From the 'Soniachne Zakarpattia' stop I rode to Pavlovo by bus. Two kilometres is not such a great distance, but a bus happened to be passing, and so I saved my strength for the coming tour of the mountain villages. The autumn day turned out warm, though a little overcast. The small village of Pavlovo is home to about 700 people. Its churches belong to two religious communities — the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Greek Catholic one. The first stands right by the bus stop and is consecrated in honour of Elijah the Prophet.
By the entrance, under a canopy, stand small sculptures of the Mother of God and of angels, made in the Catholic style. By the fence lies stacked firewood, used to heat the building.
Some 200 metres on, I stopped by the Greek Catholic Church of the Holy Eucharist, built in 2000 on the foundation of a former landowner's house. In the church's yard there is a well. On the tower, a clock is painted on three sides, showing one and the same hour throughout the day. I am very fond of tower clocks, but such an imitation, to my mind, adorns no building at all. Time does not stand still, everything changes swiftly, and those frozen hands are a little dispiriting.
The village has a community club with a library.
The building housing the school and the kindergarten is three small houses, resembling ordinary dwellings, joined to one another by passageways.
The road along which I walked leads to Perechyn and further on to Uzhhorod.
Along the way I saw the ruins of agricultural farms and the new builds of hotels or guesthouses going up on the bank of the River Pynia, into which construction rubbish was being dumped right there. It is very bitter to see such a thing. Someone wants to make money off those who come to rest in these lovely places, all the while destroying that very beauty. I crossed the River Pynia by the bridge — already hushed in autumn, but in spring swift and turbulent.
The Pynia is formed from its two tributaries — the Little and the Great Pynia, which take shape from small mountain streams. Then this whole watery artery, with its stony banks, rushes into the Latorytsia, known for its devastating floods. There are three versions of where the name Pynia comes from: that it foams (pinytsia); that it flows out from under a stump (pnia); that it runs through a locality where, in the past, a fine (penia) was levied for crossing the border. And so I walked two and a half kilometres. Pavlovo has grown together with the village of Ploske, which has a history of more than 400 years.
Here is a little shop by the road.
And this is the building of the village council serving five neighbouring villages at once.
Across the road stands a Second World War memorial listing the surnames of the soldiers — fellow villagers — who fell at the front.
This is what the administrative building of the forestry office looks like. By the entrance, at the roadside, stood jerrycans — whether for buying fuel or for selling it.
In the very centre of the village stands the Orthodox Church of the Holy Intercession, built in 1928. At that same time, three bells were installed on the bell tower.
On the mountain slope I could see a Greek Catholic church, but I did not immediately know how to reach it, and having walked along the street deeper into the village, I had gone far away from it and did not want to turn back, so I headed on towards the school instead.
It was already the end of the extended school day, and the younger pupils were waiting for the school bus. As I was photographing the huge inscription on the wall, they read it out to me in chorus, in twenty children's voices. Such was the patriotic pupils' rap I happened to hear, which speaks of these local children's longing to master their studies and instils hope.
"Bless us, Mother Ukraine,
To come to know life and learning,
To have a will for work,
And to grow up faithful to you."
To come to know life and learning,
To have a will for work,
And to grow up faithful to you."
By the school stands a full-height monument to our national poet, painted the colour of golden autumn — the very autumn I was admiring at that time in Zakarpattia.
Right nearby there is a football pitch — a place for future champions to train.
Returning to the central street, I saw the House of Culture, with plaques mounted on it bearing the date of the founding of the village's cultural centre and the date of Ploske's liberation from the fascist invaders in 1944. It is good that such events are marked, so that you already have some notion of the village's history.
Evening was drawing in; the householders were leading their cows home from the pasture. I asked a woman when the bus would come. She answered me, '15:30 is the last one,' without explaining that this was by local time, which differs from Kyiv time by one hour. Back then I still did not know this peculiarity — in these parts people live by local time, that is, minus one hour. And on my watch it was already almost four, so, as I realised, there would be no more bus. The man at the stop, who was holding bottles for 'Poliana Kvasova' water, realised the same. Losing no time, I set off along the road, reckoning in my mind that the way must be at least five kilometres, and I had already clocked up about six. Well, just to make it before dark. I had no torch with me, though here in some places lamps on solar batteries are mounted on the poles. The man, evidently, did not much fancy walking. I was already on the approach to Pavlovo when, at the bend, glancing back, I saw him some 200 metres behind me. Then he cut the corners, walking not along the road but across the meadow. And suddenly that very bus caught up with me — the one that leaves Ploske at 15:30 local time, and at 16:30 Kyiv time. The driver stopped, and I rode the tiny remaining stretch of the way. From the bus I watched that walker on his shortened route. What can you do — walking is good for you. Both for your health and for the impressions, which I share with you with such pleasure.
This story is also available in Ukrainian: Павлово і Плоске. Закарпатські села в долині річки Велика Пиня
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