From August 6 through August 21, 2009, Ukrainian folk art and cultural specialist Orysia Tracz will lead her 14th annual Folk Art and Culture Tour of Ukraine. Her group will explore local folk craft markets in a number of cities and towns, meet with artists, attend lectures, tour museums, and visit historic sites. The tour includes Kyiv, Kam'ianets-Podil'skyi, Kolomyia, and Lviv, with visits to Khotyn, Ivano-Frankivs'ke, and the Carpathian Mountains (Kosiv, Yaremche.) Visits to ancestral villages arranged. Participants will enjoy great shopping, fantastic food, and warm Ukrainian hospitality. You don't have to be Ukrainian to enjoy the trip, and conversations will be interpreted into English at all times.

Price $4,235.00 (Canadian) includes airfare, hotels and meals in Ukraine, and museum admissions. Taxes and insurance not included. Departure is from Toronto, with add-ons from Winnepeg, Edmonton/Calgary/ and Vancouver. Arrangements can be made from American cities as well. Your tour manager/guide Orysia Tracz is a recognized specialist in Ukrainian ethnology and culture, translator of four books (one on Ukr. folk costume, three on folk art), writer and lecturer. She has been leading tours to Ukraine since 1993.

For reservations and details, contact: Martha Banias, The Great Canadian Travel Company, 158 Fort Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3C 1C9, Phone (204) 949 0188: cell: (204) 781 8398 Toll Free: (800) 661 3830 ext 208

“I can believe in heaven after a place like this,” sighed the tourist. Another traveler, a descendant of the first pioneers to Canada over a century ago wondered, “How could they ever leave this beautiful place?” And one woman wept into my shoulder as we overlooked a Hutsul church with the Carpathian Mountains in the background, “Why do I feel so at home here? I’m a born Canadian.”

I don’t look for these experiences – they just happen. But I do look forward to being in the place where they occur - in Ukraine. The place is in the back of my mind all the time. For no good reason an image of a landscape, a city square, an interesting building, or a face pops up as if on a screen, and I’m there again in my imagination. If time, money, and family obligations permitted, I'd spend at least half a year there – hiring a driver, going wherever the spirit moves me, stopping wherever I want, for how long I want. Yeh, in my dreams! For now, I’m happy leading a folk art and culture tour to Ukraine once a year. I call it RETURN TO THE SOURCE. People from all over North America join me, and not all of them are Ukrainian or have Ukrainian roots. We have a grand old time and become fast friends in the two weeks together, forming bonds that last and reach across the continent.

And after we return, the group has a reunion at someone’s home in Winnipeg (where many of the participants live) with a pot-luck dinner, exchange of photographs, and much eating, drinking, laughing and reminiscing. The folks from far away phone during the evening, so we’re all back together. Last year, one of our group was good with a video camera and edited a delightful tape of our trip, making it possible for us to experience it again on the screen.

Why do people go on this tour? For so many varied reasons: to see the land from which their great-grandparents emigrated; to go back to the home they hadn’t seen since escaping or being taken as a force laborer during World War II; to see the homeland of one’s spouse or parents; or to just see a country about which they have heard so much. What do they expect to see? Are they impressed or disappointed? It depends on the person. If you want to see your ancestral village the way it was more than a century ago, it both is and isn’t there. It is still rural, still agricultural, with geese, cows, horses and wagons – but also with satellite dishes, gas stations, cars and buses, and stereo sets. The large cities are very contemporary and modern, with high rises, expensive cars, elegantly dressed people (it is Europe, after all), computers and, yes, even the ugly billboards. At the same time, you will see someone sweeping the street with a twig broom – but the street washing machines still come later. If you want to see the beauty of the land, architecture, and people, that is what you will see and remember.

The faces of the people, young and old, are exceptionally beautiful, and tell another whole story. If you want to see poverty and sadness, you will see that too, but is that all you wish to remember? Some folks, especially those who are not experienced travelers, judge Ukraine by North American standards of advancement, and forget that even on this side of the ocean, there are things better left and forgotten -- often more so than in Europe. But those who have traveled throughout the world are impressed with Ukraine, and with how quickly it has advanced since independence (observing its 18th year in August 2009) from what it had been under Soviet rule. The Ukrainian experience as an economic colony under centuries of foreign domination and persecution must also be considered – the wounds are still raw, and only now beginning to heal.

