Carkanian Circle E-Book

Carlo Reltas

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 509

Beschreibung

For Carlo Reltas, Carkania means the countries on the edge of the Carpathians and in the Balkans. On his round trips, he visits fascinating cities such as pre-war Kiev and Odessa, Istanbul, Tirana, Sarajevo and Ljubljana. He also makes a detour to the supposedly "queasy Minsk". Carlo Reltas invites his readers to accompany him on his journeys and walks through the main cities and other important towns in south-eastern Europe. He shares his impressions, his experiences and interweaves them with historical and political-social background, sometimes with commentary. At the end, he even proclaims a new capital for Europe. The author was a journalist and manager of the international news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) for decades. Since leaving the news business, he has been living on the edge of the Odenwald and travelling.

Leseprobe

Carlo ReltasCARKANIAN CIRCLEA South East European Travel Diary

The circle is a long, winding road. The path of the Carkanian circle leads to the heart of Europe.

C. Reltas

Carlo Reltas

Carkanian Circle

-

A

South East European

Travel Diary

CARE Publishing

Heppenheim

Cover picture:

The unfinished Cathedral of Saint Sava in Belgrade, 

the largest church building in South East Europe (2002)

All photos (except portrait of the author):C. Reltas

© Copyright by CARE of Sattler, 2024ISBN: 978-3-758483-46-2Original edition in German: 

"Karkanischer Kreis", soft cover 2017, eBook 2019

CARE of Sattler

Vala-Lamberger-Straße 20, 64646 Heppenheim 

[email protected]

Distribution:epubli – a service of Neopubli GmbH, Berlin www.epubli.de

Content

Cover

Motto

Title

Imprint

THE MAJOR FIRST ROUND (September 2002)

Visiting Ladies and the Daughter

Oleg – Cicerone of Černivci

Twenty Hours to Odessa

The Beauty by the Sea and the Beauties

Blue Monday by the Black Sea

In Wooden Class to Moldova

Chişinǎu: Living the Good Life in a Poor Country

At a Snail's Pace to Romania

Bucharest - Wounded and Whimsical

On the Bosporus Express

At the Golden Horn

Culture Mix - a Bulgarian Intermezzo

Thessaloniki Notes of an Alien

The Shadows of Skopje

Serbia at the Crossroads

Zagreb - between k. u. k. and EU

Travelling along the green Sava

Ljubljana: Idyll and Ideals under the Castle

THE MINOR SECOND ROUND (August 2015)

Golden City on the Dnieper

Amazing and peculiar Minsk

Old Ragusa, young Dubrovnik

War Victims Mostar and Sarajevo

Priština - Europe's Latest Capital

The Giants of Skopje

Tirana - Capital of the Shkipetars

Serious Situation in the Former "Operetta State"

THEREAFTER

Černobyl, Mežyhirja, Babyn Jar (2016)

FINAL KEYSTONE

An Epilogue from Prague (2016)

Maps

About the Author

By the same Author

THE MAJOR FIRST ROUND

(September 2002)

Thanks to 

Oleg, Jean-François, Sandra & Tim, Pierre-Michel, Jérôme und Vessela

Visiting Ladies and the Daughter

"Dzien dobry, Polska!" As on the north-east course around the Baltic Sea, which Karl had set off on four years earlier, his route to the south-east on the Carkanian Circle along the Carpathians and across the Balkan Peninsula first led to Poland. He sleepily got off the Berlin night train to Krakow. The obwarzanki seller was already waiting at the station with his freshly baked sesame and poppy seed curls. Karl will come across these curls many more times on his journey, obwarzanki here, similar names at the stations on the journey all the way to Istanbul, where a related and equally popular pastry is called simit. The curls smell warm. He takes two of them. "Dzien dobry, Polska! Good morning, Poland!"

The old royal city of Krakow is still damp from the morning summer rain. Karl and his Berlin girlfriend walk along the leafy city ring road, which begins just a few hundred metres south of the train station. Nora accompanies him on his south-east European tour as far as the old Polish royal city and will return to the German capital the following day from this first stop on the Carkanian Circle. Their common destination is the guest house of the Jagiellonian University. Who hasn't studied there, for example the incomparable visionary Stanislaw Lem, the world's most famous science fiction author, who preferred to call himself, with subtle irony, a "do-it-yourself philosopher" of the modern age. Or Wislawa Szymborska, the grand old lady of Polish poetry and winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature. During the days of his visit with Nora, both were still living in the city where the heart of Polish literature is still said to beat. So it was only logical that the European Union should also designate Krakow as the European Capital of Culture in the millennium year 2000. However, the two did not meet them, not in the university guest house and not in the garden of the House of Literature, where they were said to come and go. 

In Florian's Alley, which was once used by Polish rulers to enter the city on the Vistula, they climb to the second floor of their academic hostel and look out of the wide windows onto this pedestrianised street, with shops of all kinds below and McDonald's, which has also become ubiquitous in Eastern Europe. To the right, the view falls once again on the mighty Barbakan (Barbican), the massive bastion with metre-thick brick walls that the late medieval city lords erected outside the Florian Gate to protect their wealth. To the left, the Florianska leads into the main market square, where the city's riches, which were to be protected, are gathered in the Cloth Hall, the magnificent, elongated building in the middle of this main trading centre.

After the two Berliners have tried out the university beds and otherwise had a good rest, they are keen to pay their respects to another lady or - to be more precise - to look at and admire her: the Lady with the Ermine, a masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, which was acquired by Prince Adam Jerzy Czatoryski in 1800 and is now normally on display in the Czatoryski Museum. But alas, just as they visit, Cecilia Gallerani is travelling again. However, Karl would see the beautiful mistress of Milanese Prince Ludovico Sforza a few years later. The young Italian woman with the dreamy sideways glance and the strange pet on her arm came to Berlin in 2011 as one of the "Faces of the Renaissance". He brought home a poster from this exhibition at the Bode Museum and hung it up at home, so that every day since then he could enjoy the sight of the beauty, who had been sorely missed in Krakow. 

