The empty Carpathian port

PIZZA

“It was 11 years ago that I visited Uzhhorod for the first time, I went there on a school excursion. I had little money, but we went to a pizzeria. It was the first time when I invited a girl for pizza, and although I have not seen her ever after, it was an interesting moment, a sort of a first date and first defeat. While I liked the city very much, I regretted that I spent all the mo­ney I wanted to spare.”

CALMNESS

“Although Uzhhorod seemed a very big city to me, I immediately felt that it would be a nice place to live, because it is calm. With a population of 120,000, it is the country’s smallest oblast center. It is the only oblast center that does not have electric transportation, it takes only 25 minutes to get to the center on foot from any point of the city. There is a saying, that nobody says hello in Uzhhorod in the afternoon, as everyone has done so before noon. Thus, Uzhhorod can be only compared to Luxembourg. The city is not about architecture, but tranquil life. There is a river, the mountains are nearby.”

LANGUAGE

“Transcarpathia has very strong dialects, however, in Uzhhorod I discovered that people talk pure literary Ukrainian. For example, in Vynohradiv, located on the border with Hungary 80 kilometers from the city, people speak a very complicated dialect for the most part. This is a Trancarpathian phenomenon. It is a place where four borders meet, a melting pot surrounded by the mountains, and many words are mixed there. However, in Uzhhorod one cannot just learn Ukrainian at school, one speaks it in everyday life. This was a barrier I wanted to overcome, and I began to speak correct Ukrainian thereafter, a decision I made out of my own will. This can be called my first victory, a very gratifying one, I must admit.”

COLOR

“When you look at the city from the mountains in spring, you can see the cascades of the old city, covered with red tiling, and there is greenery and yellow walls in between. When the sun lights the roofs, the tiling starts shining even if it is covered with dust. This is a sort of my inner Macedonia.”

AFRICA

“There are things in this city that I cannot get. It’s like a sort of an African city, because, for example, there is a river flowing via Uzhhorod, but the water supply in the houses is frequently failing. This is the city with the worst public transport, as there are only fixed-route taxies, with no trams and trolleybuses whatsoever, so getting somewhere frays your nerves. And the image produced by the combination of these African features, huge ambitions, grotesque, and people who do their utmost for you, is somewhat obscure, yet the initial impressions are very pleasant and they are namely what draws your in.”

BERLIN

“The huge residential sector surrounds the old part of city with its quiet streets, gardens full of flowers, and people lazily sweeping the sidewalk, makes the city look domestic. Everything intertwines there, and you might feel this family atmosphere in people’s openness to one another. You come and immediately become a resident of the city, there are no problems. This can be compared with modern Berlin, where you won’t have any problems as a newcomer, whatever happens.”

SITES AND ROUTES

“There is a variety of routes you can choose, everything depends on your mood. If you don’t want to see anyone, it will be enough for you to avoid going via the central Korzo street. Choosing a different one, located 50 meters from Korzo, you will hardly meet anyone and will reach your house in solitude. If you seek communication, want to meet people and have some coffee, then you’d better go via Korzo. If you need some romance, you should go via the Lime Alley, which is Europe’s longest. It stretches for 13 kilometers along the Uzh River. Back in 1939 it was described as the main place for rendezvous, now it ranks second after Korzo. It starts in the center and finishes in a residential area, where it goes from highly populated to fairly unfrequented. At one point where the river twists, it is overgrown with bushes, there one can run and cycle.”

SCALING

“You see, the center is quite small, it would take one about 45 minutes to go around it. When my friends arrive, I have to make circles while showing the city so that it seems bigger, I always want to delude them. I go to Uzhhorod Castle, then, in order to bring the people to my next place of destination, which is located in a matter of 40 meters only – a philharmonic, which is an exact copy of the Prague Philharmonic – you would make a huge circle, taking over 30 minutes. This is done on a subconscious level, nobody makes any arrangements, but in this way you make the city seem larger.”

HORIANY

“Horiany will always remain my favorite place. This is a small district almost located in the suburbs of Uzhhorod, but it is the city’s core. It is the place from where the city started to develop 1,100 years ago, and it is there that the Horiany Rotunda stands, a small round church, older than Kyiv Cave Monastery. Like in a village, people there may pasture cows and geese. Things important for my personal experience also started in Horiany: a person from our company of young poets, Vik Kovrei, had a dacha there, where we used to gather. One can sit there simply in the yard under the vine and drink the wine made of the grapes from that vine. And it takes one some 1.5 hours to get to Uzhhorod from there. At first we would have some get-together, then walk slowly across the city. We would return from Horiany at night, through the center, and my companions would thaw in the darkness bit by bit, because we live in different corners of the city. And in the end you would be alone, going on your own, with only dogs wandering around: this is the most wonderful thing for me, because this is a city where one can always stay alone.”

