The strange foreigner

The world is so complicated. And there are people who would like to know everything, speak all languages, visit all the countries. The explorers and discoverers. Those, who want to know everything that is foreign to them, when they could safely stay home without worrying about the rest.

Stultorum infinitus est numerus — the number of fools is infinite. Map attributed to Oronce Fine, 1590, Bnf.

Of course, everyone knows, that elsewhere, beyond the boundaries of the familiar world, there are people unknown to us, who are both close to us and infinitely strange, and to whom we appear, on our turn, both close and infinitely strange.
Similar and other. Relative and different.
Strangely familiars, of a disturbing relationship.

The zebra, Filippo Pigafetta, Frankfurt, 1597

Formerly, before the explorers and discoverers, the unknown stranger who inhabited the imagination of the Europeans, could assume quite unexpected forms, but thanks to God, we rarely encounter them today.


And then the travelers and discoverers came.
The stranger they met wears strange dresses (the strangest of them even do not wear any), he lives in strange places, practice strange occupations, and eat strange foods.


This foreigner often puts on unexpected colors, and sometimes overdoes it to the point of drawing on his own body all kind of lines which will allow him to hide in the jungle, mangrove or bush.

Joseph Kabris, Précis historique et véritable du séjour de J. Kabris, 1817.
The French sailor Kabris was shipwreck in the Pacific Ocean at Nuka Hiva. He just escaped the natives who wanted to sacrifice and eat him. Before marrying the daughter of the king, his body was entirely tattooed so that his skin displays all the ritual symbols of the community, and he is fully integrated in the royal clan. He became a warrior, and participated both in the battles and in the ritual sacrifices and feasting following them. The Russian captain Krusenstern in his circumnavigation stopped at Nuka Hiva, captured Kabris, and in 1804 brought him to St. Petersburg. Having returned to France, Kabris exposed his tattoos at fairs and sold this little booklet. He was thus doubly foreign (and strange), both in Nuka Hiva and upon his return to Bordeaux.

This was a time of curious and fearless travelers, those traveling with painters and botanists, cartographers and naturalists, Bible, porters and interpreters. The travelers were very rare, but their stories exciting and the readers passionate.
Most of these readers never traveled far, and even in the 20th century the lovers of dreams plunged into the books with the eyes of imagination.

August Sander, Blind children, 1931.

Every day I go to work by taking line 8 of the metro of Paris.
Line 8 is the longest of the network, it parts from the south of the 16th district in the uptown west of the capital, goes down to the business districts, and then, following the great boulevards, it reaches the still popular streets of the 11th district, connecting the symbolic places of the revolutionary Paris of 1789 and 1848, the République, Chemin Vert, Bastille, Ledru-Rollin – which have also been the places of immigration for more than a century –, descends to the Forest of Vincennes, and, through the south-eastern suburbs, it reaches the town of Créteil and its 90 thousand inhabitants from all backgrounds.

Before 8 o’clock in the morning there are around me all those sleeping men and women with dark skin, returning from the night cleaning in the offices of western Paris. Later, all those readers of mysterious letters, opening newspapers printed, we imagine, in Bangkok, Dhaka, Fuzhou, Addis Ababa. In the afternoon, it is the old Africans telling their beads, with a black parka over their dress embroidered with so many shades of blue; Chinese women loaded with bags, who fall asleep just sitting on the corner of the back seat, and whose age is impossible to guess; the old woman turning the pages of a Romanian book, more and more worn from week to week, imaginably the only one she has; the young girls returning from the University of Créteil and discussing with loud words and laughter about their law course; and the hilarious young people whose jokes fly over the heads of the passengers in the language of the films of Satyajit Ray. And there are still all these pious readers, those who turn the pages of their Quran, their lips always moving, those who read evangelist brochures with pencil in hand, and the Polish ladies who mark their page with a holy image before leaving the train.

I should also tell about all the little children of the last fall, falling asleep early in the morning on the benches and folding seats, their bags between the legs, their mothers dormant at their sides, the faces of children coming from elsewhere, living in some “social housing project” in the agglomeration of Paris, never for long time in the same one, and going to school where they arrived at the beginning of their wandering. Like this little boy, perhaps Chechen, not more than five, frantically asking his mother in Russian, in soundbites full of tears, and she stubbornly replying in French, in a smashed and stammering French, but firm in her demands for his first day in the class.
And a few stray tourists, by the way also foreigners, their hands on the sacs, alert eyes.