In the neighbourhood near the Czatoryski Museum, many a café tempts him to stop for a bite to eat. He likes to stop off there with Jolanda, Karl's daughter, who some years later is spending nine month in Krakow as an Erasmus student from autumn 2005. They sip hot chocolate in a romantic parlour with old sewing machines and other ornaments from the old days. The atmosphere in "Once upon a time in Kazimierz" (Dawno temu na Kazimierzu) is even more nostalgic. The restaurant in the old Jewish quarter of Kazimierz with this elegiac name takes visitors on a journey through time. On the long side of the building facing the street, there appear to be entrances to five different shops from the first half of the last century. However, if you enter the building from the narrow side facing Szeroka Square, you are immersed in an eatery from a bygone world. Here, too, the inevitable Singer sewing machine, a richly decorated iron stove, old wooden tables, seven-armed candlesticks, traditional handicraft tools on the shelves - the whole room bears witness to Krakow's Jewish culture before the Holocaust. Karl and his daughter savour a potato soup that tastes wonderful, but is so strongly flavoured with garlic that they harbour the worst fears for the rest of the evening. But Jolanda's fellow students and friends don't let on when daughter and father arrive at the concert in the Jewish cultural centre after their nostalgic evening meal.

Krakow's most famous klezmer band called Kroké, which is nothing other than the Yiddish word for Krakow, is finally playing in their home town again. With viola, flute, accordion, bass and drums, the line-up is somewhat different from that of a traditional klezmer combo. Above all, Tomasz Kukurba and his comrades-in-arms do not shy away from electronic amplification and even distortion in their modernisation of klezmer. Klezmer is already very dynamic anyway. But Kroké's temperament and music sometimes become downright wild, returning to the tender and accelerating again - and all with breathtaking virtuosity in sometimes fast, sometimes slow playing. Is that still klezmer? Is it jazz now? It's KROKÉ! The young audience in the newly glazed foyer of the cultural centre is entranced with enthusiasm.

After the concert, the music enthusiasts disperse to the pubs around plac Nowy (New Place) with its circular market building in the centre. When Karl and his son Fabian travelled to Krakow again seven months later to bring Jolanda back to Berlin after her Erasmus year, along with her newly acquired Polish household, they returned to the pub scene on plac Nowy. It's World Cup time 2006. The big screens are flickering in the back rooms or upstairs in the pubs. Germany versus Argentina, Italy versus Ukraine - emotions are running high among the Erasmus students from all over Europe and their Polish hosts. Football conflicts are the most beautiful, because after frustration or joy, after victory or defeat, reconciliation and peace are quickly restored over a beer afterwards.

But back to the Carkania tour: Kazimierz with its synagogues, the Jewish cemetery and the sunny street cafés on Szeroka Square are of course also part of Nora and Karl's programme. They also join the stream of tourists going uphill to the Wawel Castle. Situated above the Vistula on the southern edge of the city ring road, it offers a beautiful view of the river landscape and the industrial suburbs on the south side. There in the former enamelware factory of Oskar Schindler, a state history museum has now been established there, which focuses on the period of German occupation from 1939 to 1945 and, of course, the fate of the Jews in the Krakow ghetto.

The interior of the castle exudes monarchical splendour, both in the cathedral with its famous tombs and in the castle itself with its many state rooms. Karl remembers the Audience Hall, with which Polish rulers were able to impress the envoys of foreign countries centuries ago, not because of the tapestries, not because of the coffered ceiling with the wood-carved character heads, but because historical ambience is filled with life here. A string quartet performs in historical costumes, but full of life and with the vigour of youth and the grace of the Polish violonist, who, dressed as a damsel of the castle, brings to mind the dreamy lady with the ermine with her devoted playing. 

St Mary's Basilica on the Rynek Glowny (Main Market)

In the evening, Nora and Karl stop off at one of the most renowned restaurants on the Rynek Glowny (Main Market), the Restauracja Wierzynek. 1364 is written above the entrance. The origins of this gourmet temple are said to go back to a gigantic feast on Krakow's Main Market Square, which King Casimir the Great had organised the previous year to celebrate the wedding of his granddaughter Elisabeth to Emperor Charles IV. Knedliki, dumplings with roast venison, a speciality of Czech origin, is the choice of the visitors from Berlin. Nora and Karl savour this traditional evening meal in the dignified ambience of the first floor, accompanied by a heavy Hungarian red wine. Brocade curtains, ornate chairs, crisp white serviettes and heavy cutlery give the dinner a quasi-bourgeois feel. Or even a royal and imperial one? Either way, the long city walk and the delicious meal give them a deep sleep in the university guest house.

The morning in Krakow begins for Karl that day with a run around the green park ring, which now surrounds the old city centre instead of the city wall. The run is an opportunity to say goodbye to the Barbican, the castle, the Slowacki Theatre and various church towers along the route. One more shower, one more pack - and they are back on the platform after a day and a half. Nora stays a little longer before travelling back to Berlin in the afternoon, Karl boards the fast train to the Polish eastern border to Przemysl, where he wants to change to the overnight train to Černivci in the Ukrainian Bukovina. The railway crosses the Vistula. On the southern side of the river, the railway area bordered the Jewish ghetto to the east. Soon after passing the industrial site with the former enamelware factory, which for many Jews became a place of work and refuge from the henchmen of the Nazi regime, the railway bends to the east. In the direction of Tarnow, Reszow, Przemysl and Ukraine, it initially runs alongside the motorway. 

While cars roar by on the right, the towers of the Nowa Huta steelworks can be seen far to the north across the Vistula. On a Sunday, Karl and his daughter Jolanda travelled there by tram, right up to the gate of the former state combine with its imposing Stalin-era administration building. They were unable to enter the huge factory site, which is now in the hands of the world's largest steel group, ArcelorMittal. The barrier can only be passed by employees of the plant. However, they then made a pilgrimage along a ring road in the model socialist city founded in 1949 especially for the workers of the iron and steel combine. Their destination? A church with a special history! The blocks of flats they pass on the way there have green front gardens with trees that are now decades old. The green ambience suggests that a "workers' paradise" was planned here. This new home is clearly getting on in years and is in need of renovation. Nevertheless, it is clear that the residents of this new residential neighbourhood have developed their own identity for the factory, which is close by but kept at a distance by a park belt. 

