An alternative to “plastic tourism”

LVIV — For the next month two Lviv travelers, journalist and cultural scientist Andrii Mochurad and psychologist Pavlo Lozynsky, will be telling people in Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iraq about Ukraine. On Saturday, they set off on the “Viter na Skhid” (East Wind) Expedition. They will carry the Ukrainian national colors along the traditional tourist itineraries and follow exotic routes to unfurl the flag on top of Mt. Ararat. Another part of this project is being carried out by two other travelers, Volodymyr Hryniuk and Andrii Danylovsky, in Southeast Africa. This expedition is meant to familiarize people in the Middle East with Lviv and Ukraine, as well as to encourage Ukrainians to travel elsewhere instead of following the traditional Western itineraries. The Ukrainian travelers will share their impressions and cultural information with The Day. The following is an interview with project coordinator Andrii MOCHURAD on the day the expedition set off.

How did you conceive the idea of the East Wind project?

“We selected regions that were left out of the tourist charts or those we knew little about. For example, Turkey is a tourist country, except that only a small part of its western coast is frequented by tourists with hotel accommodations on an all inclusive basis. Tourists often do not travel further than the hotel grounds and know nothing about real Turkey that starts 20-30 kilometers away. How many Ukrainians know about Kurdistan? Or about Cappadocia, an ancient area sometimes described as the Kingdom of Fairy Chimneys, with historical monuments dating back to the 13th century? Everybody knows about Mt. Ararat and most believe it is located in Armenia (there is a brand of cognac bearing the name that has been popular since Soviet times). In actuality, this mountain is in Turkey.”

Is there anything special about the Middle East that attracts you?

“People who live in the Middle East have a very different mentality, so much so you start wondering about your origin. It is a different world even for an experienced traveler.”

There are polls to the effect that 70 percent of Ukrainians do not travel further than their respective oblasts, so Western Europe would be a big discovery for them. Which is the best way to advertise tourism in Ukraine?

“To begin with, Ukrainians do not travel much and money isn’t the point. I tell people how to make inexpensive trips to Europe. The trouble is, few believe that they can travel to Norway or Denmark by paying what they would usually have to pay to travel to Poland. An inexpensive trip can be made if one doesn’t use a travel agency. Travel agencies are a problem. When we tried to find sponsors for our project among these companies, their approach proved markedly unprofessional. We were told that our project wasn’t interesting (“Who would think of traveling from Africa to Lviv?”). Here the concept of tourism is typically Soviet, with few knowing what this business is all about. Philistine customers are offered gloss tours and are perfectly content with them. In this sense the Iron Curtain is still there. It is in their heads. Many still believe that trips abroad are expensive, difficult, and dangerous.”

How should one travel to enjoy the trip?

“He who has visited only one country has read just one page of a book. Such travels spell self-development, living at a frenetic pace. How should one travel? Some of my colleagues organize what they call corporate tours. For example, a tour for a group of physicians who will have things to discuss, visit foreign clinics, and share professional experience. In Lviv, such trips are practiced on a religious basis, in the format of pilgrimage. Traveling alone, you constantly find yourself in varying foreign environments. This, of course, requires psychological preparedness and knowledge of languages.”

Your project is also supposed to promote Lviv. How will you go about it?

“We will carry a symbol of Lviv and try to establish contact with foreign environments. We have made arrangement for a meeting with the Writers’ Union of Iraq. In Turkey we’ll contact ethnic communities. There is the language barrier, considering that we didn’t have enough time to learn Kurdish dialects. Anyway, we’ll try to take cultural samples and show ourselves to the world, not as journalists but as travelers, participants in a Ukrainian project.”