The Ukrainian city became a refuge for the long-haired rebels under the Soviets. That tradition remains very much alive, says novelist Andrey Kurkov
Two dozen cats live and work in the cafe at 1A General Grigorenko Street, in Lviv. They “work” as psychotherapists, bringing relief to customers stressed out by the war. People go there to drink coffee, eat cake and pet the cats. The cafe stays open even when a missile attack has caused power cuts throughout the city. Alik Olisevich sometimes goes along to make sure that the cats themselves are keeping calm.
Olisevich is Lviv’s best-known – and possibly oldest – hippy, and the keeper of the city’s hippy movement archive. He can most often be found in the Virmenka cafe in the Armenian quarter of the old town, an institution that has been operating since the 1970s central to Lviv’s hippy history. Local students occasionally pop in to see the old-timers – hippies, and writers who seem to have been sitting there since the place opened more than 40 years ago.
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