 Kolomyia has arrived: it can be Wikied. Like George Bush's observation that the war in Iraq is just a comma in history, Kolomyia's Wiki entry is a series of short paragraphs touching upon nineteen nation-changes in an 800-hundred-year history. Kyiv-Rus, Halych, Poland, Moldova, Poland, Ottoman Empire, Poland, Ottoman, Poland, Austria, Russia, Austria, West Ukraine, Romania, Poland, USSR, Germany, USSR, Ukraine. You have to give the tenacity award to Poland.
All this flux has created a kind of stability. You can't drop what your doing every time there is a violent overthrow. You add a few new words to the local dialect, a few new spices to the rack, a new angle on local architecture. Kolomiya is the center of the Pokuttya region, meaning "in the corner". Just try to stay out of the way as the cannons role through.
As regimes changed, Kolomyia held tight to the thread of history. Despite the paprika added to borsch or the funny local dialect, itself a borsch of Slavic, Hungarian, Romanian, German, Kolomyia remains a most Ukrainian place. It is home to the Museum of Hutsul and Pokuttya Arts as well as the Kolomiya Museum of Pysanky, wondrously intricate wax and dye painted eggs. Not to say that the city projects flag-waving patriotism. Who's in power seems to mean less that staying close to the soul of the land, to tradition, to work done by hand in honor of ancestors.
Kolomyia lies on a slightly elevated plain abutting the Carpathian foothills on a line equidistance between Lviv and Chernivtsi. It is an hour's drive over winding but decent roads south of Ivano Frankivsk. It has a population of around 60,000 which is comparable to Luzerne, Switzerland or Santa Fe, New Mexico, brethren cities in mountainous places with rich cultural histories. And hoards of tourists. Well, not yet, not quite for Kolomyia. But there are local entrepreneurs betting that if they build it, the tourists will come.
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| Vitaly Paviuk | I first met Vitaly Paviuk at a small tourism development seminar at the Kolomyia rayon library. He called together a private-public group to brainstorm on priorities. The group included several area Peace Corps volunteers and, as a treat, we Americans were invited to stay at Vitaly's Kolomyia-based bed and breakfast on Friday followed by a stay at his new rural cottage on Saturday. As far as the B&B, Vitaly said we were in luck as it was vacant for the weekend. Hold on a minute. This is Kolomyia, barely on a path, much less one beaten. Even at $16 per night per person, where was the demand to uphold such an audacious claim? Surely this guy was dreaming.
Vitaly looks like a grown up Alfalfa from Our Gang. His face is boyish and doe-eyed, his dark blunt-cut hair parted in the middle. He speaks softly and carefully, and grins almost all the time. We arrived at On the Corner, so named because it is, to find a three-storied pitched-roof gray cube. Other than a small membership plaque for the Carpathian Tourist Board, there was no sign that this is a guest house. Inside were 350 meters, five bedrooms, two living areas, dining area, fireplaces, three bathrooms, cable TV, internet access and some people pretty darn proud of the place. We met Vitaly's mom, dad and sister, who are the main staff for On the Corner. Sister is just here on vacation from her large-chain hotel management job in Turkey. We chose our rooms, my daughter tagging the pink one with the balcony. We crashed onto comfy couches around the fireplace, waiting for dinner. Home made potato varenyky with shkvarky, crispy fatback fried with onions and garlic.
During the crazy 90s, while in high school, Vitaly's friend called from Germany. It was
a wonderful, civilized place and Vitaly should come. His parents scrapped together money to send their son to a six-month German language course at the prestigious Goethe Institute in Gottingen. He finished in two months and returned to find a job working with a German company exporting forest mushrooms. After two years of "the best business school of my life" he had saved enough to go to Prykarpaty State University and earn his legal degree. Then the phone rang again.
Another friend in Austria. Come to Austria and study. It's great. So he did, fitting right in, no homesickness at all. He thought he would stay, be a cosmopolitan European.
But one day he awoke and knew that he was going back to Ukraine to turn the family house into a bed and breakfast, the kind that he had become fascinated with in Austria. "I wanted to do something with the same quality as you find in the west, but with a Ukrainian face." His mom, who was cleaning houses in Italy, agreed immediately. His dad was skeptical. His son was a lawyer and should pursue a stable and prestigious career. Many people were discouraging. Crazy idea. Who would come to Kolomyia for a holiday? Build your silly hotel and sit and wait. Hah! Vitaly was philosophical. "I learned not to listen to that. You just have to believe in your ideas and keep going."
Over four months with an investment of $10,000 in materials, family and friends stripped the house to the bricks and put it back together again. "We took out a 400-liter cast-iron Soviet heating system and replaced it with a 40 liter PVC system." The first guest soon came through a Kolomyia travel agent. A businessman from Dnipropetrovsk. He stayed for a year. He brought his colleagues.
