Peter Moore

Issue 247 of Wanderlust just hit the newsstands.

If you turn to page 144 you'll find my article about Lviv.

I hope I have done the city and its people justice. And that my story reflects the resilience, determination and humanity that I experienced there.

Big thanks go to , and .ua. (Instagram handles). Amazing women, incredible storytellers and the sole reason I got to experience what I did. I ended up telling the story my way. I hope that's OK.

has just been to the frontline. Make sure you check out her Instagram for her amazing photos.

Tanya Yermak just released a new book. I'm hanging out for the English translation. If you can read Ukrainian grab yourself a copy. It's called "U Yoho Holovi, u Yiyi Tili" (In His Head, In Her Body). Check it out.

Needless to say, there's a lot of stuff that didn't make the article. I'm hoping there'll be other opportunities to share my experiences and remind the world that this existential battle against Russian aggression is far from over.

I'm going to end this post the way I ended my story.

Slava Ukraini!

Heroiam slava!

🇺🇦

My dad passed away 18 years ago today.

And, as has become something of a tradition, I’m posting a picture of him, snapped on our travels together.

This one was taken in the Galápagos Islands, at the Charles Darwin Research station, with one of the islands’ legendary giant tortoises.

Those who knew my father will know that he was a short man.

But maybe not as short as he looks in this photo 😂

Miss you dad.

LEAVING LVIV

I left Lviv for Przemyśl on board the IC 715K train coming from Kyiv on the evening of Easter Monday.

It was meant to leave between 18:26-18:29 but was running a little late that night, pulling into Lviv station around 18:42. Not much of a delay, I’m sure you’ll agree, for a country at war.

Passport officers in the camouflage uniforms climbed on board ahead of me, and as with entering the country, they processed our passports quickly and efficiently. This time, however, they were joined by officers in black uniforms and sniffer dogs, who went through the carriages, periodically asking people what was in their bags.

One of the officers stopped and pointed to my bag on the luggage space overhead, asking me a question in Ukrainian.

“Do you have any weapons?” he translated into English when he realised I didn’t speak Ukrainian. I shook my head, silently wondering why anyone would be smuggling arms out of the country.

The same ads and public service announcements played on the screens that hung from the ceiling, but after my time in Lviv they felt more powerful and emotive. The one that showed a soldier calling his mum from the front reminded me of the families of missing and captured soldiers that gathered in front of the Taras Shevchenko monument every Saturday, asking their loved ones not to be forgotten. What they would give for such a call.

It was dark when we arrived in Przemyśl an hour and a half later. It took 42 minutes, 30 seconds, and 57 milliseconds to be processed by Polish immigration, not bad considering they had a train load of passengers and the facial recognition equipment that is part of the EU’s new entry/exit scheme was down and they had to resort to taking photos with their mobile phones.

I crossed the road and booked a room in the Hotel Europejski and then wandered into town for a beer.

I had a lot to process.

Easter Monday was my last day in Lviv. The locals call it Wet Monday, when everyone splashes each other to wash off winter.

All the action, I was told, would be out at Shevchenkivskyi Hai again.

It was less crowded than during Hayivk but somehow more chaotic. People were still wearing their traditional vyshyvank, but this time they were armed with less historically accurate water pistols, squirting whoever came within their sights. The mostly deadly shooter, as I quickly discovered, was the mayor’s wife.

The charity, Unbroken, hosted a special lunch for soldiers wounded in the war. The rehabilitated veterans sat a long table in wheelchairs, eating a special Easter meal and taking part in traditional games, the most difficult one eliciting a sound from a trembita, a long, thin horn from the Carpathian Mountains.

The veterans soon made their way to a field where a band were belting out traditional tunes. The crowd soon formed huge freewheeling circles again, this time with the veterans shifting their wheelchairs from side to side on the periphery.

In the middle of the circle, a soldier in a wheelchair was dancing with a girl with long red hair and wearing a beautifully embroidered vyshyvank, a huge smile on both their faces. Other revellers, arms linked and laughing, skipped around them in a huge circle, a blur of limbs and colour. It was mesmerising, ecstatic even, but again, overwhelmingly wholesome.

For a moment, I was reminded of the upsetting things that I’d seen during my visit to Lviv, moments that had literally made me weep. The daily funeral processions. The silent protest in front of the Taras Shevchenko Monument. The sheer scale of the Field of Mars.

It struck me that Ukrainians have every right to be angry and bitter. To be despondent about their plight and the world’s increasing indifference to it.

Yet, at Easter at least, they choose hope. They choose joy.

“Slava Ukraini!” (Glory to Ukraine!) called out the singer, as the dancing and the music reached a crescendo.

“Heroiam slava!” (Glory to the heroes!) came the crowd’s thunderous reply.

I mentioned before that Lviv didn’t feel like a city in a country at war until it did.