On line 8, outside of Paris, the metro leans dangerously once in one direction – porte Dorée –, then in the other – porte de Charenton –, and the wheels squeal in a deafening hiss, when it resumes speed towards station Liberté. In the corner marked by these three stations as a fold of the line, just above these travelers coming from around the entire world, in 1931 extended the Colonial Exhibition.


When crossing today the part of the Forest – or rather park – of Vincennes where the exhibition was held, one seeks long the traces. Towards the lake, where the “native rowers” paddled in the mown lawn, where the dogs of the neighborhood were running around, the copy of a palace of Cameroon became “the Pagoda of Vincennes”, a Buddhist monastery. Porte Dorée: a concrete panel covered with greenish lichen commemorating since 1931 the exploration of Africa. Opposite, the Palace of Porte Dorée, still exposing the reliefs on the facade and the frescoes in the hall of entrance. That’s all.


Since 2007, the Palace of Porte Dorée has become the “National city of the history of immigration”. The building was erected on the occasion of the Colonial Exhibition of 1931 by the French architect Albert Laprade, to provide a summary of the history, economy and arts of the French Empire. It housed first the permanent Museum of the Colonies, renamed Museum of Overseas France in 1935, and becoming after the decolonization Museum of African and Oceanic Art in 1960. The museum was closed down in January 2003, when its collections were united with those of the Museum of Man to form the Museum of First Arts at Quai Branlay.


Inside, in the hall of entrance, a complex fresco by Pierre-Henri Ducos de La Haille.
A museum of immigration which does not speak about colonization, not even to mention the history of the place which accepts the visitor, but which has kept all its former decor – to the aquarium in the basement, which was also established in 1931, and which was for a long time the largest one in Paris.
In the box in the lobby I ask for a ticket. The attendant:
“To the aquarium?”
“No, to the immigration.”
“Ah? The immigration?…”
It is a museum that welcomes few visitors. In the three rooms on the top floor it presents a collection of official documents and photos together with a few items left by families (a sucase, a passport, a boat ticket, the first contract of work, some images from the past). It is mainly visited by high school students with their teachers, students most probably coming from the suburbs with line 8.

The windows of puppets (string or glove):
“the black woman”, thirties; “the black man” and “the arab”, early 20th century; “the Jewish usurer”, late 19th century

An exact contemporary of the Exhibition of 1931, a volume of the Larousse Encyclopaedia provides a description of the various populations of the globe, incuding Europe, which surprisingly blends this curious spirit of the travelers of the previous century (palpable in the choice of some great pictures) with a post-Darwinian discourse on the adaptation of the races to various natural environments, giving way to a complex taxonomy of mankind. The author, professor and paleontologist of the Natural History Museum, in his introduction mixes up with an easy hand apes, prehistoric populations and contemporary primitive peoples, sorts and classifies the various populations of the world, pointing out the educative mission of France, to celebrate in conclusion that the “most backward” people have already made “significant progress”. The whole comprises nearly 700 photos and drawings, including a large part from the collections of the Natural History Museum or that of the Museum of Man, dating from the late 19th and early 20th century.





Once they said about someone born in the same village – or really in the immediate proximity – that he was un pays, a “countryman”. Sometimes, during the adventure of a trip to the capital, in the middle of the crowded streets, one had the pleasure of meeting a “countryman”. From the perspective of this familiar formula, the others were always strange foreigners.
Not long ago in a village I know I heard of a woman who had lived there for years and had raised her children, but who was born in a village a few kilometers away, that she was a foreigner. Her husband himself said: “I married a foreigner.” Between the two villages there passes an impassable mental border, the one separating Burgundy from Champagne (and over there, they are absolutely not like we are!)

There are no foreigners without frontiers, and there are no frontiers without papers to cross them. Papers that monitor you, papers that file you, papers that track you down – but also papers that make you free, papers that let you travel, papers that allow you to work.
Papers which give you rights, rights to work, rights to a family life, rights to movement, rights to organize and express yourself – and perhaps also the rights to vote, one day soon.

Etranges étrangers

Le monde est si compliqué. Dire qu’il y a des gens qui voudraient tout connaître, parler toutes les langues et avoir vu tous les pays. Des explorateurs et des découvreurs.
De ceux qui voudraient tout savoir de ce qui leur est étranger quand ils pourraient demeurer tranquilles chez eux sans se soucier du reste.

