First published: 28/02/23.

Tsunami

Wooden Tserkvas Of The Carpathian Region

Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region (Inscribed)

Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region by Tsunami

There are 8 of these tserkvas in Ukraine. Besides the one in Zhovkva, which is just outside of Lviv, none has written a report on others yet, so I will briefly report on the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Nyzhnii Verbizh near Kolomyya, Ukraine. 

During my 2 month-long trip to Europe from Los Angeles in autumn 2013 (the year it was inscribed) I walked across the border from Sighetu in Romania to Solotvyno in Ukraine, took a mini bus to Rakhiv and another one to the Hutsul "city" of Yaremche. Between Rakhiv and Yaremche there is another one of the 8 tserkvas at Yasinya, but I did not have time to stop there. After a night in Yaremche (of which I was curious because it was the main setting for the most famous Ukrainian film in history, Shadow of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) by Georgia-born, Armenian / Soviet filmmaker Sergei Parajanov who mainly worked in Ukraine), I headed to Chernivtsi by bus with a stop in Kolomyya only for 90 min.. Once at the Kolomyya bus station, because the church is still 5 km away in the village of Nyzhnii Verbizh, I immediately took a taxi.

According to the UNESCO site, this church and the aforementioned one in Yasnya are the two Hutsul-type churches, which is one of the 4 subcategories of this group of 16 churches. It was more unusual looking than I expected with 5 octagonal towers with pear cupolas on top, which are all covered with grey tin panels, even though it is wooden underneath. 5-domed Byzantine / Eastern Orthodox church is not so uncommon, but this one does look uncommon. Although you cannot tell from my photo taken from the ground level, if you see an arial photo of this church, you'll realize these towers are quite tall, sitting on the base with the horizontal logs. It was originally finished in 1808 but was renovated in 1990 with the embossed tin panels, as indicated on the front panel. Its original architect, a local named Grigory Semeniuk, supposedly received a gold medal of merit from the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand for this design.

But unfortunately the church was closed and, as I remember, the taxi driver tried to call someone to have it opened for me. But after 20 or 30 min. nobody showed up, so I had to go back to the bus station with the taxi. It was such a pity, as I see in the photos on Google Map that the interior looks amazingly colorful and cheerful, decorated with icons and Hutsul crafts. You might say, not just a corner of the interior, but the whole interior looks like a religious souvenir shop, but the interior is definitely something you cannot imagine from the exterior decoration. 

Behind the church was a wooden bell tower and also nearby was a statue of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine's national poet, like Pushkin in Russia and Schiller in Germany. 

While writing this report, I was amazed to find direct buses from Wroclaw (through Krakow and Lviv) and Gdansk (through Warsaw, Zamosc and Lviv) to Kolomyya. The buses stop next at Kosiv (UNESCO ICH for its Hutsul ceramics) before reaching the final destination of the so-called Hutsul capital of Kryvorivnya-Verkhovyna (where there is a museum dedicated to Shadow of Forgotten Ancestors). I have previously found another direct bus from Wroclaw (which is my base in Europe) to Kamianets-Podilskyi and yet another one to Chernihiv (which I sometimes took to move between the two cities). I'm not sure if these buses are actually running today (they are, according to Google Map), but I assume they are during the peace time. To me this shows how closely Ukraine and Poland are related even today, but mostly due to the many Ukrainian people who have been working in Poland. 

From Chernivtsi I took an overnight train to Kyiv, which was the final destination of this trip. 5 days after I left Kyiv for Los Angeles, the Euromaidan Revolution started taking shape in Kyiv. It was late November, 2013. The rest is history. 

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