We travel further

We have come to the end of the journeys planned for the first half of the year. We have visited the Art Nouveau Subotica and the Hasidic cemeteries of Tokaj, defeated the Ukrainian potholes from Subcarpathia through Czernowitz and Kamenets-Podolsk to Odessa and back, participated at the Easter of three denominations in Lemberg, and on the way of the wooden churches and painted Renaissance monasteries we reunited Maramureș and Bukovina, cut in two by a country border. And in the meantime we compiled, visited and discussed, and now publish the journeys proposed for the second half of the year, to the program of whose we also welcome the recommendations of our readers. The planned costs include in each case the trip (by bus), accommodation (in double room), and the guided tour. The language of the guide – optionally, English, Italian, German or Spanish – will depend on the composition of the group.

As usual, I ask anyone interested in one or another trip to write, without an obligation (but with a serious intention) until Saturday, 3 August at wang@studiolum.com. Then, when we already know the number of participants, we will publish the dailed program of the trip, the exact costs (including the eventual single room complement), and the application and payment deadline on our page “Come with us”, which, linked to the right margin, serves as a constantly updated travel schedule.

• The lost world of the Eastern Galician shtetl, 25–29 August (Sunday–Thursday). The fellow passengers of río Wang may have already accustomed to the fact that in our trips we visit a lot of things that no longer exist, but this is the first time that all our journey is dedicated to a completely vanished world, the network of former Jewish towns from Stryj through Sambór and Żółkiew to Brod and Tarnopol, and from there, through Czortków and Buczacz to the Bukovinian border, thus moving around in the Eastern, now Ukrainian half of Galicia. We visit the beautiful, decaying cemeteries and synagogues, we reconstruct the life and relationships of this network of settlements, we recall the memory of the illustrious personalities and movements. The summary of our posts on the Jewish heritage of the region can be found here. Planned costs: approx. 300 euro.

• Lemberg Klezmer Festival, 30 August – 2 September (Friday – Monday). This is the fifth year that the Jewish Cultural Association of the city organizes a summer klezmer festival with the participation of a number of authentic Eastern European – Ukrainian, Moldovan, Russian – bands as well as invited international celebrities. During the weekend festival we also visit the hidden corners of the city with those who are for the first time in Lemberg, and make an excursion to the Polish Renaissance royal palace of Olesko. An interactive map of the monuments of Lemberg and our posts on the city are collected here. Planned costs: approx. 220-280 euros.

• Western Galicia: shtetls and castles, 2–6 October (Wednesday – Sunday). Continuing our journey of August, now we visit the Western, Polish half of Galicia, where the greater proximity to the cultural and economic centers make it more visible that the Jewish shtetls were born in under the protection and for the service of the landlords’ fortresses, as the 17th-century proverb says: “there is no proper Polish nobleman without his own Jew”. We visit the network of the former shtetls in parallel with the magnificent Renaissance palaces and royal castles, from Kraków’s Kazimierz through the Renaissance towns of Opatów, Sandomierz and Tarnów to Lublin and Zamość, now on the World Heritage list. We will also visit the important Galician sites of the First World War, such as the fortress of Przemyśl. Planned costs: approx. 300 euros.

• The Crimea, 23-29 October (Wednesday – Tuesday). We gradually expand to the East, after Odessa now we have reached the Crimean peninsula (and the Caucasus follows in the next year). We arrive by plane to Simferopol (the tickets should be individually purchased: now, three months in advance you can buy it for about 300 euros from all over Europe), and from there we go around by bus in the ethnically diverse peninsula, rich in stunning natural beauties and historical monuments. We will see medieval Karaite cemetery and a Jewish mountain town, Genovese and Gothic citadel, impressive palaces of the Russian aristocracy along the southern coast between Sevastopol and Yalta, Orthodox places of pilgrimages and Tatar mosques. Planned costs (in addition to the plane ticket): approx. 450 euros

• “Lightning” in Maramureș, 31 October – 3 November (Thursday – Saturday). One of the greatest celebration of the Romanian region is the “lightning” in the cemeteries around All Saints’ Day, when the cemetery hills are full of life, those living far away come home, and the families commemorate together their deads, often hosting the strangers, too. This is why we repeat at this time the Romanian half of our spring tour, by visiting the traditional wooden churches of Maramureș, the “merry cemetery” of Sapănța, the market of Sighetu Marmației, the open air museum of wooden folk architecture in Baia Mare. Planned costs: approx. 220-250 euros.

• The unknown Mallorca, 17–22 January (Friday – Wednesday). The true face of this beautiful and archaic island – of which our old readers know that it is our second home – can be got to know in January, when the flood of the tourists stops for a month, and the island for a short while lives only its own traditional life. The weather is mild, almond trees are blossoming, and orange is ripen, and the settlements celebrate two greatest events, the feasts of Saint Anthony, protector of the farmers, and Saint Sebastian, patron of Palma, in a veritable Mediterranean joie de vivre, with fireworks, the parade of the masked devils who tempted St. Anthony, fires and grilling on the streets and squares. In addition, we walk through the old town of Palma, the ancient Jewish quarter, the Medieval and Renaissance inner courtyards, the Arabic towns along the coasts and the manor houses in the mountains, we taste wine in Binissalem and sail over to the little island of the blue lizards. Our posts on Mallorca can be read here. Planned costs (in addition to the plane tickets, which is usually 200-250 euros from the continent): approx. 450-480 euros.

Our readers have suggested the possibility of a weekend in the former Hasidic villages of the wine region of Tokaj, to follow the centuries old “route of the Jewish wine” from Tokaj through Košice, Prešov and Bardejov to Poland, or to repeat in October the one-week long Czernowitz–Kamenets-Podolsk–Odessa tour. These are also available if enough people apply for them, especially if any of the above tours will have not enough applicants, so we will have to organize something else instead of it. Please feel free to write, to ask, to suggest.