My adventures in Lviv, Ukraine, were awesome!! I had four days of adventure this month, and each one was a little better than the previous one!
My first adventure day I went into Lviv city center with two teammates, Darek and Alycia. Our goal for the day was to wander around and get a feel for where all the “cool” thing to do were, and get prices for all of them for our team. We visited the Armenian Cathedral of the Mother of God’s Assumption, passed the Soldier of Fortune shop, tried to find the chocolate museum (which still remains lost to us), got prices for several national museums, and had lunch at a local cafe that was more American than Ukrainian.
One my second adventure day, I went into town with Jessica and Alycia specifically to go to several of the museums we passed the previous week. We went into on national museum that was a former palace for Ukrainian royalty, build by an Italian architect. A lot of the architecture and items in the museum were from the eras of Napoleon and the Armenian empire. We also had to do some errands while in the city, so we didn’t get to see as much as we would have liked.
On the third adventure day, we went to a music festival about two hours from Lviv. Our hosts’ daughter, Bria Blessing, is a major Ukrainian singer/songwriter. She was on The Voice Ukraine, and recently wrote and recorded a hit song for a Ukrainian movie about a woman in World War I. You can look her up on Spotify, YouTube, soundcloud, and iTunes, if you want to hear her music! She was playing at this music festival, so we went with her parents to watch her perform. We also got a chance to drive about an hour farther and visit a part of the Carpathian Mountains. They are amazing and gorgeous!
Our fourth adventure day was extremely special. The Blessings took us out to breakfast at their favorite restaurant in Lviv, where we randomly met an American couple visiting from Lake Tahoe. They ended up spending the entire day with us, walking around the city and sharing their story and wisdom with us.
After breakfast, we walked to the top of High Castle Hill, the highest point in Lviv, where a castle once stood in the center of the city. The view was amazing! I also had a realization at the top of that hill, which I posted about in my last blog.
After visiting the top of this hill, we walked around Lviv, visiting historical monuments and sites of the Jewish community, past and present. We visited a memorial site commemorating a synagogue, the “golden rose”, which was destroyed and burned by the Nazis in 1942. The old synagogue floor has been cleared and stone ruins preserved, and a marble pattern has been built on the second half of the property. We also walked through the old Jewish streets and saw the insets where all of the mezuzahs had been in the door frames of the houses. The Nazis removed them during the war, but the insets have remained as a memorial to the families who once lived in that area.
We also visited the former Jewish Ghetto, where all Jews were put during the occupation, and the monument that now stands for those who were deported and killed. Whenever the ghetto became overcrowded, the Jews would be taken by truck to the extermination camp outside of the city. Around 136000 Jews of Lviv were killed during the Nazi occupation.
We also visited the former site of the Lviv concentration camp. There is a memorial plaque at the entrance, but the grounds have become overgrown and not kept up well. After the Soviet Union took control, the camp was turned into a kanine training facility for the police.
Those last two places were the hardest to visit. The weight of what happened in both locations was overwhelming to the point of tears at times. It was especially so because we were reading the Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom during our car rides this week.
This last day of “adventure” was the most meaningful, the most touching, and the most heart-wrenching. It was worth it. If you ever get the chance to visit any concentration camps or memorials such as these anywhere, do it. It’s hard, but it is worth it.
#GodIsInControl #redefiningdisciple
#THIRD