Although Nowa Huta is a district of Krakow, it is understandable that some residents of the "New Hut" only travel to the centre of the royal city once or twice a year. It has its own centre with a central square, which is now remarkably named after Ronald Reagan. There are sports facilities, cinemas and churches. However, the pious workers had to fight for these for years. The "Church of the Mother of God, Queen of Poland" has an elliptical shape, which is visually emphasised by the sloping flat roof. Designed in the 1960s, the building has a large glass front facing north-west and an elegantly curved concrete cladding. The "Ark of the Lord", as the building is also called in reference to its external shape, is topped by a 70 metre high steel cross. In the early 1960s, the then Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla, had already held open-air masses in the same place under a wooden cross. 

As Jolanda and Karl approach this modern church building, whose architect Wojciech Pierzyk was clearly influenced by Le Corbusier's famous chapel Notre Dame du Haut de Ronchamp, they hear singing from inside. They step up to the glass front and peer into the sacred building. It is Sunday morning. Mass is being celebrated. They cautiously open one of the portal doors. The church, which was consecrated in 1977, still in the socialist era, is full. The faithful sing devoutly and yet with fervour. The two non-Catholics discreetly withdraw. But even from the outside, this building for Poland's First Lady, the Mother of God, who was never missing from the lapel of Solidarnocs leader Lech Wałesa, is highly impressive. 

The journey to Nowa Huta was well worth it. On the way back from the Queen's House to the City of Kings, the two meet a former comrade-in-arms of Wałesa. Lech Kaczynski smiles from a poster for the Law and Justice Party (PiS). The conservative politician had just won the presidential election at the end of October 2005, relying not least on the Catholic camp. Two months earlier, the PiS had also won the government majority with the slogan "Polska solidarna vs Polska liberalna" (Solidarity Poland vs Liberal Poland). Another poster that the two Germans see through the window of the tram almost sounds like a commentary on this: "Nie dla idiotów." But this is just the Polishised version of the Europe-wide Media Markt slogan "I'm not stupid". The German retail giant has of course also set up shop here in the sprawling industrial estate between Nowa Huta and historic Krakow.

Jolanda and Karl have returned to Krakow by tram. He now leaves it by train on his way east, with Nowa Huta on the northern horizon. Two Polish ladies and their daughters are sitting in the compartment. They curiously question the foreign traveller. The older ladies speak a little German, their daughters English. They are proud of their splendid Krakow and enjoy Karl's praise and compliments for their metropolis. When he tells them about the previous evening's dinner, they moan: "Yes, the Restauracja Wierzynek, simply marvellous!" What did he eat? "Knedliki!" They roll their eyes - in rapture.

Oleg – Cicerone of Černivci

   Oleg is standing at the edge of the platform, a tall, dark-blonde man of about thirty, more likely in his late twenties. Karl notices him immediately. Most of the other waiting passengers are chatting to each other, market women with huge, lightweight plastic travelling bags bulging with cheap Western fashion from the supermarkets and department stores of Poland, which they intend to sell on for a profit in the flying markets of their Ukrainian homeland. He, on the other hand, is lost in thought as he walks up and down the platform in Przemysl.

Karl had got off the train in this Polish border town nolens, volens. Changing lanes! Transit travellers have to cross over three continuous railway tracks to a track system that begins there. This is where the eastbound trains with another track width depart for the Ukraine. But he had just less than an hour between arriving and continuing his journey to pay a brief visit to the old town of this former largest garrison town in Polish Galicia, which is still characterised by the Habsburgs. He walks down Franciszkanska (Franziskanerstraße / Franciscans street) over cobblestones and past baroque buildings. He passes the church of the same name and crosses the Rynek, the market square with its patrician houses, which bear witness to Przemysl's rich past as a trading centre between Krakow and Kiev, between the Black Sea and the Baltic.

He looks up to the Catholic cathedral and the 17th century castle. But he has just enough time to walk down to the River San, where the demarcation line between the Russians and Germans ran during the Second World War in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement. Karl stays on the eastern side of the old town, climbs the hill again, crosses the busy main road to Lviv on the edge of the old town to get back to the railway station, where his train - also bound for Lviv (Lemberg under Austrian rule) - was waiting for him. 

Before he can board the platform for Ukraine, he has to undergo the first check before entering the neighbouring country. Valid ticket, valid identity papers? Without these checks, you will not be allowed onto this part of the station, which is separated from the section for Polish domestic trains by a high fence. Karl has a ticket from Krakow to Černovcy, as it is called in Polish and Russian, or better Černivci, as it is called in Ukrainian, but a seat pass only for the route to the border. For the overnight train within Ukraine, he still lacks the sleeping car supplement. What to do? The packed saleswomen don't look as if they could give him any information in English. 

So he asks the young man at the edge of the platform. It turns out that Oleg, as he introduces himself by name, even speaks a little German. Karl shouldn't worry. At the Mostyska border station, the Ukrainian conductors would come on board and sell the appropriate surcharges. "Where are you travelling to?" asks the young academic. Oleg is a lecturer in Ukrainian at the University of Warsaw. "Černivci? That sounds good! I want to go there too."

Karl and Oleg have a lively chat about all the world and his brother. After almost three hours, the conductors actually turn up. A perfect host, Oleg pays Karl's supplement for the sleeping place up to Černivci in Ukrainian currency. Karl still doesn't have a hryvnia in his pocket. "You can pay me back tomorrow," remarks the young lecturer. Naturally, Karl is delighted with this friendly and eloquent travelling companion. The rest of the one-and-a-half hour journey to Lviv flies by. There they make up their beds in their coach to Černivci which was named Czernowitz in the Austrian time. Arrival time at their destination is at the crack of dawn, at four twenty exactly. So it's time to go horizontal. 

But first Oleg wants to clarify one thing. He doesn't think it's a good idea for Karl to spend a few hours in the waiting room at half past four in the morning before taking a tour of the sights in the capital of Bukovina and boarding the train to Odessa on the Black Sea in the afternoon. He should accompany him home. They could rest there for a few hours. Afterwards, he could show him his home town. Karl has already got to know the almost unconditional Eastern European hospitality on his trip around the Baltic Sea and has also learnt to appreciate his new friend during the discussions with Oleg on the hour-long journey. So he has no hesitation in accepting with thanks. He lies down to one side. For a while longer he hears the rattling of the wheels and the whispering in the other bunks. Then he falls asleep.

