Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Felix Austria

tonight she goes to a lecture on contemporary military technology.” What have I done to him that he dislikes me so much? Adela was barely able to convince him to take me to a performance by the world- famous illusionist Chevalier Ernest Thorn. She knows that since my early days I have been interested in the nature of various miracles, in magic and sorcery. Especially in our time,whentheworld isalmost completely discovered, these remaining dark spots within it fascinate me, beckon me to penetrate them to the ultimate essence, to find the answer. Our era is fast and radiant. Margosches and Lieberman, the factory owners, race down the Tysmenytsia road in their automobiles at the speed of ten miles per hour.

We have not had the time to enjoy the wondrous gas streetlamps, and now our train station is already lit with electric lights (so what that they go out often, delighting the pickpockets). We have not had the chance to visit the Kaiserpanorama where, like in a fable, three- dimensional images from faraway lands appear in front of your eyes—and now those images have come to life and started moving in the electric theater Mr. Oeser has brought to town. We can no longer imagine either the city or ourselves without the elephant cries of locomotives, without dense pieces of soot from their trunks, without the smells of burning railway coal. And now we only laugh when someone’s granny recalls the days when the first local train went by the Kolomyia city

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