Signs of Lvov

Lvov is a fairy-tale town – we all know it, but no one has ever actually been there. Or they were there long ago, maybe when it was a completely different town, for it is said that there are several towns in that place and that they reveal themselves when the veil of their façade is accidentally lifted to reveal a Polish or a Hebrew inscription, in rare instances German or sometimes Russian. Lvov is a town that not even its residents know, and that is fine, for as soon as you begin to realize who you are you begin to put on an act and lose yourself forever. That is why psychotherapists and travel guides will never be anything more than erudite archaeologists, pathologists studying the cells of a beautiful girl – and that girl might be our soul or the soul of the place where we find ourselves. Lvov is a beautiful girl who does not know she is beautiful, who has other worries than putting on her makeup. She is a girl about whom men sometimes dream but whom they hardly find, a girl for life, a girl who simply enjoys that she exists.