Still rather sleepy, Oleg and Karl get off their bunks at a quarter past four. "Man, I feel like I've only just fallen asleep," moans Karl. "You're lucky you don't have to stay in the station concourse until dawn before you can start your sightseeing tour," says Oleg. He is right. The night train arrives in Černivci right on time at 4.20 am. They quickly pass through an empty domed room, the main hall of the railway station located down in the valley of the Pruth River. They stow their luggage in a taxi in front of the white, classicist building. And off they go over the cobblestones of Gagarin Street, which first runs alongside the railway and then curves to the right up the hill to the city centre. Only the trolleybus comes towards them on the incline. To the left and right are two to four-storey buildings that could all date back to pre-communist times. 

At the top of the hill, Gagarin Street merges into Golovna Street, which stretches along the entire ridge to the south of the city. A beautiful church appears on the right, then a second one. "That's my church," Oleg points his finger out of the taxi. "The Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Cross. It's almost 200 years old," he remarks proudly. Of course, the Ukrainians of Polish descent naturally seek out the church loyal to the Pope. "We're celebrating the big parish festival this weekend. We're sleeping in first. But I'm going there with you this afternoon."

The taxi rattles on over the rain-soaked pavement. After a few hundred metres, they drive alongside the central square with the town hall built on the hilltop in Austro-Hungarian times. Karl, who is still tired, briefly notices the town hall tower and nods off for a moment until Oleg draws his attention to the next church on the left, the pink-coloured Romanian Orthodox cathedral, further along Golovna, the main street. "And behind it - you can't see it now - you'll see the Armenian church," says his guide. In this way, Karl "experiences" the multiculturalism of the Bukovina capital at dawn in a double sense, the political and the religious one. 

The silent chauffeur speeds through a green trellis of street trees on the pavements, past old buildings and over cobblestones. With the Central Park behind them on the right, they finally reach the ring road to the south, Nesaležnosti Prospekt, Independence Avenue. Here, five-storey apartment blocks from the 1960s stand to the left and right. As part of his economic reforms, the then Soviet head of government Nikita Khrushchev had also pushed ahead with housing construction - ultra-modern buildings by the standards of the time. At last, there was not only investment in the development of heavy industry and the military, but also in a better life for the population. Oleg's family also moved in here.

The blocks stand with their narrow sides at right angles to the broad, tree-lined promenade. Karl follows Oleg to one of the entrances. On the ground floor, he inserts his key into one of the flat doors. As they step into the corridor, a young woman in a short T-shirt comes towards them, barefoot and wearing briefs. She was expecting her brother, rubs her sleepy eyes and looks puzzled when she realises that Oleg is not alone. The brother introduces the German guest to his younger sister, explains that they are both still dead tired and quickly prepares a morning camp for Karl in the living room. The many pillows with crocheted covers are put to one side and the bed linen is adjusted. Then, for the second time that night, they wish each other a good night's sleep.

As Karl peels himself out of his bedding at half past nine, he hears noises from the kitchen. Oleg has already been shopping and is preparing breakfast. His sister Marija has already left for work in an office. She is the only one of the family who lives permanently in their home town of Černivci. Her mother works as a nurse in Rome. "In Italy?" Karl asks in surprise. "Yes, that's right. And my father works as an engineer in a steelworks in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. As you know, I myself work as a lecturer in Warsaw. So the family is spread out in all four directions," explains Oleg with a slightly pained smile.

The narrow kitchen room still has room for a small table where the two of them sit down. There are the typical elements of a Ukrainian breakfast: white cream cheese, fresh cucumber and tomatoes, along with grey bread and, of course, some sausage.

Invigorated by this snack, the two set off. At the Sberbank branch on the corner of Golovna and Nesalezhnostiti Prospekt, the ATM of Russia's largest bank actually dispenses the national currency, the hryvnia, just as Oleg had promised Karl, the incredulous EC card holder. Equipped for all eventualities, they make their way through Nikita's 1960s blocks of flats towards the city centre. They choose the route via Fedkovyča, which runs parallel to Golovna and has been one of the favourite residential streets for generations - first in Czernowitz and finally in Černivci. The various rulers of Bukovina have left their mark here.

The Romanians, who occupied Bukovina in 1918 and were awarded it as winners of the First World War in the Treaty of Saint-Germain, built some magnificent residential buildings here. The green house at no. 54 is an impressive example of the Romanian style. Its centre section with balconies adorned with balustrades is flanked by two bay towers with pointed, red-roofed canopies. No wonder that Red Army officers resided here after the occupation by Soviet troops. Other villa façades (for example at number 24) are even adorned with reliefs of coats of arms. "Are these the signs of Austrian or Hungarian aristocratic families?" asks Karl. Oleg is stumped. "Quite possibly."

The "Red Army Street" (Červonoarmiijs'ka), which rises towards the centre of the city, is also adorned with beautiful façades from the imperial and royal, or Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy. The apteka, or pharmacy, at No. 28 is a splendid example of this. Red Army Street crosses the city's largest square, Soborna Plošča. It used to be called Austria Square. At the time, a bust of Empress Elisabeth stood in the neighbouring park. Instead of "Sissi", a Soviet soldier still dominates the scene. The sculpture stands in front of a polished brown, tall obelisk with a waving coat, a rifle in his right hand and holding a standard flag with his left, celebrating victory in the Second World War. Meanwhile, the traces of the Red Army are beginning to fade. After the dramatic events of February 2014 in the capital Kiev, Červonoarmiijs'ka is renamed "Street of Heroes of the Maidan".

View from the Central square to Herrengasse

But Oleg and Karl don't know anything about this yet. They finally arrive at the Central square with the town hall. On this rainy day, the blue paintwork of the building, which was erected in 1843, is only faintly visible against the grey sky. But with its three-tiered tower in the centre above the portal, the city government building dominates the elongated square from the front. A pedestrian zone branches off in its south-east corner, which Oleg proudly points out. "This is the Herrengasse. Even in the time of Emperor Franz Joseph, it was the place to go shopping and for a walk. Strolling, is that what you call it?" he asks. "Absolutely," says Karl. "In such a splendid urban setting, you could even call it sauntering." The large stately house with tower on the corner of Ringplatz, as the central square was called under Austrian rule, is still adorned with an elegant façade today. One can vividly imagine that before the First World War, the German-Jewish bourgeoisie and the many literary figures of the multilingual Bukovina metropolis came and went in the café there. 

