Saturday, January 28, 2006

Via Notes From Kiev, a New York Times Travel section piece about Uzhgorod - Onion Domes and Cellphones in Uzhgorod.

Uzhgorod's my favorite Ukrainian town. Lviv and Odesa are also my favorites, but they are in a different category. And there's also Crimea, of course.

The New York Times piece has one drawback: after reading it, I want to find myself in Uzhgorod right away. The headline's kind of silly, too: 'onion domes' are associated with Russia all too easily, which is misleading. And why 'cellphones'? Why not the honest 'long-legged beauties'?

The best part is this menu snippet: "more esoteric dishes like 'herring under fur coat'." I saw this translation of selyodka pod shuboy in a Mykolaiv restaurant in 1999 and it still makes me laugh: instead of a salad, I see this angry-looking fat fish, in this long and heavy mink coat...

3 comments:

  1. I am glad that you like our city. Maryna and I have a home there and her mother and brother are still in the city.

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  2. I love Uzhgorod. We used go there several times a year to play tennis when I was a kid, and then I was there on work-related trips in 1999 and 2000. Really, really miss it - and really want Mishah to see it - but spending 19 hours on a train from Kyiv is out of question now, unfortunately... Vsyoho naikraschoho vam i Maryni!

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  3. It is a beautiful city. I went there in 1996, with a group of American Greek Catholics who were returning to the land of their ancestors to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Union of Uzhhorod. I most enjoyed the prominade along the river, and yes, the people are so friendly. A couple of us went to a little village on the outskirts called Horyani (sp??), where we were taken from house to house and stuffed with good food at each place. We looked inside an old church with frescoes that must have dated back many centuries and which were unrestored and way off anyone's tour guide. One really felt the sense of discovery, as if there were still corners of the world where everything was still fresh.

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