Lwów, Lviv, Lvov and Lemberg

by Keith Meredith

appreciated too. In the coach there was a small compartment occupied by the attendant when he was not elsewhere in the car, as he was currently. Stepping inside he saw a samovar on the boil and a cardboard box full of used teabags but no teabags ready for use, no lemon, certainly no milk. He continued in to the next coach, and the next, and they emphasized the comparatively privileged position he was in. These coaches, of Ukrainian rather than Slovak railways, were all open plan. There were long plastic-covered benches clearly designed for lying on but with no bedding and no privacy, some occupied though it was only about two in the afternoon. There were not many passengers but those there were gave an impression that they'd been days on the train and were treating it like home when no visitors are expected. Russian was being spoken and the general atmosphere and ambience could have been taken straight out of the USSR he remembered from the 1960's and 1970's. After going through four coaches there was no sign of a restaurant or buffet car and he thought it wise to return to his own railway "home" and have a late "lunch" of whatever he had left. This turned out to be a small roll, a square of chocolate, an apple and half a bottle of water. He was then alone for a hour or two before he had a visit to his 'home' -a ticket examination. He asked whether there was a buffet on the train. There was not, though there were Ukrainian or Russian men with mugs and teabags who asked for, and were given, the vital other ingredient-hot water-from the samovar in his coach. By about four o'clock they reached the frontier with Slovakia. The Ukrainian customs officer, a young man, asked him in English if he had any alcohol or tobacco. He said he had not and this was accepted, and there was no bother with passport control either. After maybe an hour the Slovak border control commenced: a young woman asked to see his passport, looked at it and took it away with her; a man then asked to see his luggage, and looked fairly thoroughly through it before leaving his railway "home" After an hour and a half or so the young woman came back with the passport. During all this time the train was not exactly stationary but its moving up and down, and changing tracks sometimes, was all within a few hundred metre stretch of the line. The train was not usually at any kind of platform and there was no visible sign of any amenities save what may have existed in a large hut-like building used by the frontier personnel. He thought of clambering off the train to see if there was anywhere where a hot drink could be bought but it was too risky. At one stage in these hours of waiting he noticed that the Ukrainian railways sleeper cars with their Russian ~speaking occupants had been unhitched and in their place were Slovak rolling stock with ordinary seats and luggage racks above, similar to those he had travelled on during the Soviet invasion of 1968. This time, unlike then, there were no passengers at all in them. He returned to his own carriage. There were various bumps, bangs and shudders and it seemed that the opportunity was being taken to inspect the wheels and suspension, maybe not entirely a bad idea – maybe they'd also refill the water tank so he could use his wash basin. There was a vast piece of equipment outside and on both sides, reminding him of the gantries at Harland and Woolf's shipyard. It moved along the rails and such was its width that one of its wheels ran on the outer rail of one track on one side of the train he was on while the other ran on the outer rail of a track on the other side, with the whole equipage some forty feet in height. After an hour he found that the Slovak coaches had now been disconnected and removed, begging the question why they had been connected in the first place, and that there was now just his coach and the engine. Later on still there was no engine either, just his coach on its own. It also appeared that the wheels had been changed to standard gauge. It would presumably have been standard gauge right through to Lwów before the area had been transferred to the former U.S.S.R.: so, a further manifestation of depolonization.

  Finally, after some four and a half hours, it happened: the coach was hitched again to an engine and moved off through Slovakia. The attendant was still on board and he acceded to a request for hot water from the samovar for a proffered, battered, paper cup. It was getting dark but it was clear to see that the economic situation here was somewhat better: buildings looked smarter and there were some new factories and depots of firms from elsewhere in the European Union, whose territory the train had also entered. The train was faster again now, its acceleration quite impressive what with its engine only pulling one coach as opposed to the fifteen that were being pulled out of Lwów.

  Some hours later, after dark, he found that there was some water in the corridor washroom so was able to have a wash and he went to bed properly, changing in to pyjama bottom (the top had, as previously mentioned, been left on the train in the rush to get off at Lwów), making the bed, and managing three hours' sleep before being woken up by the attendant. The train was passing Dubnica nad Vahom - a town remembered from his past life and he knew that efforts must be concentrated on getting dressed and ready to get out at the larger town of Trenin three miles or so down the line. There was no platform where the train stopped. At some stage his coach had been hitched to other coaches again. He clambered down to track level and the attendant pointed forward and said "Trenin". He did manage to walk along the track a hundred yards, round the wheels of another train, up on to an actual platform and, within the hour, clamber into the bed of the hotel room he had booked (the reception staff accepted his apology for lateness-not as late as he'd arrived at the Lwów hotel especially with the lost hour got back-and had not cancelled his booking). But this is squarely in Slovakia, away from the train compartment that had linked with Lwów and so is part of another story.

  As the hours had passed on this train there had been no shortage of time to think over the past three days: the time-consuming attempt to go the few hundred miles from Gdańsk to Lwów across what had after all been part of the same nation state not so very long ago; the beauty of the fine buildings, streets and parks; the tramlines without trams on the Gorodotska and the trams on other routes; the unattractive pint-size, sardine packed buses; the drab run­down areas that also seemed a physical expression of social and economic problems ; the non-existent hotel room number allocated to him, his room inside the hotel once he could find and get in to it; the usually albeit not always friendly and helpful people, whether Polish or Ukrainian -speaking; above all the urbane, civilized big-town ambience, then there was the train he got on at Lvov station-a Ukrainian answer to the trans-Siberian Express... and, finally, before dropping off to sleep after passing in to Slovakia, the words of the Brit at the Lwów station who had taken up residence in Lwów/Lviv when asked how he found living there: "love it".

  Postscript: Wrocaw – the new Lwów

  He had just two full days in Slovakia. which had proved not an hour more time than he needed. before the final destination of the trip: Wrocaw . Whereas Lwów was near the Eastern extremity of the pre-war Polish state and shared its heritage with the Ukraine, Wrocaw was some four hundred miles from Lwów and the other side of the Western limits of that state. Like Lwów, Wrocaw had not had an exclusively Polish past but here the main country which shared the city’s history was not the Ukraine but Germany. In fact on the face of it, Lwów was firmly behind him, except that it wasn't. Of those Leopoiitans who had not remained in the city nor left continental Europe altogether, Wrocaw was a principal destination. The postwar settlement had given Wrocaw to the new Polish state. It was a city comparable with Lwów in size and importance and one where the expulsion of the German population meant the presence of vacant homes. His friends who were kindly putting him up for the final days of the trip showed him the Raclawice Panorama, the Fredo Monument and the Ossolineum Library, all parts of Poland's history and culture that had been moved to Wrocaw from Lwów when their future in the latter city had become uncertain. The people amongst whom he mingled were likewise, in large measure, predominantly people from Lwów and its region, or the descendents of such people. So, in a way, it was by going four hundred miles away from Lwów that in some ways he became nearer to it than when he was actually there. But that too ha
d perhaps be better part of another story