Today it houses a bank, as does the elegant "Belle Vue" hotel-restaurant building opposite, with its characteristic, elongated balcony spanning the entire first floor. The Russian Sberbank now resides below on the ground floor. Despite all the Cyrillic characters all around, Karl feels transported to a bygone "Austrian" era. The architecture still reflects the aura of the fin de siècle. 

Herrengasse no longer bears its German name. Today it is named after the Ukrainian national poet Olga Kobylyanska, just like the municipal theatre, which was inaugurated in 1905 as the Schiller Theatre. After a five-minute walk, Oleg and Karl arrive at the theatre. The theatre forecourt is adorned by a park with benches and flowerbeds. Directly in front of the portal, she sits on a plinth, the champion of Ukrainian nationalism. A brother in spirit, the freedom-loving Friedrich Schiller, sat there at the inauguration of the temple of art. "Hey Oleg, I have to take a photo of this," shouts Karl. And so the blond Oleg poses together with Olga, who has become a larger-than-life sculpture, standing on the steps, his hand casually resting on the plinth of the monument to the woman who died in 1942 under German occupation at the age of 78 and became a kind of national saint.

A banderole is emblazoned above the entrance. It reads SALOMEA. Apparently, despite a chequered history under Austrian, Romanian, German, Soviet and Ukrainian management, the programme has not changed completely. Richard Srauss completed his opera Salome in the same year that today's Kobylyanska Theatre was finished. In its first heyday, theatre companies from Vienna, Berlin, Vilnius and Moscow performed here to packed houses.

A mighty portal arch, over which the stage house rises like a dome, dominates the centre section with the entrance. The arch rests on a pair of classical columns on either side. They reinforce the solemn impression on the city traveller who approaches the Temple of the Muses via the flower-lined forecourt. 

Oleg proudly guides Karl around the magnificent building designed by the Viennese architects Fellner & Helmer. The pan-European claim that the builders wanted to assert in the multinational Czernowitz of the fin de siècle is emphasised by the busts of the great poets, which are placed in the upper part of the side façades in front of circular windows surrounded by stucco. The British Shakespeare and the French Molière are added to the places of honour above the large windows of the front façade. Around the corner in Schillerstraße - as it is actually still called - the Russian Pushkin is the first to be seen, followed immediately by Schiller, banned from the forecourt, with his flowing curls. "Great, Europe's 'chief dramatists' are having a rendezvous here," says Karl. "Wait and see, that's not all," Oleg asks for patience.

The Russian-German couple walk over to the other side of the theatre. With a grin, Oleg points up between the foliage of the trees to the side façade: "Look, there's Mr Goethe from Frankfurt." Karl almost misses him, as the Cyrillic plaque under the bust only contains four letters. Indeed, the German prince of poets is looking down at him with dignity. "Gete" is written there in Cyrillic characters. When transcribing, the Russians and Ukrainians leave it at the mere transposition of their phonetics. "To German eyes and ears, this transcription and this pronunciation seem a little incorrect," criticises Karl grinning ironically.

After all, even Černivci still honours old Goethe as a street name giver. So they take Gete Street, which runs behind the theatre, to walk over to Vulitzya Universitetska. This centre of science has been housed in the former bishop's palace of the Orthodox Metropolitan of Bukovina and Dalmatia since the Soviet era. The magnificent building of the National Jurij Fedkovyč University was added to the World Heritage List in 2011. The students - according to Oleg, who dedicated himself to Polish literature there - consider it an honour to be able to pursue their studies "in these sacred halls". The huge brick building, constructed between 1864 and 1882 by Czech architect Josef Hlavka, who also built the Vienna Court Opera, is characterised by a mix of Romanesque, Gothic and Byzantine elements - another example of the fusion of different cultural influences in the capital of Bukovina. 

On this Saturday, the school remains closed, so the two of them walk around the extensive, U-shaped building complex and up Josef-Hlavka Street to the park on Habsburg Hill. From there, it's a steep descent through the forest into the Pruth Valley, where the trains run. A new September shower descends. They hurry into the station concourse and shake the moisture out of their clothes like young dogs.

It was Oleg who made a point of getting Karl's ticket to the Black Sea in advance. "Then we can go to the community festival afterwards in peace and quiet, and you can save yourself the stress of buying tickets just before departure," he had advised at breakfast. No sooner said than done. And indeed, buying tickets is not that straightforward. As a foreigner, Karl has to go to a special counter. His passport number is meticulously noted down there. Payment can only be made in cash. It's a good thing that he has already withdrawn the hryvnia from the Sberbank machine in the morning and that he has Oleg with him as a translator. Because the railway official wants to know all sorts of things. Even his father's first name. "Karl as well? I see. Karl Karlovich then," he notes. "Like the Russians, we Ukrainians honour our fathers by mentioning their names together with ours," explains Oleg Fyedorovič. 

On the station forecourt, they quickly grab a snack at a kiosk. Then Oleg's heart's desire finally comes true. They take a taxi to the Church of the Holy Cross. The Roman Catholic Christians are celebrating their parish festival there this weekend. And they are doing so in an ecumenical spirit. Everyone is invited: the Orthodox, the Uniates (Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church) and the Protestants. Karl, who has taken a seat on the bench next to Oleg in the densely packed nave, is struck by the entry of the priests, especially the pope of the Uniate Church, which is linked to Rome but continues to practise the Byzantine rite. Like the other reverends, he wears a colourful robe. He stands out with his golden shepherd's crook and even more splendid headgear, a mixture of a turban, crown and bonnet. This hat widens slightly above the golden interwoven headband and ends in a dome shape at the top. The chubby-cheeked pope looks like one of the Three Wise Men from the East, who haunt Karl's childhood memories. 

