Did the war make Lviv more diverse?

Even on this grey day, the city somehow feeels more colourful than it used to be

Drawing by Author

I woke up at 6:30 am. I had three pour-over coffees yesterday, and it’s way more caffeine than I would usually have. I also had a coffee-flavoured macaron – who knows how much caffeine was in it? It probably had a marginal contribution to yesterday’s overall caffeine intake.

My out-of-control coffee consumption didn’t stop me from going to bed early – at around 9:30 pm. I did wake up a few times during the night. A refrigerator in my AirBnb flat was performing a symphony of cold, buzzing sounds – with interacts, of course – and I had to turn it off in the middle of the night. Otherwise, I woke up well-slept.

It’s 8:20 now. I just came to a coffee shop called Black Honey in the Old Town of Lviv. I ordered an aeropress coffee. After finishing my third cup yesterday, I went to read that areopress usually has less caffeine than other methods of alternative brewing. From now on, I’ll stick to it or a regular filtered coffee.

While waiting for the aeropress, I ate a lemon-infused paster de nata, which was delicious and much better than homecooked buttered potatoes and carrots I ate in the morning. I’m trying to have some simple meals whenever I can to help my stomach survive after everything else it has to digest throughout a day – that is coffee and pastries, to be precise.

It’s a grey day in Lviv, one of those when it drizzles but never actually rains – teasing you and keeping you on alert, making you wait for the main event that never comes. Coupled with many grey building and grey roofs, a grey day feels particualrly grey here. Lviv is a grey city, in general. This omnipresent grayness comes off the walls and roofs and fills local moods with lethargy, sleepiness and subdued depression. People here are not unfriendly, they’re just all a little bit sad – like Lana Del Rey’s entire discography.

I think it’s this vibe that makes me reach for too many cups of cofee. Everyone in Lviv drinks coffee. Coffee here is also too good to not drink. This city knows how to be sad and how to counteract it with great coffee. I don’t just want to drink coffee when I’m here, I must – this is the way.

This aeropress is no less great than any other brew I had in the few days I’ve been here.

Let’s enjoy it for a moment before it kicks in and I take off with the day.

We say Ukraine is united, but – as it is true for many other territorially big countries – that unitedness is more of a utopic ideal rather than real state of affairs. People in different cities of Ukraine live distinctively different lives, even more so with the ongoing war.

In Lviv, air strikes have been rare throughout these years and, of course, no combats of any sort took place – the city is too far away from the border with Russia. The war affected Lviv in other ways, the main of which was the influx of refugees. I don’t know how the city looked in first months of the war. I didn’t travel here in that time. When I look at Lviv now – two years since the full-scale invasion – I can see a change from the city I knew prior the war.

Before, people here had a strong rural plume following them. You could see that many of them came from neighbouring villages and town and only few grew up in cities. They also used to look more alike, rather strict and noticeable divergence in fashion were uncommon.

After the fullscale invasion, Lviv had to mix with the other parts of Ukraine and – to such extent – for the first time in its long history. The most cerebral , grandiose and western part of Ukraine meets the other side of it – one that is responsible for our homeland’s colourfulness and wild character. The heat-full and passionate southern Ukrainians. The industrious and tameless Ukrainians from the east. The cooler and calmer Ukrainians from the north. You can also see foreign faces and hear foreign langauge more frequanly.

In this historical moment, all roads lead to Lviv. Perhaps, Lviv hasn’t even realised yet what a mixture is brewing here. The city knows how to brew good coffee, I hope it will learn how to house this new and unfammiliar diversity under its roof.

It makes me strangely excited to see the first fruits of that bonding.

Even on this grey day, I can see more colour and warmth than I would expect to in this city of reserved temperament.

I came to Lviv to rest, but something still makes me feel restless. I know what that “something” is – the war. The war still makes me feel restless and depressed. I think that even here– in the city most distant from the war – people still share that sentiment of restlessness.

As much as we try to live in the moment, our thoughts are somewhere in the future – in that space and time when the war ends and we can feel that life makes sense again. Living next to the horrors of war makes it all insensible and wrong. Yet, we still do and we still wait for the brighter future.

This text is about to end, and it makes me sad because I don’t know what else to do.

I’ll definetly get more coffe later.

I might also go on a walk through the streets of Lviv, looking for something to make sense of on this grey, drizzly day.