Ukranian fashion update: all gold, including the sneakers you can't see. All gold at approximately noon on a Tuesday. Love it.
I came back, had my favorite yogurt for lunch (Activia with muesli) and then decided to wear my hammer pants today.
After working a little bit and exchanging some emails, I decided to go find the oldest church in Chernivtsi, built in 1607. On the way I passed the Drunken Church, and saw a large Polish tour group going in.
Head covered, hammer pants.Of course the whole time I was walking around, I had “Hammer time!,” From London to the bay…,” and “can’t touch this” going through my head.
Then I found the old church. It was closed, unfortunately.
You can see the back of the Drunken Church from this church's courtyard.
Around the corner from the church is an old synagogue that is in ruins, but it is undergoing renovation. I had read about this and was pleased to see it. Funding this is a joint venture between a few different parties, including one family in New York.
My BFF Anne Genevieve and her sweet Dad like to go on what they call “photo safaris” together. That is basically what I did in the early evening. See this building. It is hilarious. The left side of it has been redone, while the other side hasn't.
and right side:
Across from the nice part of this block is a monument to soldiers from WWI and WWII.
Vul Ruska:
The top of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church:
Although these apartment buildings have not been maintained well, you can see that they were built during Austro-Hungairan times and I'm sure used to be very beautiful.
Then I passed the building where I went to get credentials and for the press conferences back in February. Across the street from that building is the former Armenian Cathedral.
Typical street in Chernivtsi:
Check this out...building from the time of the A-H Empire next to building built by the Soviets. Can you tell the difference?
Olga:
All the various spelling of Chernivtsi in the languages of countries that have occupied Chernivtsi and the many ethnicities of groups who have lived here, are spelled out along the side of the street on Olga. Here is the Polish spelling of Chernivtsi.
I took a break and had a Staropramen at the Movie Palace on Olga outside, and then decided I was hungry.
It turned out to be good. I had pizza, with chicken (and corn and black olives) on it, of course.
On the way home I stopped at a mini-market on Olga and bought fresh red peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, and bottled water.The walk home was pretty.
Now I have to grade my final exams and work on my presentations for the Embassy conference.
I was just playing with the international radio that Marian Strobel gave me for Christmas a few years ago and found a channel with some English music. Just heard Barbie Girl. Ha! Oh, now it is back to Ukrainian/Russian…
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3 comments:
Chicken House? LOL I love seeing pictures of Chernivtsi and how fashionable the girls dress. Didn't get a close up view of your hammer pants, but they look adorable.
You wrote: "Check this out...building from the time of the A-H Empire next to building built by the Soviets. Can you tell the difference?"
The houses you've mistaken for the Soviet blocks were in fact constructed in the interwar period, when Chernivtsi was under Romania. These houses are typical specimens of the Romanian Art-Deco (or, to be more specific, Romanian Sreamline moderne).
By the way, the house you stayed in during your journey to Chernivtsi is another specimen of Art-Deco, but in more traditional forms. And the street that begins on the left hand of this corner house, was completely built up in the interwar period with Streamline Moderne houses (as well as numerous interwar houses in the downtown of Miami). And another feature of the interwar Chernivtsi is a great deal of lanes cutting the old Austrian blocks of houses or running into their depth. Maybe the architecture of the interwar period is my, so to say, hobby-horse, but, for example, in Chernivtsi I like most of all exactly the Romanian houses of the 1920s and 1930s.
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