The festive character of the mass is further emphasised by the flags of many church organisations, which are planted on the sides of the nave. The Kolping flag is also present. Founded by the German priest Adolph Kolping in the mid-19th century, the journeymen's association is still active today as an international social organisation in 60 countries, apparently also in the now Ukrainian Bukovina, where it has of course been rooted since Austrian times.

During the ceremony, which is held in Ukrainian, an announcement is also made in Polish. 70 per cent of the faithful of the Holy Cross parish are of Polish descent or have even retained their Polish nationality. Oleg himself is an example of this. His mother has Polish ancestors. 

To Karl's surprise, one of the many priests who help organise the festive service even prays his blessing in German. You can tell from his accent that this is not his mother tongue. But the words are correct and familiar to the random German worshipper from his distant childhood. Greetings, prayers and songs alternate. Before the host pastor begins his sermon, Karl nudges his neighbour in the pew and points out the time on his wristwatch. "You, I have to go. Just stay here. I know the way now. Thank you again for everything. And I hope to see you soon!" 

In the middle of the festive mass, it's only enough for a fleeting hug. Then Karl quietly sneaks out through the mass of worshippers and steps outside the church. His gaze falls on the other side of the square. The old Jewish quarter, where the German occupiers crammed tens of thousands of Jews into a ghetto during the Second World War, began not far away. Most of them were later deported to Transnistria and murdered there.

Karl hurries to the railway station and takes the afternoon train to Odessa. The "see you soon" that he had whispered to his cicerone from Černivci is still waiting to be honoured. They occasionally exchanged emails. They had a political discussion on the occasion of the Orange Revolution. Oleg did not share the optimistic assessment of those with a Western orientation that everything would be fine with an unconditional turn to the West. He knew only too well from his father, who earned his money in heavy industry in the Donetsk Basin, that many people in eastern Ukraine had a very different view of things. "Basically, Ukraine is a country divided into East and West," he wrote with regard to the Russophiles in the East years before the dramatic escalation of the political situation in the Maidan Revolution and later the Russian invasion.

Two years after the Maidan Revolution, Karl received some good news. The former Ukrainian lecturer at the University of Warsaw is now a Polish lecturer at Fedkovyč University. The cicerone from Černivci has put down deep roots in his home town.

Twenty Hours to Odessa

   Pling! Kyivstar switches on and logs off UMC. "You're connected to the UMS network everywhere, even in the depths of Ukraine," says Karl with a satisfied look at his mobile phone. He sits comfortably at a table in his window seat in the sleeper coupé and looks back on his few hours in the capital of Bukovina. Like the not-so-distant Lviv, which his Ukrainian friend Oleg stubbornly called "Löwenberg" (Lion's Mountain  / Lemberg as offical German name), the Austrians had turned the city on the Pruth into a prestigious outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the turn of the century before last. While the fields of rural Ukraine fly by outside the sleeping car window, the traveller still revels in urban images before his inner eye.

What a city! What a history! Part of five states and territories within just a few decades: Austrian-Hungarian k.u.k.monarchy (kaiserlich and königliches Reich / imperial and royal empire) until the fall of that empire in 1918,  Romania after the First World War, German occupation during the Second World War, annexation by the Soviet Union after the fall of the "Thousand-Year Reich" and finally the independent Ukraine after the end of communism. Five main nationalities lived together peacefully until the Holocaust. Each of them had a "national house" in Czernowitz with a distinct social life: the autochthonous Ruthenians (Ukrainians) and the Romanians, the Germans, the Jews and the Poles. 

Paradoxically, literary production in German reached its peak during the Romanian-dominated period. The Romanian German scholar Andrei Corbea-Hoisie believes this was no coincidence. The German Jews lost their power in the economy, trade and administration at that time. They increasingly realised their creative potential in art and literature in particular. Paul Antschel, who called himself Paul Celan as an author, and the poet Rose Ausländer are two of the most renowned protagonists who began writing at that time.

Rose Ausländer wrote: "The Jordan flowed into the Pruth at that time." Around a third of the 130,000 inhabitants before the start of the Second World War are said to have been Jews. If they did not emigrate in time, like Rose Ausländer and Paul Celan, they fell victim to the genocide perpetrated by the Germans. 

A very multicultural period is in danger of being forgotten. Even in Israel. In Ester Amrani's 2015 German-Israeli film "Anderswo" (Elsewhere), the dying grandmother of the heroine Noa, who is torn between Berlin and Tel Aviv, hallucinates about Czernowitz. The granddaughter had found yellowed family photos in an old jewellery box. Laughing people on the front, the inscription "Czernowitz 1938" on the back. One of the bystanders at her deathbed says: "Oh, that's Grandma's village in Poland, where she lived as a child." Vibrant Černivci, with newspapers in six languages (German, Ukrainian, Romanian, Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew) was anything but a village. It was never Polish. Before the long Austrian era, the town and the whole of Bukovina belonged to the Principality of Moldavia.

Bukovina, which means "beech country" in English, was named after the Ukrainian and Russian word "Buk" for beech. But Karl's railway line to the Black Sea does not run through the beech country. His train takes a wide turn to the north in order to reach the main line from Lviv to Odessa. According to the timetable, the train takes over eight hours just to reach Ternopol, where the line finally turns south-east. Rural Ukraine, once the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, has captured Karl. In the small town with the pretty name of Verenčanka, where the train arrives after an hour and a half journey and two preceding stops, geese waddle around the houses near the station on the left. To the right, the undulating Ukrainian steppe is desolate as the train starts to move again tantalisingly slowly. 

The scenery changes a little. On the last kilometres before Čertkov, where Karl's silent but not unfriendly middle-aged female fellow traveller gets off in the early evening, there is well-tended farmland as far as the horizon, not a shrub on the field margins, a few trees at the edge of the sky, then pastures again, where a few horses are grazing. It was like this in the days of Genghis Khan's grandson Batu Khan, whose cavalry army, the Golden Horde, took advantage of this vast grassy landscape on its westward march.

But Karl wants to go in the opposite direction. An hour before midnight, the time has finally come. In Ternopol, his train deviates from its northern course and turns south-east towards Čornoje More, as the Black Sea is called in the local language. But first the darkness of night envelops him.