A street falling silent as a funeral procession passes. A volunteer centre making camouflage nets just off the city’s main square. The daily power cuts. The makeshift memorials that dot the parks.

But there is one place where there is absolutely no escaping the impact of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The Field of Mars.

Right next to the old Lychakiv Cemetery.

The final resting place of the sons and daughters of Lviv, lost at a depressingly relentless rate in the pockmarked battlefields in the south and the east.

Once a grassy field, it is now a sea of technicolour flags and chaotically decorated graves as far as the eye can see. I read somewhere that Lviv has been one of the largest contributors of soldiers to the war. There are over 1,250 souls buried here, each one missed sorely by their families, who decorated their graves with photos and cherished belongings that reflected the soldier’s individual personality. And because it was Easter, nearly every grave had a p***a, Easter cake, a reminder that they were not forgotten.

There are plans to replace each of the chaotic graves and their collections of flags, photos and nic-nacs with identical white marble gravestones shaped as Cossack crosses.

It’s an attempt to replicate the quiet dignity and solemnity of the First and Second World War memorial cemeteries in Western Europe.

Unsurprisingly, the plans have met with considerable resistance from grieving families.

They want their sons and daughters remembered as individuals, not just faceless numbers.

And to be honest, it was the photos of the fallen, printed on glass so they didn’t fade, that affected me most.

Instead of just a name and an age, I got a very real sense of their personality and their interests, and in turn, the sense of young life cruelly snatched away felt deeper and more personal.

Something I’m sure you’ll feel too flicking through these images.

Heroiam slava.

Easter Sunday is also when Lvivians celebrate Hayivky, an ancient Ukrainian spring festival that dates back to pre-Christian times. The name derives from hai, meaning “grove” or “small forest.” It was here, in sacred woodlands near water, that rituals were performed to welcome spring and chase away winter.
In Lviv, Hayivky is celebrated at Shevchenkivskyi Hai.

Also known as the Museum of Folk Architecture and Life, the 36-hectare park is dotted with over 100 historical wooden structures, representing six different ethnographic regions. Designed to give visitors an insight into folk architecture and rural traditions in Ukraine, during Hayivky it is a place of unbridled celebration with music, dancing and games that showcased agility and strength.

The celebrations had a programme of sorts. Specific folk bands played at specific times. But mostly it was organic and a little chaotic. Young girls posed, taking selfies outside a 18th-century peasant hut. A stern-looking woman sold honeycomb on a stick to frankly terrified children inside a medieval stable. And families picnicked in the spring sunshine beside the old watermill and windmill.

Various military divisions were there too, showing off their wares, using the celebration as an opportunity to gather donations. At the entrance a pair of soldiers demonstrated a remote-controlled UGV, an unmanned ground vehicle, giving families a ride, spinning them around like they were on an amusement ride. Inside Drone divisions sold 3-D printed toys and t-shirts and let kids pick up real-life drones.

What I remember most? The vast, unruly conga lines that quickly morphed into a fast-moving human circle that wiped out anyone foolish enough to walk into its path.
Foolish people like me 😅

BREAKING LENT Pt.2

After spending a good deal of Easter Saturday watching Easter baskets being blessed, I knew that each item on the table had a special significance.

The p***a (Easter cake) symbolised the risen Christ, eggs new life, rebirth and the Resurrection. And that the charcuterie items were a nod towards God’s abundance and mercy.

But I soon learned that butter and cheese shaped into a lamb symbolised the “Lamb of God” and that the rushnyk, the beautifully embroidered cloths that covered the Easter baskets, were a nod towards the burial shroud of Christ and represented purity.

Ultimately, however, this was a time to celebrate family. On the way to the apartment, I had asked Luca if he’d been worried by the drone attack – Tanya had told me they could see it circling the city from their flat – but he shook his head and said he’d thought it was the neighbour’s refrigerator upstairs.

Here, at the table, there was very little talk of the war with Russia. Instead, my hosts sang traditional songs and played a version of conkers using boiled eggs. They also wanted to know about me and my life growing up in Australia. They wanted to know about my Easter traditions – Easter egg hunts, Easter hat parades, chocolate Easter Bilbies – and the significance of the gift I’d bought them for hosting me, a packet of Tim Tam biscuits.

The meal ended with a slice of p***a, Easter cake. Tasting a lot like Italian panettone, I’d been told that if a p***a cracks or sinks during baking, it signals hard times or illness for the family in the year ahead. I’m pleased to report that every p***a on offer at this Easter feast was perfect.

BREAKING LENT Pt.1

** Sorry for the delay re: my posts about Lviv. No excuses. Life just got in the way. **

When I decided to visit Lviv for Easter, the top of my wish list was to celebrate Easter Sunday with a local family. I knew it would be a difficult wish to fulfil, but journalist Diana Delyurman was able to arrange for me to celebrate Easter Sunday with novelist Tanya Yermak and her family.

