Sufaud

The Wall Street Journal
July 14, 2004
PAGE ONE
Journey to the Center Of Europe Involves Many a Wrong Turn
Mr. Xoma Marks the Spot In Ukraine, but Lithuania May Have a Better
Claim

By MARC CHAMPION
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July*14,*2004;*Page*A1


RAKHIV, Ukraine -- At the side of a road occasionally washed out by a
river in this remote corner of Ukraine's Carpathian Mountains stands a
head-high white and blue obelisk. It's a few hundred feet from the
border with Romania, and a three-hour drive on potholed roads to
Hungary, the nearest European Union country.

"This," says Vasil Xoma, Rakhiv's deputy mayor, "is the center of
Europe."

Picture:
http://tinyurl.com/3vrzh
Caption:
Vasil Xoma


Mr. Xoma and the people of Rakhiv are sure of their place in the world
because of the Latin inscription on the base of the obelisk. It was
placed a few miles outside Rakhiv by a team from the Austro-Hungarian
Military Geographical Institute back when this region belonged to the
Hapsburg empire.

According to the translation in Rakhiv's official guidebook, the
inscription, chiseled into the stone and carefully detailed in gold
paint on a blue background, reads: "Constant, precise, eternal place.
The center of Europe was determined very precisely, with a special
apparatus produced in Austria and Hungary, with the dial of meridians
and parallels. 1887."

Rakhiv, a poor logging region that has lost most of its tourist trade
since the collapse of the Soviet Union, hopes the obelisk will help
turn its fortunes.

A log building near completion a few meters away is to house a
center-of-Europe information kiosk. Mr. Xoma has opened a small hotel.
A South African minister says the town's position is a sign from God
and is building a psychological healing center. "Rub here and your
wish will come true," says Mr. Xoma, pointing to a well-worn brass
button at the base of the obelisk.

The trouble is, the translation -- made decades ago by "Academician N.
Tarasov" -- is wrong.

The marker is actually one of seven that Austrian geographers
scattered around the former empire as fixed points from which to
measure altitude, according to the current Austrian Geographical
Society. The geographers effectively transferred sea level from the
only piece of coast that the empire had access to, at Trieste on the
Adriatic Sea, inland. "It isn't saying anything about the center of
Europe," says Ingrid Kretschmer, chief cartographer with the society.

----------
RESHAPING EUROPE

See an interactive map with profiles of the countries that joined the
European Union
http://online.wsj.com/documents/info...-frameset.html

See a map of Rakhiv, Ukraine, one of a number of towns claiming to be
the Continent's geographical center.
http://tinyurl.com/6kc6k
----------

As the European Union expands eastward, redrawing the political map of
the Continent, towns claiming to be at Europe's geographical heart are
scattered far and wide. Some treat the distinction as a tourist draw.
For others, there are political undertones. Markers are dotted across
the land -- often with as little basis in reality as the Rakhiv
obelisk.

A stone outside the medieval gold-mining town of Kremnica in Slovakia
has a rock marked "Center of Europe." It was placed there in the early
1990s and has no known scientific basis, says Anton Brezak, deputy
director of the Institute of Geography at the Slovak Academy of
Sciences. It "was probably inspired by the political movement of
Slovaks for state independence," Mr. Brezak added, noting that also
etched into the stone are three key dates leading up to Slovakia's
Jan. 1, 1993, breakaway from the former Czechoslovakia.

Poland has two claimants. Szymon Antoni Sobiekrajski, cartographer and
astronomer to Poland's last king, calculated in 1775 that the center
of Europe was in Suchowola, Eastern Poland. That was where two lines
spanning the Continent crossed, says Jerzy Ostrowski at Poland's
Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization. One line ran from
Cape Porsanger, in Norway, to Cape Matapan, in Greece. The other ran
from Cape St. Vincent in Portugal to the easternmost point of Russia's
Ural Mountains. Meanwhile, residents in the town of Kiernozia, near
Warsaw, believe the center of Europe is located directly under the
ceiling lamp of the dining room of the local priest's rectory.

More plausibly, in 1989, the National Geographical Institute of France
calculated that Europe's geographical center was in Lithuania, close
to its capital, Vilnius. It got there by calculating the Continent's
"center of gravity" -- as if you carved out a cardboard map of Europe
and balanced it on a pin.