On the way to the washroom, he discovers a beautiful and appealing detail of the Ukrainian state railway: the ceilings of the coupé corridors are decorated with artificial flowers. The foliage is like a harvest festival, the plastic blossoms glow in an everlasting blaze of colour. Golden curtains are draped underneath. They are elegantly gathered at the sides so that travellers can enjoy the view of the landscape. Only now, in the evening light, do the golden reflections of the fabric come into their own. A touch of the splendour of Orthodox churches thus accompanies the passenger even on a night-time overland journey.

As Karl's train approaches the Black Sea the next morning, the sun finally makes an appearance, having remained hidden behind rain clouds and showers in Černivci. From Rosdilna, the railway junction where the trains cross over into Moldova, the morning light is dazzling. "Is this a promise of beautiful late summer days at Čornoje More," Karl asks himself as his train pulls into Odessa-Glowna, the main railway station of the Black Sea city, shortly before 10 a.m. after an almost twenty-hour journey. 

Karl mentally praises the Ukrainian state railway in two ways. On the one hand, for the amusing yet serious endeavours to embellish the atmosphere of his journey, which he appreciates despite the kitsch alarms. On the other hand, he only really realises early in the morning that he has been resting in his coupé as safely as in Abraham's bosom. The soldier from the last compartment of the carriage passes in front of his open compartment door, bringing the emptied glasses of his morning tea to the conductor in the first compartment. He has a pistol and baton strapped around his waist. So the young man was on duty the whole time and not on a weekend trip to the seaside, as Karl had assumed from his otherwise civilian appearance when boarding the train in Černivci. A long journey, but safe!

The Beauty by the Sea and the Beauties

   As soon as the traveller enters the station forecourt, his gaze is drawn to the Pantaleimon Cathedral opposite. The façade of the portal is not free-standing, but is integrated into the row of commercial buildings, whose eaves height is slightly lower than the church portal. At first glance, the church building would not be recognised as such were it not for the towers with crosses at their tops behind the portal, an imposing collection of onion and spire towers - unmissable, but nevertheless integrated into the urban, commercial ambience, as if the builder wanted to acknowledge that Odessa is above all a city of trade and seafaring.

Pantaleimon Cathedral

Under Catherine the Great, a new, hugely international trading centre was established here on the south-western edge of her empire, which had just been expanded as a result of the Russo-Turkish War. Shipowners, merchants and craftsmen not only from Russia, but also from Greece, Italy, Armenia, Germany and elsewhere settled here, not least many Jews. Catherine's first governor in the city, which was founded in 1794, was her victorious general José de Ribas, a Spanish nobleman born in Naples. In 1803, Catherine's grandson Alexander I entrusted the French aristocrat Armand du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu, with this office. He contributed so much to the city's development that it is not surprising that one of the main arteries leading from the railway station to the harbour is named after him. This is where Karl is staying, as he has a reservation at the Gotel Čornoje More (Black Sea Hotel) on Rišelyevska Street. It's only a six-minute walk - the first opportunity for Karl to thank Duke Richelieu. He had white acacia trees planted along the sides of Odessa's streets. Their dense foliage provides the newcomer with pleasant shade in the late summer sun. 

After settling into the simple but comfortable high-rise box and catching his breath, Karl sets off on his Sunday stroll to explore the beauty by the sea. But first he takes five minutes to return to the station square. The large white building with six tall columns at the front catches his eye. From Odessa, formerly the southern gateway to the sea for the Soviet empire and even earlier for the Russian empire, trains depart for the major cities in all directions: to Lviv in the west, Kiev in the north, Kharkiv in the north-east, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk in the east and - it is still the time before the Russian annexation - to Yalta in Crimea. A blue and yellow flag, the standard of Ukraine, flies above the large dome of the Soviet-classicist building.

As Karl turns eastwards to get to the Musical Comedy, he leaves the Kulikov Field to his right, next to the railway station, unnoticed. Little did he realise that the worst events would take place here in the wake of the Maidan Revolution. The trade union centre stands in the middle of the park, nothing like the simple functional buildings of the German trade unions. It is a palace that underlines the importance of this mass organisation in the Soviet state. In spring 2014, pro-Russian opponents of the pro-Western Maidan revolution set up a tent camp in front of the trade union building. In the cosmopolitan port city of Odessa, people mainly look to the West with sympathy. But the population is predominantly Russophone. Among these Russian speakers, supporters of leaving Ukraine and joining Russia have formed. On 2 May, pro-Ukrainian activists organised a "March of Unity" in response. 

Both sides engaged in street battles in the city. The pro-Ukrainian forces, including supporters of the "Right Bloc", finally march to the tent camp to disperse it. The pro-Russian forces retreat into the trade union centre. Suddenly, incendiary devices start flying inside and outside. The building burns to the ground. At least 42 people die.

Karl is still unaware of this evil spirit of a later time. On the other hand, at the end of Panteleimoniwska Street on the forecourt of the Musical Comedy, he encounters a good spirit of Slavic mythology, the first truly beautiful person in this beautiful city. Her name is Russaločka and she is a ray of hope on the badly run-down square in front of the modern concrete building of the comedy theatre. The Slavic fairytale character Russalke is a water spirit. The Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák dedicated his wonderful opera "Rusalka" to her. The Czech forest fairy floats over ponds, pools and streams. Her sister in Odessa, on the other hand, naturally leads a life as a sea nymph. She is "The one who rides the dolphin". The naked beauty of the iron sculpture sits gracefully at the side of the dolphin's neck with her knees drawn up and holds up a lyra. Unfortunately, she is not singing. If you want to hear her, you have to listen to her sisters on stage.

Alexander Pushkin, who is honoured many times over in Odessa, also wrote a drama about the mermaid. Karl seeks him out next. In Pushkin-Vulitsa /Pushkin Street), which runs parallel to Richelieu Street to the sea, the Russian national poet stands on a low pedestal almost at ground level in front of his museum, a life-size bronze figure wearing a top hat and a tight-fitting, elegant frock coat. Fresh flowers lie at his feet as a sign of unbroken veneration.

