Once you find yourself in the Carpathian Mountains, something happens inside, you begin to marvel at the beauty of life, the land, love...Is it the intoxicatingly clear air with the pungent pine fragrance or being closer to the sky? After visiting these places once, you will always want to return.
At present, after instituting visas, many Ukrainians no longer cross the Polish, Slovak, or Austrian borders, but prefer to go on skiing vacations in the Ukrainian Carpathians. This has produced a heavy influx of tourists. All the ski resorts, tourist lodges, and other tourist accommodations in the neighboring villages (known these days as agrarian settlements, perhaps as a tribute to agrotourism) are filled to capacity.
In Lviv oblast, for example, tourism has increased by 10% this year and there is every indication that it will continue to grow. Of course, reaching this increment was not easy. Attracting tourists requires considerable promotional effort, information support, and a coordinated action plan. Two years ago, Lviv opened a tourist information center courtesy of the Lviv Tourist Association for the Development of Tourism. Shortly afterward, its offices opened at Lviv Airport and at the border customs checkpoint of Krakivka (recently yet another one started functioning in Zhovkva). Tourists, on crossing the border, want to know about the itineraries, hotel accommodations, service, and so on. Lviv was the first to introduce such information centers, because there was no alternative, tourism being the only source of income in most such populated areas.
In March 2003, Lviv oblast adopted one of Ukraine’s first resort, tourism, and recreation development programs, for 2003-07, worked out by the regional administration’s resort and tourism department jointly with the National Academy’s Institute for Regional Studies. Still later appeared the National Tourism Development Program, the Resort Business Development Program. The cabinet is deliberating the next resort business priorities program. Lviv oblast was also among the first to sign a cooperation agreement between the Tourist State Administration of Ukraine and the regional administration, and to work out a tourist itinerary marking and coding system that was officially examined, coordinated with the State Committee on Standards and Certification, and is currently recommended all over Ukraine. Incidentally, the tourist business consists of what appear to be minor things, like regularly supplied clean rushnyk embroidered towels, tasty meals, good lighting, and polite guides. At present, young specialists are trained for the tourist industry by fourteen higher schools at various levels of accreditation.
Large and small hotels have been certified. Although only two big ones have received four stars, tourists often prefer smaller and homelike ones. This means, of course, that the latter must have all the expected amenities, including interior design, service, and cuisine. There are many such small hotels in the vicinity of Lviv and along all major highways. In fact, they need little advertising, as their publicity is secured by word of mouth. Last year, thirty of them were certified and their number grows every year.
However, what makes Lviv oblast such a tourist attraction these days? People want to see places of interest and be in scenic environs. They find all this in Galicia. Where else can one celebrate Christmas in a more exotic atmosphere, with countless marketplace puppet shows, with whole villages joining in the festivities, when one is drawn in a whirlpool of songs and dances?
I am looking through the 2004 Tourist Calendar of Lviv Oblast. It contains plenty of information. This small brochure helps every domestic and foreign tourist choose an itinerary and event that will be especially interesting, like climbing Mt. Pikui, the highest elevation point (in the village of Bilaovytsia in Zhovkva district), or February 24, or the Ukrainian Palianytsia [unleavened bread] Festival in Zolochiv district. Some will be eager to attend the Women, Fashion, and Cars auto show as part of the Coffee Bean Mystery Fest.
The calendar was first issued in 2003 and helped the local budget receive a 14% returns increment (mostly from the local tourist business). At present, the tourist industry makes up only 11% of all budget receipts. Lviv residents sincerely hope that with time it will be the lion’s share. People visiting Lviv more often then not decide to spend their vacations at Skole or Slavsk, rather than going to the Carpathians. They invariably climb Mt. Tysovets to marvel at the panorama opening from its peak, something one will remember long after. Tourists now stand in lines for the two sit-down car cableways, although many prefer rope tows (24 available). Unfortunately, the thirty alpine skiing tracks are not enough. Also, the sit-down car cableways have long outlived their service lives (each has been in service for thirty years), which is another factor to keep in mind.
However, those living in Skole District, particularly those responsible for its economic growth, are in good spirits Mykhailo Hnatyshyn, head of the district administration, says there is a real investment boom and that it will quickly change the local lifestyle, adding that, “Previously, the whole infrastructure was focused on Slavsk and Tysovets, but now we are trying to spread things throughout the whole district. In other words, hotels and cottages for vacationers have started being built in a number of villages; mineral springs are prospected (there are 64 springs in the district). Hopefully, the water supply, sewage, and road construction problems will be solved soon. Villages are being revived.
Take, for example, Volosianka. The village is eight kilometers from Slavsk and once considered a depressed zone, slowly but surely dying out. At present, two hotels and a sit-down car cableway are under construction. The construction of an elementary school is being completed at the village council’s expense. A gas pipeline is also slated to be installed.
The village of Orivachyk is another example. Ukrainian Airlines has built a hotel complex of five cottages and a rope tow. The company did it for its own people, of course, but it means jobs and a better living for the locals.
