View From On High

Lviv, May 30, 2015 8:45 AM

Yesterday I woke up to a beautiful, cloudless blue sky and decided to rush up to the castle to get some pictures of the city while the sun  was in the best position for doing this.

At 6 AM, the town square was empty except for the street sweepers.

At the base of the castle hill, I began the long climb up the stairs. There must be a hundred or several hundred. I did not count them. Mercifully, they wound around the hill. Were their full extent visible it might be crushing to the spirit.

It is peaceful on this beautiful morning with no one around and quiet except for the cheerful chirping of birds.

I was thinking how nice it would be to arrive at the summit with the view all to myself when out of the brush a very angry dog rushed at me and I suddenly regretted being alone. Snapping and growling he looked quite wild although he did have a collar.

Then two more mad dogs appeared.  Uh oh.  But, as it turned out this was a good thing as the three dogs decided they were madder at each other than with me and so as they fought with each other I scurried on up the hill.



At the top of the hill, I was pleased to see I was not alone.  A young woman was there too, although she soon left.

My new camera has a big zoom lens and I debated bringing it with me (the lens) as I like to travel light. But, I decided to bring it as I thought how wonderful it would be to capture the old town center from this very vantage point.  I got some great shots with my new camera, but I decided to take some with my smartphone as well to compare the two when I got back to the hotel.

Back at the hotel I found the smartphone pictures to be far superior.  In fact infinitely superior as I had not had the memory card in the camera. Oh well, now I will have to return to Lviv as tomorrow I head out to Kyiv and won't have time to come back up the hill this trip.  But as you can see the smartphone pictures are not at all that bad.

Following my trip to the castle I met up with the American teacher who is leaving in a couple of days.  A good thing as from him I received invaluable information not only about teaching at the university, but also about Ukraine, its culture .. and everything else.

Described as a workaholic by the  dean teaching all day every day.  He appears to me to  be another force of nature, with incredible energy working on a whole bunch of ambitious projects from designing a marina in New York City (the completion of which is his reason for leaving here to return to the US), to the design of a group of wooden toys which he plans to give to an orphanage as part of another project he's created to train the children here in the skills necessary to make these toys into a productive money making venture for them.

In his 30's, he is a physicist by training, (Stevens, MIT and Harvard)  and is part of a 10 or so person group which includes 2 Nobel laureates developing a database system designed to revolutionize the field of medicine. I am told it is superior to a one which Google just acquired for over $100 million.

He has very useful advice for me: from the best restaurant in Lviv to how and where to obtain an apartment here,  and, unbidden, he says he knows a woman who is the perfect match for me who may be coming with the peace corps to teach here this fall. Oh, my!

The American tells me his experiences in teaching here, the special challenges he has faced.  It is clear that he has cleared the way for me as demonstrated by the practically unquestioning acceptance of me, an experience so different from his own.

Among his many talents, he is an experienced teacher having taught in Poland prior to coming here.

Do you think I find all this intimidating?  You bet your life I do!

A difficult act to follow?  No, more accurately, impossible. Yet everyone including he is so eager for me to take this on, it  makes it almost impossible to back out now, plus the chairman's quick study of me suggesting I may only want to teach 2 or 3 days a week (true) may indicate the expectations for me may not be anything like those for this force of nature.

We had to cut short our conversation at the restaurant as he had to go for a meeting at an orphanage so we went to his apartment, collected his dog and set off with a driver and a woman who is a real estate manager for interpreter.

At the orphanage, the American was very upset at the way they were treating another dog which he had left with them. He had left it thinking the dog and the children would have a fine time interacting with each other.

Instead the dog was chained up, her water bowl was dirty and receiving no satisfactory response (indeed the children were blamed) from the orphanage personnel in a meeting we had with 6 participants attending, the American literally packed up his toys (which he had set out on the floor) to go home.

And all of us (driver, real estate manager, the American and myself) now with 3 dogs the two additional being the mistreated dog and one of her 8 children conceived (the rest having found homes) (another part of the mistreatment allowing this to happen to this only 7-month-old dog) drove back to the town square.

Back at the square, I rushed off to meet with a real estate agent and driver/interpreter both provided by a friend of the guy I had met days before at breakfast in the hotel to see some apartments for my possible stay here in the fall.

Following that I attended the evening symphony. Wonderful Brahms music which, with my mind buzzing, received far less than the attention it deserved, while still serving as a wonderful time and place to sort through my thoughts on all that was happening here in Lviv.