BORDER

“I have eventually discovered the other possibilities of Uzhhorod. I could see Slovakia from the windows on one side of the dormitory house where I lived as a student, and if I crossed the corridor I could see Hungary from the windows on the other side. One of the central streets, Sobranetska, ends at the EU border. Traditionally, people do not walk there for an unknown reason. This is quite a symbolic thing, because this border is indeed a restriction for Uzhhorod, a sort of a threshold, and this city does not like any thresholds or limitations.”

MOUNTAINS AND SUICIDES

“Enctire Uzhhorod can be viewed from the ruins of the Nevytsky Castle, located 25 kilometers from the city, but you can’t do so from the Uzhhorod Castle, because there are no higher hills. The city is surrounded by mountains, and one mountain called Bam is located inside the city. In fact it is not a mountain, rather a big hill, where the local hospital and university are situated. The entire city can also be viewed from the university. Uzhhorod does not have multistoried buildings, because it is a seismologically dangerous area. As for me, there is no need to build multistoried buildings in a mountainous area. The highest building counts 16 storeys and was built as an experiment. This is a place where suicides are committed, self-murderers are attracted by the height.”

CZECHS AND SOVIETS

“Czechoslovakia has left many traces. They granted regional autonomy, allowed the Ukrainian language, built a lot. Unfortunately, the Soviets have taken the bigger hand in terms of architecture. It would be cleverer to broaden Uzhhorod from the residential sector. Instead we have a consumer services centre, university, and dormitory area in the center, which has much spoiled the scenery. In terms of architecture, the Soviets have left the worst trace, whereas Czechoslovakia – the best ones.”

PETOFI

“This is a place of paradox. For example, one of the central squares was named after Sandor Petofi, a “Hungarian Shevchenko.” There is a monument to Petofi and a Hungarian school, whereas in fact the poet has visited the city only once, he stayed in the hotel Black Eagle, noticed flies on the walls, was caught in the rain, got into some mud, and left several lines in his diary telling that Uzhhorod is a terrible city. Now there is a square named after him. Thus, Uzhhorod will always respond with friendliness and kindness to everything.”

A TYPICAL RESIDENT OF THE CITY

“In 1939 the city covered five times less area than now. It started to mushroom in the post-war period, people would come from all the surrounding areas. I don’t know any person who can call himself/herself third-generation residents of Uzhhorod. Hence the tolerance to newcomers; the city exists thanks to them. The typical resident of Uzhhorod is a middle-aged person, about 35 years old, standing and smoking, not hurrying anywhere, and with no concerns. He can simply stand and wait until he meets some acquaintance in the city and makes same arrangements. Incidentally, because of Uzhhorod’s small area there is no tradition to start carousal and parties on Fridays to mark the end of the working week, because 70 percent of Uzhhorod residents’ working time is taken by coffee drinking and talks, and nobody is ever strained, at least for the most part, because there are still a few people who are hurrying somewhere. So, the person I have described, may stand and pretend quite well to be busy. If anybody called me asking to do something I would assure them, No, I have 1,241 things to do. This does not mean that I don’t care or that I’m a goof. This is simply a lazy city, where you don’t hurry anywhere, you go out in the morning having no engine that would push you in the back to run and do something.”

CHIC

“The best Transcarpathian artist Albert Erdeli lived in a colony of artists near Paris, he did not have money at all, and complained about this in his letters, but he had 38 (if I’m not mistaken) white shirts with cuff links and collar studs. Uzhhorod seeks to show its stylishness. It is a classical situation when an artist invites you to his studio and spends all his money on you, to the last penny. That is what treating somebody well means in Transcarpathia. And he will treat you well till the morning, and won’t have money for cigarettes for two weeks after. But this is a question of conceit, showing what we can and what we have.”

WINE

“Every resident of Uzhhorod will tell you with sacred confidence in his eyes that Transcarpathian wine is wonderful, there are even festivals held there. But the wine is awful, it is impossible to drink it, one can just get drunk with the help of it. It is drunk in huge portions, one can drink 1.5 litres from big plastic bottles. There is no culture of wine drinking. People are proud of it, but I don’t understand this pride.”

COFFEE

“Lviv has coffee houses, Uzhhorod has coffee. When anybody says that coffee is good in Lviv, this evokes sarcastic smiles. A resident of Uzhhorod will reply that it is better to drink Nescafe from an automat than to drink Lviv coffee. However, there are no coffee-houses in Uzhhorod. I mean there are many of them, but they are featureless, the tables are heaped, and they are not cozy. But the coffee is wonderful, and people drink a lot of it from big tea cups.”

