Back to the Future

Lviv, Ukraine,  May 14, 2017, 8:30 PM

Everyone is out walking today.

It's Sunday and so downtown Lviv is freed of vehicular traffic, making it the best time to walk around this beautiful city.



Leaving my hotel I walked to the medieval town center.

There was just a slight chill in the air so I sought a cafe where I could sit outside in the Sun.

I found the perfect spot to warm both body and soul.

Earlier I had stopped at the TI (Tourist Info) and got a list of the days' events of which there is, as always, a veritable feast from which to select.   (See a  partial list here).

One event looked particularly intriguing although from the brief description I could only guess what it might be about.

“Tomorrow will be better” multimedia exhibition22.08.2016 - 14.05.2017

Center for Urban History of East Central Europe

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Then I noticed its last day was this very day so I decided to bestir myself and head over there.

But along the way I took my time, perhaps too much time, capturing and being captivated by what I thought might make some good photos of people and sites.

 Indeed by the time I found the building housing the exhibit I found the entrance door was locked and it appeared I had dallied too long.

So, I decided to try pushing the buttons on the intercom panel next to the door omitting those with the Ukrainian word for "apartment" which I was glad I had learned.  But, to no avail, until  I  pushed the button next to the word for "cafe" (another useful Ukrainian word to know).

A woman answered and then came to the door, let me in and showed me the way to the Exhibit.

I was really glad that I had persisted as this was a wonderful display of pictures taken by a Polish photographer Tadeusz Rolke showing life and events in Lviv in the years 1989 to 1991 during the fall of the Soviet Union, the beginning of Independence for Ukraine.

It was a small exhibition, just 50 of his 100 pictures never published before

Other than the woman at the entrance there was just one other person (apparently her son) whom I saw peeking around a corner at me til. overcoming his shyness, he gave me a demonstration of his slinky toy.

In Ukrainian, I asked the boy his name and was delighted when he nonchalantly answered as if my Ukrainian was to be comprehended without any effort at all.

In Ukrainian and English, a sign at the entrance to the exhibition captured its essence as follows:

"We can sense some anxiety and insecurity of the time, and we can see a sad and happy Lviv of 1990
and the faces of the people and politicians who were not yet sure that a new country they had often thought about was going to rise soon".

I would have liked to have had more time, but in my quick tour, I read about the renaming of Lviv's main avenue from  Prospect Lenina ("Lenin Avenue") to Prospect Svobody ("Freedom Avenue"), and as described on the Web description of the exhibition  "the crossroads between the still omnipresent Soviet everyday reality with empty stores, crowds of the military in the street , low quality monotonous "cooperative" bought clothes, queues, lack of smiles, but with the hope for the better, and more fair future, because it was supposed to be "our own". (Vasyl Rasevych)".  

You can see a nice slide show of some of the pictures from the Web here.

One of the exhibits had pictures of 75 different people. with a clickable video for each of them

Just one of them was in English and  so I made a
video of that video.



The audio is a little hard to hear on my recording so I repeat what she is saying as follows ---

"At 1990 I was just 3 years old so don't remember much, sadly ....  but I'm pretty sure it was good ... it was nice and ahh, I mean we're back to the future now and so I'm quite happy. Thank you for the exhibition."

As they were about to close, I was only there for 15 or 20 minutes.

But in the short time, I was there, I experienced not the feeling of hard-to-imagine long ago and distant happenings.

But as if these events were very real and relevant to the here and now when freedom is threatened from autocrats on both sides of the iron curtain.