Stultorum infinitus est numerus — le nombre des sots est infini. Carte attribuée à Oronce Fine, 1590, Bnf.

Bien entendu, chacun sait qu’ailleurs, au-delà des limites du monde familier, il existe des peuples inconnus qui nous sont à la fois proches et infiniment étrangers et à qui nous apparaissons à notre tour tout à la fois proches et infiniment étrangers.
Semblables et autres. Proches et différents.
Étrangement familiers, d’une inquiétante parenté.

Le zèbre, Filippo Pigafetta, Francfort, 1597

Autrefois, avant les explorateurs et les découvreurs, l’étranger inconnu qui peuplait l’imaginaire des Européens pouvait prendre des formes tout à fait inattendues mais, Dieu merci, on les rencontre rarement aujourd’hui.


Vinrent les voyageurs et découvreurs.
L’étranger qu’ils ont rencontré porte d’étranges costumes (les plus étranges des étrangers ne portent d’ailleurs aucun costume), il vit dans d’étranges lieux, poursuit d’étranges occupations et mange d’étranges plats.


Cet étranger prend souvent des couleurs inattendues et pousse parfois le vice jusqu’à dessiner sur sa peau ces lignes qui lui permettront de se camoufler dans la jungle, la mangrove ou le bush.

Joseph Kabris, Précis historique et véritable du séjour de J. Kabris, 1817.
Marin français, Kabris a fait naufrage dans le Pacifique à Nuka Hiva. Il échappe alors de peu aux indigènes qui souhaitaient le sacrifier et le déguster. Ayant épousé la fille du roi, il est alors entièrement tatoué afin que sa peau affiche tous les symboles rituels propres à la communauté et qu’il soit pleinement intégré au clan royal. Il devient homme de guerre et participe autant aux combats qu’aux sacrifices et festins rituels qui les concluent. Le capitaine russe Krusenstern, dans sa circumnavigation, fait relâche à Nuka Hiva et capture Kabris qu’il ramène à Saint-Pétersbourg en 1804. Rentré en France, Kabris expose ses tatouages dans les foires et y vend cette petite brochure. Il fut ainsi doublement étranger (et étrange), tant à Nuka Hiva qu’à son retour à Bordeaux.

C’était le temps des voyageurs curieux et intrépides, de ceux qui voyageaient avec peintres et botanistes, cartographes et naturalistes, Bible, porteurs et interprètes. Les voyageurs étaient rares mais leurs récits passionnants et les lecteurs passionnés.
La plupart de ces lecteurs ne partiraient jamais au loin et, encore au XX^e siècle, les amateurs de rêve se plongeaient dans les livres avec les yeux de l’imagination.

August Sander, Enfants aveugles, 1931.

Chaque jour, pour aller travailler, j’emprunte la ligne 8 du métro parisien.
La ligne 8 est la plus longue du réseau, elle part du sud du 16^ème arrondissement, dans les quartiers chics de l’ouest de la capitale, remonte vers les quartiers d’affaires puis suit les grands boulevards, rejoint les rues encore populaires du 11^ème, relie les lieux symboliques du Paris révolutionnaire de 1789 à 1848, République, Chemin Vert, Bastille, Ledru-Rollin — qui sont aussi les lieux de l’immigration depuis plus d’un siècle —, descend vers le bois de Vincennes et, à travers la banlieue sud-est, rejoint la ville de Créteil et ses 90.000 habitants de toutes origines.

Avant 8 heures le matin, il y a autour de moi tous ceux qui dorment, hommes et femmes à la peau sombre, qui reviennent de leur nuit de ménage dans les bureaux de l’ouest de Paris. Plus tard, ce sont tous ces lecteurs d’écritures mystérieuses, dépliant des journaux qu’on imagine imprimés à Bangkok, Dacca, Fuzhou ou Addis-Abeba. Dans l’après-midi, ce sont les vieux Africains qui égrènent leur chapelet, une parka noire sur leur robe brodée de tant de nuances de bleus ; les femmes chinoises chargées de sacs qui s’endorment à peine assises sur un coin de strapontin et dont il est impossible deviner l’âge ; c’est la vieille femme qui tourne les pages d’un livre roumain toujours plus fatigué de semaine en semaine et dont on imagine qu’il est le seul qu’elle possède ; les jeunes filles voilées qui reviennent de l’université de Créteil et débattent à grands éclats de mots et de rires de leurs cours de droit ; et ces trois jeunes gens hilares dont les plaisanteries volent par dessus la tête des voyageurs dans la langue des films de Satyajit Ray. Il y a encore tous ces pieux lecteurs, ceux qui tournent les pages de leur Coran, leurs lèvres toujours en mouvement, celles qui lisent des brochures évangélistes un crayon à la main, et les dames polonaises qui marquent leur page d’une image sainte avant de quitter la rame.