Just a few hundred metres further on, under the lush green of the shady white acacia trees, Karl discovers the next beauty. She is wearing a tight-fitting, richly embroidered bustier with a wide V-shaped necklace at the neckline, a white veil and a floor-length, multi-layered tulle skirt. Karl has arrived at the end of Puschkinska at the town hall square with a view of the sea. The young man in the black suit who leads the blissfully smiling beauty up the few steps to the pompous town hall, gallantly holding her left hand at chest height, covered with an upper-arm-length white silk glove, is obviously the groom. In her right hand, the bride carries a bouquet of pink roses. With their wedding party in their wake, the future spouses walk between two huge candelabras and then tall columns and enter the magnificent white building. Odessa's "White House" with its ten white columns at the portal served as a stock exchange for the trading centre on the Black Sea until 1892, and now contracts for life as a couple are concluded here, among other things.

On this sunny Sunday, there is also a cheerful holiday atmosphere on Deribasivska, which Karl crosses from the town hall to the city garden. Here, the strollers on the wide pavement between the rows of trees have the exclusive right of way. Cars are banned from this boulevard. In the middle of the street, a balloon seller offers her wares for sale. Between the pedestrians, children in small pedal cars are whizzing around.

In the centre of the city garden, artists have set up their easels under the trees around the small fountain pond. Their works are for sale to the strollers. Locals and tourists sit on the stone edge of the pond. A pretty blonde types a message into her smart phone. Has her appointment been delayed? Bored, she looks at her red-painted fingernails.

Potemkin Staircase

But now Karl is finally heading for the sea and the city's tourist attraction, the Potemkin Stairs. When visitors to Odessa still mostly arrived by boat, it was the first impression they got from the landing stage. It leads up to the city with its street chessboard. At the end of the staircase, which tapers upwards to make it appear even longer, stands the monument to Duke Richelieu on the coastal boulevard, who had such an impact on Odessa under his governorship. However, the staircase is named after Grigori Potemkin, the tsarina's former chamberlain, who rose to become a field marshal and the most important advisor to Catherine the Great. He was also her lover. However, the greatest achievement of this organisational talent was the development of the southern provinces and the victory in the war against Turkey. 

The Potemkin Staircase became world-famous thanks to a sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's revolutionary film "Battleship Potemkin". A pram rolls down the stairs while soldiers massacre the workers' uprising of 1905 on the harbour steps.

On this peaceful September Sunday, it is not the armoured cruiser that is moored in the harbour, but a Greek merchant ship whose crew has other things on its mind than mutiny and insurrection, as Karl would later discover. As he approaches St Catherine's Square from the land side, he initially sees the French duke from behind. The urban planner on the high pedestal is wearing a toga, as if he were a Roman senator. He makes a gesture with his right hand as if inviting the arrivals from the sea into the city.

The skyscraper of the Hotel Odessa rises like a steep tooth behind the ferry station, its ugliness forcing itself into the field of vision of the city traveller descending the 191 steps of the Potemkin staircase. The reflections of the "Golden Child" sculpture and the harbour steps in front of it in the glass front of the Morskiy Vaksal, the modern sea station, are beautiful. Behind the hotel, on the harbour pier jutting out into the sea, stands the small Nikolai Church, a building erected in 1994 and dedicated to the protection of seafarers, fishermen and all passengers.

Black Sea and seafarers' church

A striking blonde, who has pulled up in front of the Greek freighter in her SUV, is concerned about the well-being of the sailors in a completely different way. The sexily styled "lady" in a miniskirt and with bright red lips hands out flyers with the address of her establishment. The first four "hired men" get into her off-road vehicle. And the beautiful Yelena – not to be confused with the Greek Helen of Troy – speeds off with her customers.

The lust-fuelled car has barely left when three flower-bedecked limousines pull up. More beauties emerge from them, but this time another wedding party. It is not miniskirts but long gowns that now attract attention, the bride quite modest, the bridesmaids all the more effective in their tight-fitting, slit and semi-sheer dresses. They pose together against the backdrop of the sea panorama for the family album.

On the way back to the city, Karl stops off at Kumanets. He had already noticed this pub not far from St Catherine's Square on the way there in Havana Street, diagonally opposite the City garden. In the middle of the megacity of Odessa, Kumanets tries to conjure up a village atmosphere. The serving girls wear colourful skirts, embroidered white blouses and a wreath of braided field flowers over their hair. Multicoloured ribbons hang from the back. The boys looking after the guests are dressed in white trousers and short hip-length shirt coats, with a red-brown and black ribbon tied around their waists and an embroidered insert in the same colours on their chests. They are all pretty, friendly and cheerful, putting the guests in a good mood even before the meal begins. In the late afternoon, Karl takes a seat outside on a wicker chair under one of the parasols. He discreetly photographs one of the colourful "village beauties" from behind as she takes the order at the next table. It's typical Ukrainian fare. Karl chooses a light beetroot salad to start, a stuffed roulade for the main course and the obligatory blini for dessert, accompanied by a good beer. He is highly satisfied and vows to return the next day. 

On his "way home" back to the hotel, the slightly inebriated visitor to the village pub notices an elegant gentleman at the side of the road. He doesn't move from the spot. As he approaches, he recognises him. The good man is still standing in front of his museum. "Good evening, Mr Pushkin," the German guest greets the great Russian poet. The great-grandson of the "Moor of the Tsar", Abraham Petrovich Hannibal, lived in Odessa for some time in his twenties. Born in 1799, the poet died in St Petersburg in 1837 at the age of 37 as a result of a duel for the honour of a beauty, his wife Natalya.

Alexander Pushkin

Blue Monday by the Black Sea

   Sunday has gone and with it the glorious weather. For Karl, this is an opportunity to see the Ukrainians in their everyday lives and in "working weather". He also has a bit of "work" to do this Monday. Organising the passage to Bucharest is not so easy. As feared, it is not possible to book a ticket from Odessa to the Romanian capital, but only to Kishinev, the capital of Moldova. To make matters worse, the lady in the service centre at the main station claims that his train, which is listed on the Internet, is not running, even though he has seen it posted in the hall with the train number and correct time. Behind it, however, were five large Cyrillic letters, the meaning of which was not clear to him. Abbreviation or word? His phrasebook didn't give him enough information to clearly interpret the signs.