So what do we see and do during this folk arts and culture tour? We see the country; walk a lot; visit museums of all kinds; eat, drink, sing, laugh, and cry (from emotion and happiness); meet fascinating people; and SHOP. The flight begins in Toronto; other folks join us in Winnipeg, then we transfer in Frankfurt, and arrive in Kyiv. Between our arrival in this stunning ancient capital and our departure from Lviv in Western Ukraine, we visit Kaniv, Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi, Ivano-Frankivske, Kolomyia, Kosiv, and Yaremche. Traveling by tour bus,we walk on cobblestones and enter churches in centuries-old cities and in the countryside. We visit museums and galleries, sit in cafes, shop at markets and in stores, visit people and, in general, just enjoy the culture, history, and elegance of this beautiful country.

Kyiv, the capital, has been around for over 1,000 years, and you can stand in churches and monasteries built that long ago. The center of Lviv, a designated UNESCO Heritage Site,is an architectural jewel. The museums are spectacular, with both prehistoric artifacts and contemporary works. The art galleries and folk art museums show both the traditional as well as amazing modern works inspired by the folk. In the markets, we shop till we drop, buying woodcarvings, weavings, pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs – bring your egg cartons!), ceramics (bring bubble-wrap and hard-sided containers), embroidery, antique embroidered shirts, amber, coral, and modern jewelry.

Ukrainian liquor – wines, champagne, beer, and horilka (vodka) – is excellent, and the shopping and sampling is great. The Svitoch chocolates are delicious, with no preservatives – so they just must be eaten within a few weeks or months. What a problem, eh? My culinary discovery is mushroom-flavored potato chips, something that would probably not go over too well in the U. S. Meals are covered in the price of the tour, and we get to taste wonderful traditional foods, including some not familiar to North Americans of Ukrainian descent. But if you really crave a pizza or a MacDonald’s burger, those are available also.

Our guides in Ukraine are special – you know that they are pleased to serve you, that they are proud of their country, and this is not just a job for them. If you wish to visit your ancestral village, a driver will take you and will help you find relatives or people who may still remember your family. If you need an interpreter, one will go along with you. These visits to the countryside are special, because the landscape is beautiful (no matter where you go), and the people you meet don't remain strangers for long.

Ukrainian hospitality is something else. If one of our group is searching for her home village or his great-grandfather’s grave, we are all emotionally involved. All of us, including the bus driver, wiped away tears as one of our group was greeted by a relative and young children whom she had never seen before (a separation of three generations) – they waited for her with big bouquets of flowers, and the special Ukrainian greeting of an ornately-braided bread on an embroidered ritual cloth. Another time, we were all so happy for a woman who was able to light seven candles in her mother’s church and found that the cantor still remembered her family’s name from before World War II. Once, a young woman not only found her grandfather’s village and home (which he had left in 1918), but the relatives took out a photograph showing her as a child sitting on her grandfather’s knee – in Winnipeg. He had sent the photo home to Ukraine, and they kept it all these years.

I am proud of my ancestral homeland, and enjoy showing it off. All the way through, I talk (in English) about traditions, history, origins of symbolism, and whatever else needs to be explained. Every year I find improvement: highways and city infrastructure, renovation of heritage buildings, church reconstruction, and new construction. I look forward to the serendipity of events, and meeting people who are instant family and friends -- it’s just the way Ukrainians are. It’s an amazing, beautiful country, with lovely, hospitable people. Can’t wait to go back!

Orysia Paszczak Tracz, a free-lance writer and lecturer based in Winnipeg, writes and speaks frequently on Ukrainian topics. Her column on folk traditions appears in The Ukrainian Weekly.

From folk costume and art, to music, folk medicine, and traditions and rituals, all with origins in prehistory, Ukrainian folk culture continues to fascinate and influence contemporary life and arts. It permeates all aspects of Ukrainian culture today, even the most modern of clothing design, fine art and architecture, and contemporary song. This unique tour will explore the traditions of the Ukrainian people, and their expression through folk costume and folk arts.

Shopping, entertainment, dining and cultural experiences, and visits with museum curators, artists, and folk art masters. Embroidery, weaving, pottery, woodcarving, beadwork, pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs), and more! Special museum sessions in Kyiv, Kolomyia, Kosiv, and Lviv. August 6-21, 2009.

For a detailed itinerary, check the Great Canadian Travel Company web site. Contact Orysia at dorohy@gmail.com.