Re: [Cz-L] After we go

Dear Ms. Kraft and members of the list.

Czernowitz /Chernivtsi is NOW, NOT a paler image of what it was
during the Soviet period, neither in looks nor in culture.
Even though I did not visit the city during the Soviet period,
I did visit it in 2002 and 2003 and there is no comparison between
how it looked then and how it looks now. In 2008 extensive repairs,
renovation and restoration work was carried out on many streets
and buildings. This work did not always attempt to restore buildings
and streets to their 1939 look, but often actually improved on this look.
Cases in point are the former Herrengasse/Kobilianskoy, which is now
a pedestrian mall, the Austria Platz, /Soborna Ploshcha, formerly
the market, now a park, the Turkenbrunnen/Turetska, now well paved
and beautiful with a splashing fountain and Elisabethplatz/Teatralna
Ploshcha, no longer full of "Budkes" and horse manure.

The city IS DEVELOPING and attracts many tourists, both foreigners
and Ukrainians from other parts of the country.
The autumn Poetry Festival attracts people from the whole world.
There are new hotels, new and very good restaurants and coffee shops,
Certainly much better than in Bloomington IN in the USA.
The former Volksgarten is very well maintained, some of the synagogues
have been beautifully restored.
Certainly there is much more which could be restored or renovated.
Ukraine is a poor country and it will take time to restore the whole city.
Still, the desire to do so is there and
                WHERE THERE IS A WILL THERE IS A WAY

I would not say that "the city is in the cul-de-sac of a 3rd world country",
I would say instead, that: It is in the western Ukraine, with a tradition
and reputation of culture and education, closer both geographically and
in spirit to "Zentral Europa".

Mimi
  

On 10/16/12 6:16 AM, "Jacob Greenberg" <grs_software_at_bigpond.com> wrote:

> Good question.
>
> I was brought up by my grandmother who was, at that time, speaking German to
> my father and to my aunt. She was speaking German to me as well but, when I
> was 3.5 my father has forbidden her to speak to me in German (the times
> were tough) .
> My grandmother's Russian was very poor so, when I started school, I was very
> embarrassed to discover that my Russian pronunciation was absolutely wrong.
> In the 70s I already spoke very good Russian.
> My mother, Dr Ada Kraft, is Dr Emmanuel Flor's niece. She lived in
> Chernovits for a short time before the WWII and was taken to Transnistria
> from there but she was born in Bessarabia.
> I can still understand German and Romanian but I don't speak these
> languages any more. My mother tongue is Russian and I also speak Hebrew.
> My generation grew up with the stories of the older generation telling us
> that Chernovits under the Soviet regime was a pale shadow of itself
> comparing to the pre-war times.
> Now it's even paler than before. The city stopped developing, the locals
> moved away, and it is now in the cul-de-sac of a 3rd world country.
> Yet, as I've already mentioned in my previous post, the old magic is still
> there, and they are trying very hard to revive it. G-d help them.....
>
> Serah Kraft
>
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Received on 2012-10-16 10:11:53