Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Ivano-Frankivsk, a Blacksmith's Mecca

Here's a little factoid about our new home: This coming May Ivano-Frankivsk will host the 11th annual International Blacksmiths' Festival. Each year blacksmiths from around the world gather in our city to show off their smithing skills. In previous years, festival participants have bestowed upon the city multiple metallic monuments memorializing their mastery of metal-molding, which can be found adorning parks and plazas across the city.  Here are some of the ones we've already found...
This plaza in front of the Precarpathian Museum is home to two blacksmith sculptures.  You can't see them in this photo, but the plaza just looks so nice...
The name 'Stanislawow', spelled here in both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets at the base of the arch, is the former name of the city.  It was renamed Ivano-Frankivsk in 1962.






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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 21, 2014 at 9:41 AM

    Hi Matt and Kathrina, Happy New Year. I'm enjoying your posts alot. The blacksmith's sculptures are really cool and Ivano-Frankivsk appears very picturesque. Also been thinking about you whenever the unrest in Kiev pops up on the news which is quite frequent. Do those events affect anyone outside of Kiev?

    Life at NSF is fine. Bob Wellek retired on Jan 3rd--just shy of 37 years of service. He announced his retirement only about a month before he did it. I miss him. Today is a snow day in DC and fed gov is shut down. This is about the third time this season, but at least this time it's actually snowing outside. In early Dec, we had a dusting of snow one evening but it was a normal winter day the next morning. So I walked to NSF only to find out the fed gov was shut down because of the weather! I now check my email for an "operations shutdown" message if I detect a single snowflake in the morning.
    Take care, Arlene

    ReplyDelete
  2. VitalityApril 12, 2014 at 11:17 AM

    This is great information guys and the photographs are beautiful! Thank you for taking the time/energy to share this.
    Cyd

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