Saturday, July 2, 2022

Lviv in Context (1): Geography

To witness clearly to Jesus Christ, we want to keep our thoughts and words concrete. We may do so in two ways. One, and most importantly, we may relate how we think and speak to Jesus Christ. Two, we may relate how we think and speak to the other people and creatures in the place where we live.

We will be using the city of Lviv as a microcosm, as a smaller more comprehensible world, to better understand how we might witness more concretely to Jesus Christ there and anywhere else in our larger world. To benefit from using Lviv as a microcosm, we need to know—concretely—where it is. We will do that today by identifying the geographic position of Ukraine as a country and that of Lviv as a city in relation to others cities.

Lviv is in Ukraine. Beginning with the Atlantic Ocean at the port of La Rochelle, France, we would need to proceed east through France, Germany, and Poland to get to Ukraine.

If we can imagine standing in Lviv (Ukraine) looking west, it is:
     1180 miles (1900 km) to La Rochelle (Atlantic Ocean),
     975 miles (1570 km) to Paris (France),
     495 miles (795 km) to Berlin (Germany), and
     210 miles (340 km) to Warsaw (Poland).

Going clockwise, Ukraine is bordered to the north by Belarus; to the east by Russia; to the south by the Black Sea, Moldova, and Romania; and to the west by Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland.

Between Lviv and the capital cities of each of these bordering countries, it is:
     320 miles (515 km) northeast to Minsk (Belarus),
     690 miles (1110 km) northeast to Moscow (Russia),
     385 miles (620 km) southeast to Odessa (Black Sea port, Ukraine),
     295 miles (475 km) southeast to Chisinau (Moldova),
     385 miles (620 km) south to Bucharest (Romania),
     275 miles (445 km) southwest to Budapest (Hungary),
     330 miles (535 km) west Bratislava (Slovakia), and
     210 miles (340 km) northwest to Warsaw.

Lviv’s geographic coordinates are 49°51’North and 24°01’East. Other cities sharing roughly this same latitude include (from east to west) Kiev (Ukraine), Prague (Czechia), Frankfurt am Main (Germany), and Amiens (France). Cities located near the same line of longitude, from Baltic to Mediterranean seas, include Riga (Latvia), Vilnius (Lithuania), Sofia (Bulgaria), and Athens (Greece).

Now we will locate Lviv within Ukraine. Ukraine, from west to east, is about 760 miles (1,220 km) in length. Lviv is only about 40 miles (65 km) from the Polish border. That puts Lviv on the far western edge of Ukraine.

Between Lviv and important cities nearby, it is:
     160 miles (255 km) north to Brest (Belarus),
     290 miles (470 km) east to the capital city of Kiev (Ukraine),
     695 miles (1120 km) east to Luhansk (close to the Russian border),
     110 miles (180 km) south to Uzhhorod (on Slovakian border near Hungary),
     55 miles (90 km) west to the important border city of Przemysl (Poland), and
     180 miles (290 km) west to the important cultural city of Krakow (Poland).

Copyright © 2022 by Steven Farsaci.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.