Whether it's the center of Europe or the center of the European Union
also makes a difference. The Belgian village of Oignies-en-Thierache
has a glass monument that used to mark the EU's center. Now, with the
EU's expansion May 1 to include 10 more countries, that honor has
shifted to Kleinmaischeid, a small village near Koblenz in western
Germany, according to the French institute, using its
center-of-gravity method.

The Ukrainian obelisk had Soviet authorities persuaded of its
authenticity: They put a big steel spike next to the obelisk to
double-mark the spot, which seemed to place the heart of Europe firmly
within the Soviet orbit. The site is still called Europe's center on
official Ukrainian Web sites.

The inscription isn't simple to translate because parts have been worn
off and painted over incorrectly. The Wall Street Journal asked an
Oxford University classics professor to translate it. She consulted
with another scholar who found an earlier transcript of the Rakhiv
inscription that was easier to read, and came up with this:

"Main fixed point of exact height-leveling carried out in
Austria-Hungary in connection with the European measurement of
meridional and parallel degrees. 1887" The professor, reluctant to
pour cold water on Rahkiv's ambitions, asked not to be identified.

Professor Kretschmer said the reference to meridians and parallels may
have been connected with a project at the time to measure the
curvature of the Earth in Europe, although she was uncertain.

In fairness to Mr. Tarasov, it took a classics professor from Oxford
University two days of consulting with colleagues to figure out what
the inscription said, largely because parts had been worn off or
painted incorrectly, making the Latin gibberish.

But the revelation that Rakhiv is probably not the center of Europe
seems unlikely to deter anyone here, where there is a strong desire to
join the EU along with neighbors from Slovakia and Hungary, which
entered in May, and in a few years' time, Romania, too.

Rakhiv's claim, however tenuous, has already helped win it some
admirers. Benna Cloete, a former minister in the Reformed Church of
South Africa, says he has fallen for what he describes as Rakhiv's
mysterious energy and hopes to move here next year. The group he runs,
Mature Personhood, has bought two pieces of land here on which to
build training centers for "wounded healing" seminars.

The group works in South Africa, Egypt, Britain and Ukraine taking
lost souls through a weeklong personal journey that attempts to repair
the spirit by reconnecting them with themselves, God, other people and
nature, Mr. Cloete says in an interview at one of his retreats in
Kent, England.

He says he first visited Rakhiv in 1996, as he searched for a place to
conduct healing seminars. He was impressed not just by the location
but by the resilience of the local "Hutsul" mountain people, who had
retained their spirit after decades of Communist rule.

"When we discovered this was the center of Europe, we thought: Perhaps
God wants us to do something here, calling people back to the roots of
humanhood in Europe," Mr. Cloete says.

Informed about the mistake in translation, Mr. Cloete says: "It's been
called the center of Europe and accepted very widely. I don't think it
will be easy to erase that perception."

Rakhiv's officials still hope tourists will make the pilgrimage to see
their obelisk and the nature reserves in the mountains above their
town. Surrounded by ruggedly beautiful mountains that rise just above
2,000 meters (6,500 feet), Rakhiv used to attract about 100,000
tourists a year from around the former Soviet Union to visit nearby
national parks and drink the mineral waters. Nowadays, that number has
fallen to fewer than 20,000, says Mr. Xoma.

"I wouldn't even talk about these other places as the center," says
Deputy Mayor Vasil Buzash, sitting at a table with Mr. Xoma, two more
deputy mayors and Mayor Yuri Kabal. "This is the center of Europe."


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...863020,00.html

MAP: "Centers of Europe"
http://online.wsj.com/public/resourc...2004212630.gif

Miguel Cruz

Sufaud <> wrote:
    > The Wall Street Journal
    > July 14, 2004
    > PAGE ONE
    > Journey to the Center Of Europe Involves Many a Wrong Turn
    > Mr. Xoma Marks the Spot In Ukraine, but Lithuania May Have a Better
    > Claim
    > . . .
    > More plausibly, in 1989, the National Geographical Institute of France
    > calculated that Europe's geographical center was in Lithuania, close
    > to its capital, Vilnius. It got there by calculating the Continent's
    > "center of gravity" -- as if you carved out a cardboard map of Europe
    > and balanced it on a pin.