Il faudrait dire aussi tous les petits enfants de l’automne dernier, endormis tôt le matin sur les banquettes et les strapontins, leur cartable entre les pieds, leurs mères assoupies à leurs côtés, visages venus d’ailleurs d’enfants logés dans quelque « hôtel social » de l’agglomération parisienne, jamais longtemps le même, et scolarisés là où ils étaient arrivés au début de leur errance. Dire ce petit garçon, Tchétchène peut-être, cinq ans au plus, interrogeant frénétiquement sa mère en russe à petites phrases pleines de sanglots, et elle qui lui répondait obstinément en français, un français tout juste ébauché, balbutiant, mais ferme dans ses exigences pour son premier jour de classe.
Et quelques touristes égarés, étrangers eux aussi d’ailleurs, les mains crispées sur leur sac, l’œil aux aguets.

Sur la ligne 8, à la sortie de Paris, le métro penche dangereusement une fois dans un sens — porte Dorée — une fois dans l’autre — porte de Charenton — et les roues crissent dans un sifflement assourdissant quand il reprend de la vitesse vers la station Liberté. Dans l’angle marqué par ces trois stations comme une pliure de la ligne, juste au-dessus de ces voyageurs venus du monde entier, s’étendait en 1931 le territoire de l’Exposition coloniale.


Quand on traverse aujourd’hui la partie du bois de Vincennes où s’est tenue l’Exposition — un parc plutôt qu’un bois —, on en cherche longtemps les traces. Vers le lac où pagayaient les « rameurs indigènes », au milieu de la pelouse râpée où viennent courir les chiens des environs, la copie d’un palais du Cameroun est devenue la « pagode de Vincennes », un monastère bouddhiste. Porte Dorée, un panneau de béton sculpté couvert de lichens verdâtres commémore l’exploration de l’Afrique depuis 1931. En face, le Palais de la porte Dorée expose encore les bas-reliefs de sa façade et les fresques de son hall d’honneur. C’est tout.


Depuis 2007, le Palais de la porte Dorée est devenu le site de la « Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration ». Le bâtiment avait été construit à l’occasion de l’Exposition coloniale de 1931 par l’architecte français Albert Laprade afin d’offrir un condensé de l’histoire, de l’économie et des arts de l’Empire français. Il a d’abord abrité le Musée permanent des Colonies, rebaptisé Musée de la France d’outre-mer en 1935 et devenu avec la décolonisation Musée des Arts africains et océaniens en 1960, musée qui a fermé ses portes en janvier 2003 quand ses collections ont rejoint celles du musée de l’Homme pour constituer le musée des Arts premiers du quai Branly.


À l’intérieur, dans la salle des fêtes, ensemble de fresques de Pierre-Henri Ducos de La Haille.
Un musée de l’immigration qui ne parle pas de colonisation, même pas pour évoquer l’histoire du lieu qui l’accueille, mais qui a conservé tout son décor — jusqu’à l’aquarium au sous-sol, fondé lui aussi en 1931 et qui fut longtemps le plus grand de Paris.
A la caisse dans le hall, je demande un billet — et la préposée :
— C’est pour l’aquarium ?
— Non, pour l’immigration.
— Ah ? l’immigration…
C’est un musée qui accueille peu de visiteurs. Dans les trois salles du dernier étage, il présente ses collections de documents officiels et de photos avec quelques objets légués par des familles (une valise, un passeport, un billet de bateau, le premier contrat de travail, quelques images du passé). On y croise surtout un public de lycéens avec leurs professeurs, des lycéens venus de banlieue par la ligne 8 sans doute.

La vitrines des marionnettes (à fils ou à gaine) :
« la femme noire », années 30 ; « le nègre » et « l’arabe », début XX^e ; « l’usurier juif », fin XIX^e.

