In several of Kraków’s pre-WWII buildings, one can find inscriptions near the entrance asking those entering to “wipe your shoes” (“Uprasza się obuwie wycierać”). Maintaining a clean building would have been more difficult in those times as fewer streets were paved, making it muddier than today. There would have also […]
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Kraków was considered as the unofficial capital of the western part of Galicia and the second most important city in the region. As in other former Galician cities, today various traces of its time under the Austrian Empire can still be found in the urban landscape. In particular, Kraków has […]
I love looking at old photographs of Galician cities and towns, especially postcards with city views. A real treat among these are photomontages — postcard collages. I first came across montage postcards depicting Lviv and was particularly struck by the one with a woman who had fallen from her bicycle. […]
In the first couple months of the full-scale war (after being displaced from Lviv and living in Poland), searching for sunflowers in the architectural detail of Kraków became a way to soothe my soul, to find solidarity with Ukraine during those highly uncertain and volatile times. Each time I would […]
Servus! This article is about a Galician tradition that can be found on both sides of the current Polish-Ukrainian border. It is about the word “servus,” a salutation typically used as a greeting, which gained popularity during the times of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and which became common across its entire territory. While […]
While many old Jewish cemeteries still remain around Galicia, the same cannot be said of the Jewish burial grounds in Lviv (Lemberg / Lwów). Only found fragments of their ancient tombstones (matzevah) — which were used by the Nazis and Soviets as pavement and building material — remind us of […]
I started working on this article in February 2022, shortly before the war started and before I ended up in Kraków for several months. *** Every day I walk to work across Lviv’s Old Town, passing Rynok Square right in front of the city hall building, down Ruska Street, then […]
I recently discovered that one of my favorite Sich Riflemen (a Ukrainian unit within the Austro-Hungarian Army during WWI) songs, “Chuyesh, brate miy” AKA “Vydysh, brate miy” (Do you hear, my brother), was written in Kraków. It turns out that the song was based on a poem called “Zhuravli” (Cranes) written by […]
“Did they not know that the Ukrainian people sing their beautiful songs, composed over the centuries by national heroes, not only in joy but also in sorrow, misfortune, and grief, during work and at rest, in peaceful times and in times of war? Had they heard the Sich Riflemen song […]
By Danylo Centore “Oy u luzi chervona kalyna” (Ой у лузі червона калина) is one of the most well-known Ukrainian folk songs, and it has experienced renewed popularity due to the full-scale Russian invasion. The lyrics are over 100 years old, yet they can just as easily be applied to […]
Kraków has become my temporary wartime home. When Russia began it full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, I made the difficult decision to leave my home in Lviv and depart for Poland. I didn’t know how long I would be gone or where I would end up; but […]