Did they weigh the Alps and compare them to the lowlands in Belgium and NL?
I fear their so-called "scientific" approach may be too simplistic to give
us the accuracy we most desperately need on this pressing question. And what
about all that heavy bread in Germany? Surely that tips the cardboard a
little. And of course the weighty tedium of Scandinavian film.

miguel

Gregory Morrow

Miguel Cruz wrote:

    > Sufaud <> wrote:
    > > The Wall Street Journal
    > > July 14, 2004
    > > PAGE ONE
    > > Journey to the Center Of Europe Involves Many a Wrong Turn
    > > Mr. Xoma Marks the Spot In Ukraine, but Lithuania May Have a Better
    > > Claim
    > > . . .
    > > More plausibly, in 1989, the National Geographical Institute of France
    > > calculated that Europe's geographical center was in Lithuania, close
    > > to its capital, Vilnius. It got there by calculating the Continent's
    > > "center of gravity" -- as if you carved out a cardboard map of Europe
    > > and balanced it on a pin.
    > Did they weigh the Alps and compare them to the lowlands in Belgium and
NL?
    > I fear their so-called "scientific" approach may be too simplistic to give
    > us the accuracy we most desperately need on this pressing question. And
what
    > about all that heavy bread in Germany? Surely that tips the cardboard a
    > little. And of course the weighty tedium of Scandinavian film.


With articles like this I've come to increasingly believe that _The Wall
Street Journal_ is in competition with _The Onion_.

barney

In article <6A4Jc.17$>, (Miguel
Cruz) wrote:

    > Sufaud <> wrote:
    > > The Wall Street Journal
    > > July 14, 2004
    > > PAGE ONE
    > > Journey to the Center Of Europe Involves Many a Wrong Turn
    > > Mr. Xoma Marks the Spot In Ukraine, but Lithuania May Have a Better
    > > Claim
    > > . . .
    > > More plausibly, in 1989, the National Geographical Institute of France
    > > calculated that Europe's geographical center was in Lithuania, close
    > > to its capital, Vilnius. It got there by calculating the Continent's
    > > "center of gravity" -- as if you carved out a cardboard map of Europe
    > > and balanced it on a pin.
    >
    > what
    > about all that heavy bread in Germany? Surely that tips the cardboard a
    > little.

This has little effect on the outcome; the heavy food of central Europe is
compensated for by the unbearable lightness of being.

Thomas Peel

Miguel Cruz schrieb:
    >
    > Sufaud <> wrote:
    > > The Wall Street Journal
    > > July 14, 2004
    > > PAGE ONE
    > > Journey to the Center Of Europe Involves Many a Wrong Turn
    > > Mr. Xoma Marks the Spot In Ukraine, but Lithuania May Have a Better
    > > Claim
    > > . . .
    > > More plausibly, in 1989, the National Geographical Institute of France
    > > calculated that Europe's geographical center was in Lithuania, close
    > > to its capital, Vilnius. It got there by calculating the Continent's
    > > "center of gravity" -- as if you carved out a cardboard map of Europe
    > > and balanced it on a pin.
    >
    > Did they weigh the Alps and compare them to the lowlands in Belgium and NL?
    > I fear their so-called "scientific" approach may be too simplistic to give
    > us the accuracy we most desperately need on this pressing question. And what
    > about all that heavy bread in Germany? Surely that tips the cardboard a
    > little. And of course the weighty tedium of Scandinavian film.
    >
    > miguel
    > --
    > Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu

In a dull moment some months back I googled "European geographic
centre" (as well as "center") and came up with several different
results. In essence, the centre (or center) of Europe is widely
distributed among the European countries, with the exception of Spain,
Italy, the UK and the Scandinavians. The new EU members are well
represented.
Is this demography or democracy?

T.

Sufaud

Thomas Peel <> wrote in message news:<>...
    > Miguel Cruz schrieb:

    > In a dull moment some months back I googled "European geographic
    > centre" (as well as "center") and came up with several different
    > results.

But there's the *intellectual* centre, somewhere. The War, of course,
messed everything up. A few years ago I spent a couple of days in
Bialystok. Nary a bialy to be had; nor any culture as far as I could
make out. Finally I took off for Suwalki, and then to that other
centre, Vila (Vilnius).

Nobody told me that the trains stop at Riga. I had really wanted to go
to Tallinn. I suppose I could have taken the coach, or walked. But I
didn't.