Exact contemporain de l’Exposition de 1931, un volume des encyclopédies Larousse propose une description des différentes populations du globe, Europe comprise, qui mélange étonnamment cet esprit curieux des voyageurs du siècle précédent (sensible dans le choix de quelques photos magnifiques) avec un discours post-darwinien sur l’adaptation des races aux milieux naturels ouvrant sur une taxinomie complexe de l’espèce humaine. L’auteur, paléontologue et professeur au Muséum d’histoire naturelle, mélange allègrement dans son introduction grands singes, peuples de la préhistoire et peuplades primitives contemporaines, trie et classe les différentes populations du globe, rappelle la mission éducatrice de la France pour souligner en conclusion que les peuples « les plus arriérés » ont déjà fait « beaucoup de progrès ». Mais l’ensemble comporte près de 700 photos et dessins, dont une grande part issue des collections du Muséum d’histoire naturelle ou de celles du musée de l’Homme et datant de la fin du XIX^e siècle au début du XX^e.





Autrefois, on disait de quelqu’un qui était né dans le même village que soi — ou vraiment à proximité immédiate — que c’était un « pays ». Parfois, dans l’aventure d’un voyage à la capitale, au milieu de la foule des rues parisiennes, on avait le bonheur de rencontrer un « pays ». Les autres, dans cette formulation familière, étaient toujours d’étranges étrangers.
Il n’y a pas si longtemps, dans tel village de ma connaissance, j’ai entendu dire d’une femme qui y vivait depuis des années et y avait élevé ses enfants — mais qui était née dans un autre village distant de quelques kilomètres — que c’était une étrangère. Son mari lui-même le disait : « j’ai épousé une étrangère ». Entre les deux villages passe une frontière mentale infranchissable, celle qui sépare la Bourgogne de la Champagne (et là-bas, ils ne sont pas comme chez nous, pas du tout).

Il n’y a pas d’étrangers sans frontières, il n’y a pas de frontières sans papiers pour les franchir. Papiers qui surveillent, papiers qui fichent, papiers qui pistent — mais aussi papiers qui libèrent, papiers qui font voyager, papiers qui permettent de travailler.
Papiers qui donnent des droits, droit au travail, droit à une vie de famille, droit de circuler, droit de se syndiquer, droit de s’exprimer — le droit de vote, un jour proche ?

Ars magna lucis et umbrae

I also wanted to add my two cents to the series on meridians launched by Lloyd, and to present that small Italian book on the art of sundials which I bought almost twenty years ago in the Trastevere, in a secluded small shop, where they sold all kinds of self-made time-measuring devices, water hours dripping each second, candles with wick divided per hours, rings with a hole functioning as camera obscura with the inscription Carpe diem. Life, however, hastened to meet me.

Today I started to translate Umberto Eco’s new book: Storia delle terre e dei luoghi leggendari – fabulous lands, legendary places, that’s the working title, but the book adds one more twist to what you would expect. It is not simply about imaginary worlds, as we are used to from Eco, from the Baudolino to The Island of the Day Before, but about how the fanatic readers have taken bloody seriously the fictional literary locations from the antiquity to Dan Brown’s Priorate of Sion. And already in the first, ancient chapter we are greeted by our good friends, the meridians.

Che la terra fosse tonda lo sapeva naturalmente Tolomeo, altrimenti non avrebbe potuto dividerla in trecentosessanta gradi di meridiano, e lo sapeva Eratostene, che nel III secolo avanti Cristo aveva calcolato con una buona approssimazione la lunghezza del meridiano terrestre, considerando la diversa inclinazione del sole, a mezzogiorno del solstizio di primavera, quando si rifletteva nel fondo dei pozzi di Alessandria e di Syene, di cui si sapeva la distanza reciproca.

Of course Ptolemy was also aware that the Earth was round, otherwise he would not have divided it into three hundred and sixty degrees; and this was also known to Eratosthenes, who in the third century BC determined the length of the Earth’s meridian with a good approach, taking into account the different angle of incidence of the sunshine at the time of the spring equinox, when at noon it is reflected in the depth of the wells of Alexandria and of Syene, whose distance was well known.

Eco, who in his popular albums published in recent years – The Story of Beauty, The Story of Ugliness, The Infinity of Lists – seductively blends trivia with ingenious problem proposals, is like a super jongleur, who plays with a hundred balls at once, and if he drops five, never mind. The translator, however, must also seek for those five, and dust them off, as if they had not fallen. This is what I try now, too.

