How Ukraine is Like Odysseus: Staying the Western Course?
Plus: A mountain-biking club tours the Carpathians, Lviv's Oksana Lyniv leads Bayreuth festival, Soviet monument toppled, the healing power of blues—and green borsch
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Lviv Live Music | Wealth & Democracy | Food & Drink | Travel & Nature | Soul & Culture | About Us
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Travel & Nature
A Club of Cyclists Explores Galician Highways and Carpathian Trails
IN LVIV, you can join a club of mountain-and-road cyclists who train rookies and lead all levels of riders on excursions around the region of Ukrainian Galicia.
«The main idea was to create a community of people who love cycling and other cyclic sports,» Serhii Piasetskyi says. «Our mission is helping people to understand the beauty of cycling and start to enjoy it in all its forms, as well as increase the overall sports culture in the city and in Ukraine.»
Story by Joe Lindsley. Read more …
Wealth & Democracy
«No Matter What Happens,» Ukraine Faces West. Conversation with Council of Europe official.
WHATEVER negative news there might be, Steen Nørlov, the Danish head of the Council of Europe’s office in Kyiv, is confident in the progress and direction of democratic reform in Ukraine. To illustrate this, he recalled the legend of Odysseus, the mythical Greek whom some scholars think, in Homer’s epic poem, visited what is now the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv.
«If you remember,» Nørlov said during our interview at the LV Café jazz club, «Odysseus did all the wrong things and therefore his journey became very long and when he came to the Sirens he did listen to them, but he also got his men to tie him to the mast and put wax in their ears and so he passed. And that is a little bit the same thing: No matter what happens [in Ukraine] the direction seems to be the same.»
We discussed the differences between the Danish system, which is often considered the world’s least corrupt, and Ukraine, which has never earned such a designation. Danish society is based on trust, Nørlov said, but he also thinks Denmark and the West can learn a lot from Ukraine, with its people’s «ability to mobilize.»
Story by Joe Lindsley. Read more …
SEE ALSO:
«In Ukraine-China Relations, Where Goes the Spirit of Maidan?»
While Steen Nørlov is optimistic about Ukraine’s direction, Arthur Kharytonov, a Ukrainian Liberal Democrat and founder of the Free Hong Kong Center in Kyiv is concerned that Kyiv is getting too close to the communist regime in Beijing. For another perspective, you can read our interview with Kharytonov here.
Soul & Culture
The Soviet Monument of Glory Finally Dismantled
SEVEN YEARS – this time was needed to get rid of the Monument to the Military Glory of the Soviet Union, a symbol of Soviet occupation not far from Lviv’s city centre. Despite the fact that the relevant conditions for it emerged in 2014, after the Revolution of Dignity and the start of Russian-Ukrainian war, this massive sculptural complex still defined the gloomy atmosphere of the place near one of the most beautiful parks in Lviv.
Story by Oleksandra Bodniak, Viktoria Savitska. See photos and story here.
SEE ALSO:
Hammer and Sickle Monument to Be Destroyed on the Field of Mars
Decommunization laws in Ukraine were enacted after the Revolution of Dignity by President Petro Poroshenko on 15 May 2015. Since that time, the Communist party was banned, the processes of renaming administrative units and streets began, as well as the removal of monuments representing the Soviet ideology. «Leninopad» – «the fall of Lenin [statues]» – was a particularly popular part of it.
Lviv Live Music
Lviv’s Oksana Lyniv Becomes First Female Conductor of Famed Bayreuth Opera Festival
UKRAINIAN CONDUCTOR Oksana Lyniv, a native of Brody, Lviv region, became the first woman to open the world’s most famous opera festival, in its 145th year, in the German town of Bayreuth, dedicated to composer Richard Wagner. The festival opened on July 25 with the premiere of «Flying Dutchman». Among the spectators were German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her husband.
«The profession of a conductor is very complex. It takes into account many different qualities – you need to have the features of a leader, figurative thinking, you should love the stage, theater, have a sense of direction, love and understand the vocals, be able to combine many components into one whole, have dramatic thinking to work with large forms. These are all things I enjoy» says Oksana Lyniv.
Story by Anna Zhurba. Read more …
United in Blues: How Music Heals. Lviv Stories.
THE WEATHER was unusually hot, and the LV Cafe jazz club felt like a proper juke joint in New Orleans or Mississippi: steamy. I had invited a delegation of European officials to join. Soon we entered a lucid dream in that humid, ancient cellar: the jazz, the heat, the potato pancakes with porcini mushrooms combined for a psychedelic effect.
Local Lviv jazz cats were playing toward the edges of known music with a visiting American – a pianist to the world’s top voices. A saxophone player, one of the LV regulars, showed up after a gig at another place and together the musicians played a free-range rendition of «Autumn Leaves,» with trumpet and saxophone challenging and complementing each other as the dreamlike piano infused a heavenly sweetness.
«I think no other country appreciates my music like Ukraine,» said the visiting American singer. «Ukrainians have felt pain, they know suffering, so they can appreciate my music, which also comes from a place of pain. The blues, the music of black Americans. Here, they suffered famine, they suffered under communism, lived through revolutions. We suffered in America, years of racism and oppression. That gave birth to the blues.»
Story by Joe Lindsley. Read more …
Lviv Local
An Overview of Lviv’s Innovative Private Schools
AT PRIVATE SCHOOLS in Lviv, students are fed two or three meals a day, they can take cooking and chess classes, and learn reading, writing, and arithmetic in innovative ways, including with thematic weeks, “wave dives,” and debates. Instruction can be in Ukrainian, English, German, Polish, and Spanish.
Story by Sofia Shavranska; translated by Vitalii Holich. Read more …
Food & Drink
Guide to the Cuisine of Ukrainian Galicia
Green Borsch (зелений борщ; суп з щавлю): Also called sorrel soup, this usually warmer-weather dish is made with a spinach-like leaf. With a fresh, slightly sour taste it is often served with a poached egg and sour cream.
Find out more about Ukrainian cuisine here.
About Us
Lviv Now: Showing How Strong a Community Can Be When Creating Quality Changes Together
LVIV NOW is a project of Tvoe Misto (“Your City”), Lviv’s solutions-focused media hub, working with American journalist Joe Lindsley.
Each week, the journalists of Tvoe Misto, led by editor-in-chief Svitlana Zhabiuk and publisher Taras Yatsenko, host problem-solving public forums, one topic at a time, to activate democracy for all citizens. Their newsroom provides daily reporting as part of their solutions-focused journalism. We welcome you to share this newsletter or individual stories with digital nomads, creative people, travelers, diplomats, researchers, entrepreneurs, the Ukrainian diaspora, and more!
“Through the Lviv Now project, we want to tell the English-speaking audience about Lviv as a lively and attractive city, with its unique architecture, history, and entrepreneurial initiatives. We seek to show how strong a community can be when creating quality changes together,” says the director of the media hub Tvoe Misto, Taras Yatsenko.
“We hope Lviv Now will be useful and interesting among the English-speaking audience of scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, journalists and tourists, as well as firmly establish Lviv on the global map of the world,” Yatsenko says. “Therefore, the slogan of our project is "Let's Open Lviv to the world!"
For more stories and to leave comments, please visit our website LvivNow.com. We welcome your ideas and responses.