Travelling during mid-June through early August 2002: UKRAINE > Bucha > Kharkiv > Kyiv > Lviv > Odesa HUNGARY > Buda Pest POLAND > Krakow > Oświęcim > Przemyśl > Warsaw

1. DIGITAL COLLAGE: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Odesa,
Przemyśl, Krakow, Buda Pest; and Warsaw
Goodbye Ukraine: slide #2
KYIV or Kiev: slides #3 through #7
Kharkiv: slides #8 and #9
Odesa or Odessa: slides #10 and #11
Lviv (Ukraine): slides #12 through #15
Przemyśl (Poland): slides #16 through #18
Krakow: slides #19 through #22
Buda Pest: slides #23 through #26
Warsaw: slides #27 and #28

2. The top one is in Kyiv and the lower two are in Lviv. The upper two mourn
people killed from each city during the initial invasion of 2014. The lowest
memorial to 8,000 Lviv residents murdered by the N.K.V.D. in 1941.
Ukraine
Composite:
Drawn from
every city
visited
(except
Bucha)
In the lower
left-hand
corner are
three
memorials.

3. KYIV a / k / a Kiev:
Slide #4: Ukraine lets us know what she wants; the placard is on
Maidan (Independence) Square; the N.A.T.O. symbol a block away.
Slide #5: Twenty-to-thirty panels narrate the eight year war. If my
shrinking grey matter serves, the inner concentric circle depicts the
invasion of 2014 and years since, while the outer circle exhorts
people to defend their country against the fresh invasion of 2022 with
illustrations, for example, of making Molotov cocktails.
Slide #7: Bucha
Slide #8: This general collage of Kyiv includes some of the best
Soviet architecture in the center-city and new street art (near Saint
Michael’s) of destroyed Russian weaponry (rather reminiscent of
Afghanistan). True to Kyiv’s Viking roots, the street shot near
lndependence Square resembles what one might imagine Stockholm
or Oslo to look like (since I have not been to Scandinavia).

6. BUCHA
We all remember the horrid
scenes of wanton slaughter
by the Red Army in March. As
we drove to Bucha that
afternoon, three months later,
the taxi driver became more
and more subdued. It was his
first time, too; he had no
relatives there. We met an
elderly gentleman who had
returned to his home reduced
to rubble. The story he told us
was, and remains, heart-
breaking. This crime will
remain in Ukrainian memory
for many years, if not forever.

8. Kharkiv: Slide #9
The lack of protection for the monument commemorating the Great
Patriotic war from 1941 to 1945 frankly puzzled me. My first thought was
that foregoing protection intended to poke Russia in the eye since
Ukrainians were not liberated in 1945. Such disrespect to the two million
Ukrainian soldiers killed in action, however, is unthinkable.
Then I considered the idea that, when Kharkiv hunkered down in March,
there was not enough material (e.g., sand-bags) to cover all monuments
and older buildings. Surely, in three months, there would have been new
protective materials arriving. So . . . NOPE for that option.
My conclusion, such as it is, argues that the memorial not only
commemorates the U.S.S.R.’s Great Patriotic War of eighty years past
against the fascism from the West, but also reminds viewers of the
Great Patriotic War of Ukraine against fascism going on today but, this
time, from the East.

10. Odesa a / k / a Odessa: Slide #11
Of the four cities that I visited, Odesa was the only place where I had
a strong feeling of foreboding – a hunch that something was up. I am
not sure that feeling was at all accurate. Nevertheless, the feeling
came within minutes of disembarking from the train and grew
steadily stronger during my stay. That sense was one of
apprehensive readiness – much like the feeling after long hours of
studying for a final exam and wanting to get it done, already.
There are many past lives of Odesa, city punctuated by temples,
mosques, Orthodox cathedrals and Catholic churches.
The most heartening part was the picture of the poster-girl as a
blend of Slavic, Turkish, and Viking roots as well as a walk through
an amusement park and boardwalk teeming with families, giggling
children, and serenading twenty-somethings.