Investors will soon appear in Pidharka, Sopit, and Urych. Kyiv firms plan a three-star hotel, rope tows, skiing tracks, and tennis courts nearby. Everything will be done in keeping with the required formalities: allocation of plots, paperwork, and payments. It is true, however, that the current legislation has many gaps, including the rope tow as well as alpine skiing track design and technical requirements. Now these problems are being solved with the aid of local specialists.
Private housing construction has received fresh impetus over the past several years. Large cottages lining the road are in most cases so- called agrosettlements. Currently the district boasts 83 resorts, with 38 functioning throughout the year. No one knows the exact number of such agrosettlements; perhaps some seventy, each offering amenities matching a small country hotel. There one problem, however; the current legislation does not provide for green tourism, just as there are no clear provisos on how their owners should pay taxes. Skole authorities found a solution to the problem. A session of the local council decided to levy UAH 100-150 a month on every proprietor, and the people received this with understanding. Likewise, all those many tourist lodges, being branches of business entities located all the way from Lviv to Kyiv, must become taxpayers, but this problem is too difficult to be solved by Lviv oblast without state support.
TYSOVETS, GEM OF CARPATHIANS
Visiting the Carpathian Mountains without visiting Tysovets would mean depriving oneself of a memorable experience. The place is very special. Here even the air is therapeutic. Foreign tourists insist that it looks and feels like a scenic Alpine spot, although we think that it even better, for it is our native land. Homes are scattered on the slopes — 36 in all — and there is a sports base. All this is Mount Tysovets. One can get there only by car; there is no public transport, so the place looks like it is somewhere at the end of the world.
The sports base of Tysovets has a long and eventful history. Ukraine’s top athletes have trained here and famous people have spent and continue to spend vacations. It was here that a round of a world freestyle skiing championships was held in the Soviet Union for the first time. Sportsmen and tourists can use a ski stadium with a biathlon shooting range, slopes as though custom-made for freestyle, slalom, and giant slalom events (in summer, roller skiing tracks are equipped), and rope tows. Too bad the ski jump stays idle, as its repair and renovation cost a huge sum. Under the Soviets, the place was a military base and later converted into a sports one. Many facilities were added, but fortunately, it remained under military jurisdiction. Fortunately, because it saved the local forest from being felled. One of the recent attachments, a boiler room, laying a gas pipe to it, and supplying gas to all the structures cost UAH 4 million. This is serious money, of course, but the expenses will be recouped in two and a half years. Previously, liquid fuel was used for heating and it cost UAH 1.8 million a year. Gas will cost UAH 222,000. Moreover, the pipe was laid by the military, and it has a diameter of 159 mm, allowing supplies to all the neighboring villages. And so the locals regard Tysovets as a symbol of civilization soon to come, along with employment and medical assistance.
The sports base is not new, but it is always filled to capacity. There is a heavy influx of students, attracted by the opportunity to ski and then have a hot shower at 24 hryvnias per 24 hours (by comparison, a single accommodation at any of the nearby agrosettlements costs $30, rising to $50 on New Year’s Eve. This explains why Tysovets remains practically always packed. Of course, people of means can have a room at a cottage for 300 hryvnias a day.
It gets dark early in Tysovets, and the evening can be spent training in the capacious gym, but after the day’s skiing one tends to relax without any extra physical exertion. Most tourists spend the evening outdoors, under the starlit sky that seems very close at this altitude, adding a touch of enchantment to the atmosphere. There is also a discotheque and bar, a poolroom, and a television set. So much for the nightlife. The fact remains that perhaps half of the customers come here not for entertainment but for serious skiing. These are athletes training for their next competition or various tournaments, invariably including Ukraine’s winter and summer championships, the Ukrainian Cup, junior qualifiers for international ski competitions. Tysovets hosts the winter biathlon championships.
“Do you like skiing here?” I asked Olena Petrova, Meritorious Master of Sport and silver medal winner at the Nagano Olympics.
“Here the skiing tracks are always kept in excellent condition, as they have two retracks. And they may well have all the rest. It’s no match for Khanty-Mansiysk, of course — as I think that place is the world’s best sports base — but the local conditions are gradually improving. They serve better meals and a cafО will open soon. The shooting range has some flaws and the roller skiing track has to be renovated. It used to be in an excellent condition, but it’s thirteen years old... They also need a snow gun, the kind you have at Protasiv Yar in Kyiv. If they install it, training sessions will start earlier, with the first snow. Several salvos and the track is ready,” she told me.
Volodymyr Melnykov, base manager, dreams of making Tysovets the world’s best winter sports facility. In fact, his dream could come true if Tysovets came to be regarded by the authoritres as a strategic national project and the military would no longer have to shoulder all the expenses. After all, it is an Olympic training ground. The cabinet and the head of state issue resolutions and edicts stressing the need to advance culture and sports. Words should be followed by deeds which, in turn, will be followed by tourists.