Most of Tanya’s work is published in Ukrainian, including her latest book, "U Yoho Holovi, U Yiyi Lili" (In His Head, In Her Body), a collection of interconnected stories about the physical and emotional impact of war. But I was able to track down a spoken word piece in English she’d done on YouTube for the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute.

It was a powerful piece called "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" where she painted sharply observed vignettes of soldiers captured, missing, and lost in the war with a stark, brutal simplicity.

One of the soldiers profiled was a defender at Mariupol who had left for the front before his twins were born. His plight particularly resonated with me. My mother’s father left Australia to fight in the Second World War the day before she was born. He died in action. They never got to meet. That trauma has stayed with my mother throughout her whole life.

Tanya lived in an apartment in the north-east of Lviv with her husband Lev and their bright son Luka, currently in the 7th grade. We were joined by Yaryna and Valerie, visiting from Uzhhorod, a city near the Slovakian and Hungarian borders. Yaryna is an oncologist, Valerie is a sculptor and painter. Maria and her two daughters, Katya and Jana, were there too, Canadian Ukrainians now living in Kyiv. And finally, the two Easter orphans, me and Diana, the journalist, whose family lived in Odessa.

A collection of recently blessed Easter baskets sat in a row on the long dining table. Now that everybody had arrived, the baskets could be decanted, sliced and diced, plated, and then returned to the table.

Uzhhorod is a famous wine region, so Yaryna and Valerie’s basket included a couple of bottles of Carpathian wine. They were opened and poured, just as the obligatory toast was made.

"Khrystos Voskres!" (Christ is Risen!) cried Valerie.

"Voistynu Voskres!" (Truly He is Risen!) replied everyone else.

Before we ate, Tanya handed around a plate of sliced boiled eggs, each of us taking a slice. As head of the household, Lev stood up to speak.

“We traditionally conclude the start of our breakfast by sharing a blessed egg,” he said. “I give a piece to everyone. Eat it, and in doing so, become part of this holy, blessed event.”

With that, Lent was broken.

Leaving Tobago

Sadly, the time had come to leave Tobago.

It was a public holiday, so the buses weren’t running, so I had to catch a taxi for the first time on my trip.

The taxi had an entertainment console in the dash, including video, and on hearing I was an Aussie, the driver put on the USA/Australia World Cup match that had just started. When Cameron Burgess scored an own goal after just 11 minutes, I asked him to turn it off.

As is my way, I arrived way too early, so after I checked in at the open-air check-in counter, I went for a wander, checking out the beach at the end of the runway and the remains of an old British fort overlooking it.

If I’d wanted to head down to Store Bay and the food shacks there, it would have taken 10 minutes for me to walk there. But instead, I returned to the airport and treated myself to fried chicken and chips and a Carib shandy at the chicken shop the other side of the road from the check-in counter.

Like everything else in Tobago, it was ridiculously affordable. Despite the smell of avgas in the air, it cost me less than £3.

Pulling Seine

Pulling seine is a generations-old communal fishing tradition in Tobago.

Fishermen drop a long net just off shore, forming an arc back to the beach. The net is buoyed by floats and weighted by sinkers, and anyone passing by joins in to help the fishermen drag it ashore, filled with coastal catch like jacks, sardines, carite and kingfish.

Here’s the really cool thing. The people who help pull in the net are rewarded with a share of the catch.

Phil had told me all about the seine and its traditions. Rubbing yourself with limes brings good luck, apparently. As does seeing an industrious person, first thing after you wake up.

Phil also said Castara was a good place to see a seine, but warned there was no set time they occurred. Often it was just a case of a fisherman looking up from repairing his nets and thinking “Time for a seine!”.

So, in the grand tradition of TV travel series, on my last day in Tobago, on my last morning in Castara, I just happened to come upon a seine when I headed down to Big Bay for my last swim of the trip. I dropped my towel and grabbed one side of the net. The fishermen don’t mind tourists pitching in. They need every hand they can get. And they know it’s extremely unlikely that they’ll claim their share of the catch.

It’s hard going, let me tell you. And I wasn’t the only one struggling. The fisherman who’d set the seine called out to the lifeguards watching the beach, and they sprinted down, Baywatch style, to help.

Our catch, to be honest, was modest. Bait fish mainly, which suited the seabirds who descended upon the net in numbers, swooping down to scoop up a little silvery fish or two. There was one decent-sized fish, a jack, and the fishermen offered it to me. They’d been after bait fish, apparently. I said they should give it to someone who really needed it. It ended up going to an old Rasta who’d wandered down to help out.

I was delighted to have just taken part. ‘Pulling seine’ had been top of my Tobago bucket list, and I’d been resigned to the fact that it would go unticked.

But hey, if I’d learned one thing on this old-school adventure on this tiny Caribbean island, Tobago always delivers.