See the title. The answer to the question is, I don't know. I hope to investigate, to find an answer.
When I first went there some 7 years ago I was not impressed.
Actually Burshtyn seemed a sleepy, ugly town. The old section, bad. Not even half-way interestingly boring. The new section, the one that came with the utility plant in the early 50's was worn down. Also ugly and bad. The 4 and 5 story apartment complexes were Khrushchev right, i.e. given 50 years of negligence.
Someone had a good idea though. The "new" Burshtyn was a planned community. A center, schools, parks, good walkways, past the forests to the sea. Most of us know 'seas' in Ukraine. They are simply reservoirs. But the sea in Burshtyn is particularly nice. The walk past the giant statue of the omnipresent Taras Shevchenko notwithstanding, builds in one, a faith of community. And that's what I saw years ago in Burshtyn. Don't exactly know why.
I wrote of Burshtyn as a failed place. At that time I wrote that no one was left. Only old people. The few children were left with the babushkas, so the mother could go to Kyiv or other more modern places...where real money could be earned. And sent back to the grandmother and the child.
The utility plant is carbon. Coal people from places like Donetsk regularly visit. I saw two ladies recently in Halych. The hotel in Burshtyn, owned by the state utility was full. Actually that was the same reason I was in that 'motel'. For some dumb reason, I had thought the utility hydro. The fact that it sat on a river I guess caused my inattention to the three ugly smokestacks and the spewing of a mess of carbon gases. Actually, all of us but the uneducated Greenpeacers know that most plants - hydro, carbon, nuclear, others - spew odious gases. Some more than others, of course.
Someday, maybe I'll write of 'cooling ponds' and such. All utilities have them. I have the non-distinction of claiming a $3 million dollar investment tax credit on one. Ignorance by the tax authorities prevailed. So me, too.
Burshtyn is in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, some 36 or 38 kilometers north of the city by the same name. It's also some 15-18 kilometers south of Rohatyn, home of the famed Roxalana. Her statue dominates the square and center of that interesting city. Burshtyn is also 12 miles north of the interesting town of Halych, home of King Danylo, founder of Lviv, the historic patron of Galicia. All this to say that Burshtyn's not much.
Except it's nice. And of late, much to my surprise has shown great vitality. Where I saw rot and ruin 7 years ago, old people, few children, now I wonder of what I saw before.
Young women and men push baby carriages. They are in large number. I sit in a park. Young boys kick footballs (soccer balls to me) in the park I sit. I saw many earlier playing on one of the several fields (do they call them 'pitches'?) in Burshtyn.
A young woman paints the white on the bottoms of the trees. The same type of white type paint, I think, has been applied to all the street curbs in Burshtyn.
Friday is bazaar day. A good market. The sides of the road are filled with automobiles. The rinok is full.
In this backwater I hear of a place where I can get an Internet connection. I can find all of the rest of the world. It opens at 9:00 AM, but a whole bunch of kids still wait at 9:15 AM. I come back. Much later. The kids in this backwater town play Internet games for 5 hryvnia an hour. Where do they get the money?
The manager of the Internet place is not particularly interested in helping me. He does offer the local TV station as a possibility. Despite my anger, I think I respect the young man's loyalty to his consistent clientele.
And the local TV station is a solution. I don't think it's actually a part of the station. But it does have a young fellow named Igor that can type stuff on my computer that gets it working. And he has a clientele of kids too. But he has a separate room for 'serious' users (I flatter myself... am I really more important than those kids?). And, by the by... the TV station has a fax machine. One-stop shopping, I say.
I'm thinking of living in Burshtyn. More likely Halych. My relatives in these two towns think it funny when I talk of computers and communication. They think that a far thing. I think, well...actually I know that the Internet connection I got with Igor was broadband, it had a cable. Also, I saw a bunch of satellite dishes attached to apartments. I suspect I can get Atlanta Braves baseball from Burshtyn, or Halych.
Maybe the big problem with these places in Western Ukraine is that they generally don't speak much English. Russian, either, for that matter. Actually I don't speak English either. Perhaps, over time, I can teach the populace American. More likely, I'll learn even more than language.
So, I'm damned confused about Burshtyn. Why over the last three years has it 'suddenly' improved? Why are the apartment buildings now painted? Why the strollers (baby carriages)? Why the new church (a beautiful edifice)? The benches in the parks are now fixed, no longer broken, why? The white paint on the curbs? The flowers planted in the parks? The dirt turned almost everywhere... suggesting a planting?
I just don't know.
I suspect it doesn't have anything to do with Yushchenko, Tymoschenko, Kuchma... who the hell ever the politicians... their ignorance. Maybe these are people... just being people... rejuvenating and caring... about themselves.
I'm a little proud of Burshtyn.
Halych too. Reminds me of Blue Ridge... and Georgia, and Tennessee and North Carolina...and Fightingtown (pronounced fightingten) Creek... and the trout...and more.
And the mystery remains. But I don't worry about it.
The change was good for Burshtyn.
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