"At first it was really uncomfortable", bemoans the young businessman. "I didn't even buy socks for a year. We put all the money into variable costs for food and utilities and used the rest to buy furniture." He began advertising on the web including hostelworld.com which allowed online booking. The business took off among tourists that Vitaly calls "backpackers", foreign students looking for adventure and culture, include the grit, if you will. But visitors only stayed a couple of nights while Vitaly's vision had them staying longer. Leaving their money in the community. He checked with local travel agents. No one was thinking in terms of local events and excursions for these long-sought tourists who were to provide local economic salvation. Just a lot of sitting and waiting.
So, Vitaly created the Kolomyia sector of tourist services. He enlisted his uncle, a professor of history, geography and culture, and they went a'huntin. They organized local crafts people working in folk arts, painting, ceramics, rugs, blacksmithing, to provide demonstrations and workshops. They plodded through verdant hills staking out nature hikes. They organized transportation to run people to Bukovel or Kosiv for the day. At first, he took no cut from service providers. "I did it to keep guests in my hotel and to take care of the local people." Now he wholesales excursions to local agencies. But that is another business. In addition to importing water pumps, coffee beans and motorbikes, and that is getting ahead of our story.
Running at thirty percent annual occupancy by early 2004, he had put the nay saying to rest. He took a seat on the Carpathian Tourist Board and started helping, pro bono, others in town venturing into hospitality. "Tourists coming to Ukraine are experienced travelers," he notes.
"It makes it difficult because they are seasoned. They know what they want." On the Corner got a small mention in a "backpacking" article in the Guardian, then a note in the New York Times. By the end of the year, On the Corner was running at fifty percent annual occupancy. Then the phone rang again.
A Lonely Planet reporter had been by recently, secretly, after seeing the reference in the New York Times. She wanted to know if she could recommend OTC for the 2005 edition. "Our occupancy soared to 80 percent year round. We have lots of repeat customers, mainly from Europe, lots of families. It is a family business and it attracts families." He began wholesaling most of On the Corner's time to European tour agents. That is when he got bored and branched off into coffee beans and water pumps. People told him he had crazy ideas. Who in Kolomyia would buy imported coffee beans? When he sold the business, he was moving a hundred kilos a month of beans through a retail shop in sleepy little Kolomyia.
It seems that Vitaly has both the courage to reach out and grab opportunity and the velocity to gather no moss. The phone rang again.
This time it was Mr. B. He wanted to bring to fruition his vision of a peaceful country retreat on 200 hectares that he had recently acquired. Would Vitaly be interested. Yak zhe!
Mr. B is a private down-to-earth kind of guy. The proverbial grizzled friendly bear. I asked him why, like Vitaly, he could live anywhere in the west - his daughter lives in America - why stay in Kolomyia? "Now don't go writing something about patriotism and all that. This is my home, this is where I am comfortable, this is where I want to be." Mr. B has had his share of traveling. He roamed around Europe during perestroika working illegally as a construction tradesman. He saved some money. When the coup took place, it was time to come home. He started a small factory making hand-crafted furniture for export. That led to general contracting for fancy dachas all around Ukraine. Life was good. He had time for fishing.
Mr. B is passionate about fishing. "My favorite lake was wild, full of the most beautiful pike." Through bad management, the lake died. So he bought it. He worked for a year with Vitaly to clean and restock it. It was christened Silver Lake. It is now a lovingly managed home to fourteen kinds of fish. Mr. B's eyes sparkle when he says, "Some of those fish are pretty big. I want to try some bow fishing." What? You know, with a bow and arrow.
They built a four bedroom cabin ten meters from the shore. We drove to Silver Lake Cottage just after it opened, on a gorgeous Fall day, color like I had never seen in Carpatia. The cottage was small and fanciful, like something you would come across in a fairy tale. Everything was made of wood and smelled of pine sap and holiday. It was not luxurious, but peaceful, private, other worldly. What was there to do? Fish, of course. Ride the all-terrain vehicle which was modified to dampen the noise. Walk for hours through the woods, along the lake and river. My daughter found a brood of four kittens which were generously offered as free souvenirs. We made shashlyk for dinner.
"This is not about money," says Mr. B. "Its about nature and peace and privacy. I have always wanted to work in hospitality, but I want guests with whom I can socialize, who appreciate the preservation of natural beauty. Right now we only have guests from On the Corner. We will see how it goes before building some more. I want to do a sauna and a swimming pool. I have seen a lot of hotels, and they are all more or less the same. I want this to be something different."
Vitaly has been sitting at the table during this interview. "Can I add something?", he asks.
"I like our city council now, I like the mayor. They have a vision. Kolomyia is all about community. Money is starting to come in. We are working on plans for repatriation of people working abroad. But we have to avoid mass tourism, keep the character of Kolomyia." He tells me about his new vision to create facilities for business conferences and training. But really, who would come to Kolomyia for something like that?
Valerie Wright came to Ukraine in 1992 as part of the first group of Peace Corps volunteers in the former Soviet Union and was drawn to stay. After many years mainly in Kyiv, she is now building a new home in Ivano-Frankivsk region and will contribute frequently to the Observer.
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