If at noon the sun is reflected in the depth of a well, it means that it stays exactly perpendicular above the given location. If it is reflected in two, then there is no difference between the two angles of incidence, so nothing can be calculated from it.

The reality is, that the Alexandrian librarian Eratosthenes learned from a caravan arriving from the southern Syene – today Assuan – that the sun is reflected in the depth of the cistern of the settlement, laying precisely under the Tropic of Cancer, in only one day of the year, on June 21, the summer solstice. He thus measured at the same moment the angle of incidence of the sunlight in Alexandria (7°12'), and found it to be the 1/50th part of a full circle, so he concluded that the length of the complete meridian would be fifty times the known distance of the two cities. The resulting circumference of the Earth – 39,690 km – only slightly differs from the 40 thousand known today.

The story of the measurement is well summarized by an English-language interview with Eratosthenes, including a modern diagram. But for the sake of a greater credibility, I quote it from the eccentric baroque Jesuit scholar, Athanasius Kircher himself (Ars magna lucis et umbrae, Amsterdam 1671, 638-639), whose works, as Eco admits, are preserved all (but one) in his personal library.

Hac solertia legimus Eratosthenem terrenae molis quantitatem indagasse; assumptis duabus urbibus Syene, & Alexandria sub eodem meridiano in planissima Aegypti regione sitis, quarum distantiam in stadijs 6183⅓ cognitam, ut prius, summo studio exploratam habebat. Quibus notis nihil aliud requirebatur, nisi ut eandem distantiâ in gradibus quoque notam haberet, quam ea, qua sequitur solertia invenit. Cùm tempore solstitij Syene urbs sub tropico ♋ immediatè sita, hora meridiana sit ἁσκιη, & umbra in seipsa sine ullo angulo cum gnomone facto consumatur: hoc tanquam cognito, Alexandriae eodem temporis momento dieque gnomonem erexit, diligenter angulum, quem gnomon cum umbra ad verticem faciebat, observando: hic enim erat, ut paulò post demonstrabimus, arcui meridiano inter assumptas urbes aequalis. Sed rem paradigmate demonstremus, etc.

Of Eratosthenes we read how insightfully he measured the extension of the earth, taking two cities, Syene and Alexandria, which lay in the flattest region of Egypt, under the same meridian, and whose distance of 6183 and one third stadiums were previously measured by him with the greatest care. Against this background he did not need anything more than the distance between the two cities in degrees, which he determined in the following ingenious manner. As in Syene, lying immediately under the Tropic of Cancer, on the day of the summer solstice the hour of the noon is ἁσκιη, without shadow, that is, the shadow exactly coincides with the vertical gnomon and does not deviate from it to the least angle, by observing in the same moment in Alexndria the angle of the gnomon to the vertical, he calculated, as we will soon point it out, the angular difference between the two cities. But let’s see the demonstration step by step, etc.

On the basis of all the above, my translation changed like this:

…and this was also known to Eratosthenes, who, in the third century BC on the day of the summer solstice at noon, when the sun is reflected in the depth of the well of Syene, determined the length of the Earth’s meridian on the basis of the angle of incidence measured in Alexandria, whose distance from Syene was known to him.

Such corrections, dozens per volume, are of course always sent back to the Italian editor, who always say thank for it, and never introduce it in the new editions. Therefore, as we have long known it, an educated European only reads Eco in Hungarian.

East Unlimited

Only two more days, and we will publish the travel plans of Río Wang for this year. But to give a foretaste to our readers, we already publish the program of the “East Unlimited” tour, organized by us for the Hungarian Jewish Cultural Association from April 4 to 11, during which we will mainly track down the forgotten Jewish past of the region over the Carpathians. For the readers of Río Wang we will announce the same route for the end of April.


