Lvov

 

Lvov (Lviv, as it is now called in independent Ukraine) is the major city in the western part of the country.  Near the border with Poland in the Carpathian mountains, this old European city is in the heart of the most nationalistic part of the country where the people have always spoken the Ukrainian language (as opposed to Russian, which was generally spoken in the rest of the country during the Soviet era).

I was there only a day with a group of scholars participating in a conference on coal regions, so did not have time to take many pictures, unfortunately.

To see an enlargement of each picture, just click on it.



lvov opera house
 
lvov opera house 2
The Lvov Opera House.
Another view of the Opera House.



lvov apartment
lvov apartments 2
A typical prosperous middle-class house in the nineteenth century.  The owner's shop would have been on the ground floor with living quarters above. 

Unlike the house on the left, which only has three columns of windows, this was the house of an aristocrat.  It has six columns.






mine
miners
We visited a coal mine near by.  The mines in the west are relatively shallow -- some 100 to 300 meters deep.  Still deep by our standards but no where near as deep as the 1,000 plus meters in the Donbass region around Donetsk, in the east.
Our group posing with miners as we prepare to enter the mine.  The guy on the right who is not wearing a helmet is the head of the workers' union.  Workers' unions in a socialist economy are not what most of us think of as unions.  They do not represent the interests of workers, for instance.



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