12. Lviv: Slides #13 through #15
Slide #13: my first day in Lviv; so Austrian, I expected the ‘Sound of
Music’ to sound off as street theatre. [1&1a] the city hall with a sign
appealing for the release of surviving soldiers captured in Mariupol; the
central square. [2&2a] an old Carmelite basilica ultimately trashed by the
Soviets and restored by the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the 1990s. [3]
older Roman Catholic church fallen into disrepair. [4] chapel or ‘Temple’
of Saint John the Baptist; the site dates back a thousand years. [6oops]
an 18th century armory now standing as a museum.
Slide #14: broth slide, meaning slide of everyday Lviv as the base broth
for the tastier ingredients (i.e., opera houses, churches, etc.) of a chunky
soup. Soviet era housing is often only partially occupied; note the old
farm-house and, in the upper-right corner, the Afghan-throwback.
Slide #15: l spent my last two nights in Lviv at a salon in the great opera
house to enjoy Beethoven chamber music and then a piano recital of the
works of Chopin. What a way to conclude five wondrous weeks.

16. Przemyśl (SHEMM-ish), Poland: Slides #18 and #19
Slide #18: broth-slide. Counter-clockwise from upper-left.
• One of King Casimir’s castles.
• A tower for something never built but now converted into a museum.
• Town square. First it was a statue of a pig in the fountain; hello, Orwell. Then,
walking down the stairs, I realized the animal honoured was a bear; ¿Bern,
Switzerland? Then, the venerated animal morphed into its final state as a
cow; since this is not India, it must be ‘Amazing Graze’ for Polish pastures.
• Come and keep your comrade warm . . . .
• Once upon a time in Poland followed by much-needed mist machines.
• Courtyard of upper-end residence followed by lower-income housing.
• American volunteer serving food to Ukrainian refugees.
• Poles care about children as evidenced by many schools and play-grounds.
• One of many fine primary and secondary schools in this city of 60,000.
• Center picture shows the shore along the river.
Slide #19: Przemyśl is church-central; eight churches of any Xian
variant within a twenty minute walk.

19. KRAKOW: Slides #20 through #22
Slide #20: Krakow magic. The central square on the night of my
arrival; engendered the same sense of magic as had the hotel-de-ville
of Brussels during a night-time arrival there forty-seven years ago.
That was great; I never thought I would have that sense of awe again.
Yes, there is a Starbucks and a Hard Rock Café. Below the Grunwald
memorial, please note the shadow of the statue of King Władysław II
cast on the adjacent ministerial building. Krakow had been the capital
at the time of the Battle of Grunwald (1410), won by the Poles and
Lithuanians, against the Teutonic Order. This avenue became the
King’s entrance boulevard for coronations, etc.
Slide #21: Krakow Tragic. Pictures of what is left of the Krakow
Ghetto, from the Oskar Shinder Museum, and inside Auschwitz-
Birkenau. The Poles are acknowledgeing their role as enablers in the
Holocaust. Lola Krumholz was likely related to a childhood friend.
Slide #22: Krakow is a magnificent city. But those menacing scooters!

23. Buda Pest: Slides #24 through #26
Slide #24: Buda Pest is a city of monuments, large and small. The
central square, the Monument of Heroes, celebrates the Hungarian
Kings through the Golden Age. The horses are anatomically accurate
and children revel in polishing the stallions’ prodigious members. Franz
Liszt is featured lower left. The holocaust memorial (upper-left of Liszt)
was constructed furtively by Orbán and has drawn strong protests from
academia for its denial of Hungary’s partnership in the horror. In this
array, one will find a leading European revolutionary of 1848 plus three
U.S. presidents. World War I shattered Hungary and one is reminded of
that . . . constantly.
Slide #25: There are too many sites in Buda Pest. The Parliament, in
coloured lights, and the Palace, turned art museum, are magnificent.
Slide #26: Everyday Buda Pest is worth taking the time to soak in, from
hand-me-down East German commuter trains (upper-left) to robotic
lawn-mowers to the last Soviet public structure (next to the robot).

27. WARSAW, old town / city: Slide #28
The Germans razed the remainder of the old town of Warsaw after the
Warsaw Uprising in the late summer of 1944. It was reconstructed
through the design leadership of Jan Zachwatowicz in the late 1940s.
https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/mastermind-that-reconstructed-warsaw-old-towns-to-finally-be-honoured-17210
In the right-hand margin and the lower right-hand corner are two
memorials to Polish resistance during World War II. The larger
structure is a memorial to the Warsaw uprising.
In the lower left-hand corner are the pictures of two churches. My
shrinking grey matter will likely get this wrong, but the façade is that of
a chapel dedicated to the Polish exiles who fought with the Britons
during the Second World War. The picture to the left looks like the
interior of a Presbyterian church but is actually Dominican Catholic.
Low-church tendencies may have been present in the Catholic Church
at the time of Reformation.