized we had to hurry back to our group. We slipped out, happy to find the halls empty which meant the performance was still in progress, and tiptoed back to our seats.
Or tried to. When we attempted to open the door to our compartment, it was locked. We looked through the crack and realized the hall was deserted. Now we would have to find our own way back to the hotel. But when we went to the exit, it too was locked and a seal made out of wax on a cardboard placket, was tied between the door handles. We tried another exit and then another: all the same thing.
We were laughing but beginning to worry, too, when we heard voices. Four people — a tall couple in their early thirties, a single woman about the same age, and an elderly woman — came around a bend in the corridor. They were joking and laughing and seemed hugely amused to find us. “You are with the Americans,” the tall man said in very good English, “but you’re locked in. Vell, so are ve.” He took Hal’s hand and held it from then on as we walked around the opera house.
“Ve have been behind the stage,” he told us, “with the director and the players. The director is vedy good friend of my family. My family has sold him many paintings.”
“Your family was artistic?” I asked.
“No,” he answered, “my family was vedy rich.”
He told us that he and his wife were both physicians. Her name was Elena and she was a pediatrician; he was Vitaly, a neuro-surgeon. “My grandfadder was vedy famous,” he told us. “He cured Kruschev’s children.”
The other two women were from France. The older woman had been born in Ukraine but hadn’t been back since her family left when she was eight years old. “These are good people,” she told us about the Ukrainian couple, “but things are hard here. I’ll be glad to go home.”
We wandered with our new friends and finally found an unlocked door which opened, we discovered, onto the stage. Looking out at all the empty seats made us feel expansive and we all started singing, half a dozen tunes at the same time, and we danced. Finally, we found our way backstage to the cast party, and someone let us out the back door.
“Vere are you staying?” Vitaly asked us. “Can you come to our apartment for dinner tomorrow?” We told him we were staying at the Hotel Ruse, and that we left for Chernivisti in the morning. “Oh,” he said, “you must stay another day and eat with us.” When he learned it was impossible, he said, “but you must share our taxi now.” He hailed a green cab about the size of the tiny Hondas that were first imported into the U.S. Somehow the six of us squeezed in and they took us back to our hotel.
In Kiev, we were tourists and our hosts were paid guides, but in Chernivitsi, our Sister City, we were honored guests and the preparations made for us sometimes broke our hearts. We had a meeting in the mayor’s office. They had refinished the wood floor for our visit and then the weather turned moist. The varnish hadn’t dried completely and everyone’s shoes made little sucking sounds as they stuck to the floor. Later, at the Children’s Art Institute, where we were treated to an extraordinary performance of music, dance and song, the floor had just been polished and was so slick the dancers had trouble keeping their feet. Everywhere we went — the Institute of Embroidery, a kindergarten, several hospitals and high schools, the Institute of Ecological Toxicity, a cooperative farm — we were met with tables laden with exquisitely prepared food: rounds of bread spread with caviar, pastry swans filled with whipped cream, swirls of smoked salmon on pumpernickel toast, various fruits and sausages, bottled water, bottled juice, cognac and champagne. Even at the kindergarten, we were served cognac and champagne. Several times a day we were greeted with more food than most Ukrainians enjoyed in a week.
One day Hal and I and another member of our group, Mary Anne, left the larger group to explore parts of the city we had passed by too quickly before. Our guide was Vladimir, an assistant mayor of Greek descent. He took us to the cemetery and we wandered through monuments elaborate with orthodox crosses, statues of saints and angels, and, sometimes, life-size renderings of the people who lay below. This part of Ukraine was part of the Austral-Hungarian Empire before the Russians took over during World War II, and the markers were carved in German, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, and Russian, but almost never in Ukrainian.
Vladimir told us that grave robbing, always a problem, had increased with the weakening economy, and we saw much evidence of it. Across the street in the Jewish Cemetery, the situation was dire. The lids were off many vaults and once, when we looked down, we saw several skeletons jangled in disarray. Anti-semitism has surged here since independence, as it has in other parts of the former Soviet Union, and we saw evidence not only of grave robbing but of desecration — broken and spray-painted stones. A majority of Chernivisti’s Jews have fled to Israel and other countries; those who remain cannot keep pace with the cemetery’s need for maintenance. Many families, before they emigrated, built wrought-iron cages around their family plots to protect them.
Vladimir took us to the oldest church in the city, a small wooden structure that is several hundred years old. We entered as evening mass began. We had been told that this was a very poor church, and in fact there was only the young priest and a single parishioner in attendance. Vladimir assured us that it was all right for us to enter during the service, and we stood quietly at the back, but our presence was distracting. The priest lost his place in the liturgy. We felt awkward and tip- toed out.
“My church is close to here,” Vladimir told us, “and today there is a special mass for children. It will start soon. Would you like to go?” Of course we did and when we arrived, several older woman were standing outside. They greeted Vladimir with great warmth. Later he would tell us that though the churches are very popular now with the young and the old, he is one of the few people our age who attend. Still, it was clear that these women loved him for more than his rarity.
This church, like most we saw, had been used as a warehouse during the Soviet years. The ornate frescoes were chipped and faded. A scaffolding had been erected along one wall, and renovation begun.
We had hoped to sit in the back, unobtrusively, but because we were Vladimir’s guests, we were ushered to the front and special chairs put up for us in front of the congregation, right next to the choir. The choirmaster was an elderly gentleman with a crippled hand and a great booming voice. The services are almost entirely sung, and Vladimir told us that his church was lucky to have the choirmaster for he was the only one who knew all the masses. The old man had been imprisoned for many years in Siberia, Vladimir told us, for his religious activities.
There were perhaps fifty people in attendance, with some fifteen or twenty small children taking part in the special service around a small altar. People came and went and children trickled in throughout the mass. A woman of about sixty or sixty-five with short, pure-white hair and several gold teeth shepherded the children and helped them find their places. I found myself drawn to her — she seemed strong and somewhat severe and yet tender, too, gentle and infinitely patient. Later Vladimir told us that she, too, had spent years in Siberia.
The next day, at a girls gymnasium, we heard over a hundred young voices sing the Ave Maria. I looked over at Hal, and tears were streaming down his face. “I felt like generations of sadness were rising up in that song,” he told me later.”So often it is the women’s job to carry all the sorrow.”
Near the end of our stay, the city threw a banquet in our honor. As we came through the door into the dining room, the orchestra struck up a march. I was in the lead and the music startled me. I thought I had blundered into the wrong party. None of us were used to such pageantry or honor. The meal went on for four hours, course after course, with toasts after each musical number to pace us. The Ukrainians understand graciousness in a way, I am afraid, Americans have forgotten. Sometimes, in meetings, the toasts had seemed empty but that evening they were sincere and often went far beyond ceremony to touch the heart. The need in that country is so open, so naked. We toasted back and we, too, yearned for connection. We found ourselves drawn to eloquence and stories beyond the reach of our rough Yankee ways. By this stage of the trip, we were all tired and had had, perhaps, too much formality, but the banquet was so real and so touching that none of us wanted it — or our visit — to end.
Journal entries from the same trip: Ireland and France and Italy.
©1992, 2006 by Teresa Jordan