EAST AND WEST IN JUNCTION

“I confirm that Uzhhorod’s coffee is better, but it’s because Uzhhorod does not like the mere existence of Lviv. Uzhhorod is a city of mean jokes: if you are from Lviv you will hear the joke that guests from the east have come, because Lviv is in the east for the Trancarpathians. We have much better relations with Ivano-Frankivsk, but here we have another joke to tell. We tell a resident of Ivano-Frankivsk that he is from beyond the Carpathians, because for us he lives beyond the Carpathians. We consider ourselves Prykarpattians as we live at the foot of the Carpathians, for us Ivano-Frankivsk is Zakarpattia (the land beyond the Carpathians), for them everything is vice versa, and there’s something special about this.”

A CAPITAL CITY WITH THE DESTINY OF A REGIONAL ONE

“This is a city doomed to be a village. It is considered to be a normal thing to breed domestic animals in the residential areas located not far from the center. The mere difference is that the animals are not walking along the streets. But the village’s doom is always present. Once it was fashionable to speak Russian in order to prove that you’re a resident of the city, an urbanized person. Fortunately, it is over now. Uzhhorod has a thirst for foreign things. Nobody says this aloud, of course, considering that our own things are the best. This is generally a Trancarpathian custom to say that our things are the best, but when somebody comes from another city – whether it is for a literary soiree, an exhibit, or a concert – people come in crowds. But when a Transcarpathian action is taking place, nobody will come, they will think that they will see nothing new there. Besides, there are frequent attempts to prove that we are a city. For example, we have a theater. About 50 people attend the hall with a capacity of 900. No good plays are staged there, but everyone will tell you that we have a theater, that we have a philharmonic society, although hardly anyone goes there either. Those are supposed to be some significant symbols. Now everyone is saying that Uzhhorod does not have a monument of a man sitting on a horse, because it is the city of the worst monuments in western Ukraine. Those are either Shevchenko looking like Khrushchev or Brezhnev, or Dukhnovych’s stone. Everything erected in the past 20 years raises much doubt in terms of art. The city’s center does not have a place to install a monument. It was built as a small town of 40,000. The disease of growth that can hardly be survived: it is impossible to give the center further development, but they are trying to squeeze in everything. This is the reason why the city looks like a collage. At the same time it does not have any normal, big bookshop, where one could buy good books. There are four small shops, that’s it. However, I am annoyed by the fact that the city does not understand what advantages it has and does not forsake the dream of becoming a big city. This giantism, the desire to build up, hot discussions, say, let’s join the nearest villages, and the population will increase, making 150,000 instead of 120,000. These ambitions surprise me, because then the city will lose its beauty.”

(TOO) SLOWLY

“Perhaps the greatest advantage is slowness. This is what attracted me and what I fell for, this custom to speak much and slowly, meeting somebody all the time, drinking coffee, planning everything on your own, moving slowly across the city. When an event is held, it will always start later, even those who are at the core of the event will come late. But this slowness is also annoying, because there are too many talks and little work is done. We can make an arrangement about doing this or that, drink some wine, hug, sing, and fail to do anything in the end. Who needs this? This individualistic slowness, when you move on your own feet, not by the public transport, leads to thinking, Why should I do this? Let some other person do this. Or, even if I do this, nobody is interested in it, nobody needs it. And we make an arrangement today, do not do anything tomorrow, and forget about everything.”

WATER

“If I could, I would add water to the Uzh. One can easily cross it on foot, there is no need for bridges, it is too shallow even for boats. I would make the river sailable. This is what I lack most in this landscape: high water, where ships or yachts would sail. This high water would give movement, because it is constantly flowing. I get enchanted by the absence of movement in Uzhhorod, therefore it is always hard for me to stay in Kyiv with its violent speed; this countryside slowness is very good, but if there was water, it would give constant speed, one could sit on, idling and looking at ships sail. And this sight would have compensated all the things that are unfortunately festering inside. I would like to see a different kind of Uzhhorod.”

800 KILOMETERS

“After living there, you begin to understand that this is a port, although it is located 800 kilometers from the sea. Compared with Odesa, it is a city of expectation. In Odesa, they expect, for example, ships to come, whereas Uzhhorod is waiting for its destiny. Everyone keeps telling that here and there we have a breakthough, that fairly soon we will become Ukraine’s cultural capital. Hence, for example, the sacred assurance that the Transcarpathian painting school is the best in Ukraine and that the best artists have lived or are living here. Uzhhorod is a very small city that considers itself large and has extravagant ambitions. And these ambitions frequently look like a word-play. For example, when a somewhat crazy man says that he is a prime minister of the Ruthenian Republic, or when another one, who sells his own paintings, asserts that he has millions of dollars. After all, this is a city that has lost its opportunities and has not had any serious flashes in the past, so it is waiting according to the law of probability for the opportunities to emerge – now for sure. This is an absolute mishmash typical of a port.”

THERE IS NO SHIP

“After all, some 5,000 years ago there used to be a Carpathian sea on this place. For me, the image of Uzhhorod is just a port, maybe, an empty one, because there’s no ship tied up in the Uzhhorod harbor. There is no such ship.”