The thousand kilometers long road, which, at first glance, meanders back and forth with the irresoluteness of the billiard ball over the borders of the countries apparently invented by Shakespeare, is in fact the most resolute route from the Ukrainian border to Odessa. The way through Cluj and Chisinău would be about a hundred kilometers less, but who is willing to enter the Eastern Moldovan or Transnistrian Republic, not recognized by anybody and therefore not marked on the map, where you are suspicious if you enter without smuggled goods, and will taken to pieces together with your vehicle? Or, some might say, why do we make such a detour after h Hotin, why don’t we go along the Moldovan border to o Odessa? Well, apart from the fact that in this way we would miss k Kamenets-Podolsk and the Hasidic Jewish pilgrimage sites m Medzhibozh and n Uman, we have already done this trip through the poorly maintained mountain roads of the Pre-Carpathians, through the impressive dam of the hydroelectric plant of Novodnestrovsk, across the border station of Mogilov-Podolsk rivalling Ádám Bodor’s famous Sinistra District in depression, and we would frankly not want anyone else to do it, only to make a half-day extension to visit the intactly preserved shtetl of Shargorod, which we will be therefore forced to miss. Again others after d Terebesfejérpatak/Dilove usually put the obligatory question as to why we would not make a sixty-kilometer abbrevation towards g Kuty. Well, not because the shorter road offered along the swift water of the Cheremosh exists only on the Ukrainian road maps, while in the reality the Cheremosh washes off at least half of it at every spring thawing, so in the rest of the year it works as a dirt road viable at a maximum speed of 5-10 km. And oh well, we could spare the forth three, back two-day long bus trip in a primitive way, to take a flight or an overnight sleeper, say, from Lwów, but then between a and o we would not see all the many letters, which are the most beautiful, historically most memorable Jewish sites of this Subcarpathia-Bucovina-Black See journey, and which we describe below.

a) Beregszász / Beregove / בערעגסאז. Within less than ten kilometers after crossing the border, we arrive to one of the major centers of Subcarpathian Hungarians and former Subcarpathian Jews. We stop by only for a short time, to change money, and to look around in the main square, still determined by the impressive building of the former Great Synagogue, in 1969 converted into a socialist realist house of culture.

b) Huszt / Khust / חוסט. The places marked in blue on the map – which could be much more – indicate those major sights where we cannot stop or only for a shor while, due to the lack of time, but along the way we will give a detailed report on them, and most of them we will see from the bus. Besides the ruins of the medieval castle, popularized by the most emblematic Hungarian romantic ode, Huszt also has a beautiful medieval church and an orthodox synagogue, about which we will also speak. Along the way we will also present Nagyszőllős / Vinogradov / סעליש, which was recently presented in a beautiful album of archive photos by a native collector now living in Israel, commented with his memories, about which we will soon write in Río Wang.

c) Técső / Tyachiv / טעטש. Here we just pass by the impressive synagogue converted into a sports club, and recall the old Rusyn musicians of the Band of Técső, who preserved for us the Jewish folk repertoire of the region – similarly to the Gypsy musicians in the southern, Romanian part of Maramureș, visited by the Muzsikás Ensemble –, and with whom the renowned klezmer musician Bob Cohen used to play live and publish common albums of folk music albums.

d) Terebesfejérpatak / Dilove, center of the world. Or at least of Europe. Here was established – according to the label of the obelisque, “with an extremely precise Austro-Hungarian leveler, according to the European grades of longitude and latitude” – the geographic center of Europe, marked by an earlier Latin, a later Russian, and a modern Ukrainian inscription. The exalted sense of the Mitte will be increased by the adjacent large and splendid Rusyn restaurant and folk art museum, where we will spend the first day lunch.

e) Kőrösmező / Yasinya / יאסנעה. Although marked in blue, if time permits, we will stop to commemorate and to say Kaddish in front of the memorial plaque of the local railway station to the eighteen thousand Hungarian “stateless” Jews, who in the summer of 1941 were handed over here, at the old-new border of Hungary, to the German authorities who then deported and killed them in Kamenets-Podolsk. Time now will not allow us to visit the beautiful nearby Jewish cemetery or to walk up to the source of the Tisza, the second largest river of Hungary, but we hope that we can make up for it soon at a Maramureș tour.

f) Kolomea / קאלאמיי. By leaving at the Tatar Pass the territory of the former Kingdom of Hungary, we arrive to the historical region of Podkutia, situated between Galicia and Bukovina, whose center was Kolomea, a trading town inhabited by a Jewish majority and a Hutsul minority. The Jewish historical monuments of the city were completely destroyed by the Germans and the Soviets, thus we only pass through it, so that we can arrive to Kuty at daylight.

