(Ternopil, 31.07.2014 - 02.08.2014) The Austro-Hungarian Empire didn't end in Czernowitz, nor in Ternopil, but 26 miles further east, in "Pidvolochysk (Ukrainian: Підволочиськ, Polish: Podwołoczyska, Yiddish: Podvolitchisk, פּאָדוואָלאָטשיסק, Russian:Подволочиск) [which] is an urban-type settlement in Ternopil Oblast (province) of western Ukraine" and that's all we learn from Wikipedia. As a matter of fact, the train station of this "urban-type settlement" with its unpronounceable name, offered the scenery for the story The Goose Podwoloczyska by Alexander Roda Roda:
"In this story the station restaurant offers a small menu for four crowns (soup and beef) and a large menu for six crowns, which also includes goose and Zibebenstrudel. The passengers coming the long way from Vienna arrived hungry at this border station, took a brake, and choose the most expensive menu. But no sooner had the diners eaten the beef, a man comes with a service cap (it is the restaurant owner) in the restaurant and says, 'It's time to board the train to Kiev, Moscow, Odessa...'. Everyone stands up and rushes to rail cars without having savored the full menu. One day, however, a guest stays since he is the member of the Lemberg Commission for testing the Galician railway station restaurants. In desperation, the innkeepers conjure to fry geese from their private kitchen. When the inspectors now also call for the dessert, the host can cunningly show that Zibebenstrudel (raisin strudel) is his last name and the corresponding item on the dining is no dessert, but his signature." [Excerpt from "The Cathedral of the Winged Wheel and the Sugarbeet Station" by Richard Deiss]
Clemens Schülgen from Vienna, one of the first West Europeans, who visited this area in 1990, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, wrote to me, that the old train station has been completely destroyed in 1920 during the Polish-Soviet War but reconstructed thereafter and again renovated a couple of years ago; only the station safe made by Wertheim from Vienna was - and most probably is - still in service.
That's it, nothing on Ternopil? Of course there is, just go to Christian Herrmann's report "In Ternopil" from February 2014! Nothing changed except the temperature, which was now about 30 - 40 °C higher.
No comments:
Post a Comment