The center of Kolomea before the war

g) Kuti / קוטוב, but we may safely add also its Armenian name, Կուտի, as this little town was mainly inhabited by Hasids, Armenians and Rusyns, had the glory of  becoming, in the last days of September 1939, the capital of Poland, before the Polish government emigrated from the coordinated attack of Soviet-German forces over the bridge of the Cheremosh to Romania. The Cheremosh, which from 1920 until WWII was the border between Poland and Romania, in particular between the settlements of Kuty and Vizhnitsa, whose Hasidic community was undivided in Austro-Hungarian times, gave a boost to smuggling, whose monopoly was in the hands of the two half-communities. The Hasidic population of Kuty, occupied by Germany in 1941, disappeared, but that of Viznitsa, which fell under Romanian occupation, has survived to this day. Both villages have a wonderful Hasidic cemetery, which are among the most beautiful ones in the whole Ukraine. At the cemetery of Kuty we will stop for a visit.

i) Czernowitz / Chernivtsi / טשערנאוויץ. Should I talk much about it? Yes, but in many separate posts, and also along the way, as it deserves. The capital of Bukovina, the most Jewish city of the former Monarchy, “Little Vienna” and “Jerusalem along the Prut” at once, where they nevertheless cultivated the purest German-language literature, and where Jewish community life lives its renaissance today. We will spend a whole day by visiting the once multi-ethnic city, and will also meet the Jewish community who are waiting for us with great joy.

j) Sadagura / סאדיגורא. The luxurious palace of the Tsaddik of Ruzhyn over the Prut, which has survived for several decades as a canning factory, but today is in the possession of Czernowitz’s Jewish community again. Its renovation was just completed in last autumn, so in the spring we will see it in its renewed splendor.

h) Hotin / Khotin’s castle on the bank of the Dniester: the most important Polish border fortress, which for centuries withstood the Ottoman conquest, and which played a decisive role in assembling the Polish army, with which in 1683 King Jan Sobieski liberated Vienna, besieged by the Turks. Today it is counted among “the seven wonders of the Ukraine”: we will see, why. The letter h – before others notice it – should stay of course before the i and j, but these twin letters were just as suitable to mark the twin towns of Czernowitz and Sadagura, as the h to indicate Hotin. A similarly stirring-up change of rhythm, so necessary on the long bus route, will be induced once more, by carrying forward the m indicating Medzhibozh.

k) Kamenets-Podolsk / קאָמענעץ. We are actively working to make this wonderful town known not just from its black fame of 1941, at least in Hungary, and this stop is also in the service of this PR. Nevertheless, we will also commemorate our “stateless” Jewish compatriots executed here.

Secretly taken photo by the Hungarian Jewish forced laborer and  lorry driver Gyula Spitz, on the Hungarian Jews taken to execution, Kamenets-Podolsk, 1941.

m) Medzhibozh / מעזשביזש. Grave of the founder of Hasidism Baal Shem Tov, around which an entire Hasidic pilgrimage center has been built up in recent years. A beautiful little town, melting into the surrounding nature, and boasting with a centuries old fortress and monuments, and perhaps the only one in the Ukraine, where the street labels are both in Ukrainian and Hebrew!


l) Vinnyica / ויניצא. Before WWII one of the major Jewish settlements in the Ukraine, whose complete extermination is documented by the infamous SS-photo bearing the inscription of “the last Jew of Vinnitsa”. Hitler wanted to make it the center of the conquered Eastern territories, and thus he built up the gigantic Werwolf-Führerhauptquartier, whose ruins are still visible next to the city. We will just pass through this city of bad memory and an impressive example of socialist realist architecture, and will have a lunch after it.

n) Uman / אומאן. The Hasidic center also known as “the little Jerusalem”, the largest Jewish center of modern Ukraine was established above the grave of one of the most important figures of Hasidism, Rabbi Nachman of Breslav, the great-grandson of Baal Shem Tov. On the occasion of Rosh Hashahah, as we have already written about it, Hasidic pilgrims come here by ten thousands from all around the world. We will also visit the lively Jewish quarter and Rabbi Nachman’s grave at our last stop before moving on to the Moscow-Kiev-Odessa highway, the smoothest route of our journey.

AAAND only three hundred more kilometers…

o) Odessa / אדעס, our trip destination, the city of the Black Sea Mediterranean, Neo-Classicist promenades, thieves’ songs, gangsters of the Moldavanka, once the third largest Jewish community in the world. How could we write briefly about it? In fact, we will write long, in the time before the trip, every two-three days. Until then please read the common post by the participants of our autumn tour to Odessa, which followed the same route.