Bearder.com

Where to find foreigners in Kyiv

2012-01-26T13:37:00.000+02:00

The French: in the French restaurants
The Italians: in the discos/nightclubs
The English: in an Irish Pub
The Germans: anywhere there's beer
The Turks: Hanging around outside and in shopping centers

Get your slow dance on

2012-01-16T14:41:00.003+02:00

Having been a 'freelancer' or 'contract worker' for as long as I can remember, I'm not normally invited to corporate Christmas parties. In fact, I think the last one I went to was while on my work placement at Nominet when I was at University, and that's a seriously long time ago.

However, whatever I've missed out on over the years was all made up for last night at the MIG/JN1 Corporate party for Christmas/New Year/Hanukkah/Old New Year/Arsenal Kyiv football club's birthday.

Yeah, I know its a bit late for most of those things, but what can I say? logic doesn't always apply here in Ukraine.

Anyway, let me try to describe...

Held in a large nightclub, the place was kitted out with all the usual 'corporate party stuff' but with the addition of loud nighclub speakers and lots of disco lights. On each table was wine (two bottles), Champagne, soft-drinks, food, water and two litres of the amusingly-named 'Status' vodka. One litre of 'Platinum' and one bottle of 'Black Diamond', but there was some disagreement over which one was the bestest.

I don't know what 'status' the vodka gives you other than 'drunk as hell' but still, you get the idea. The party was, like many thinks in Ukraine, big, loud, colourful and lots of booze was involved. And, if this wasn't enough - we had a stage show. No, we had a stage extravaganza! and as everyone around me threw-back more and more vodka, I sat and watched some sadomasochistic Ukrainian girls in skimpy leather leotards wiggling and singing about being 'Oligarch girls' - complete with a Janet Jackson nipple-slip incident.

The singing underwear

This was followed by some relatively normal singing until normality went back out the window when some almost-naked g-string wearing 'dancers' arrived to dance around, under, over and on-top of a pole.

ouch

ermmm...

It was quite a show and it was all interspersed by some bizarrely random comparing and party games which included a showdown between a man with a mullet who had to make a loud horse noise, my colleague Larisa who had to laugh out loud like a demented baby, and Vasya (Woody) the sound engineer who had to make a noise like a Donkey. After some serious looking mental preparation, Woody won with the loudest human-donkey-orgasm noise I've ever heard.

Horse-noise mullet man

Oh, and there was a guy who looked like a chubby David Baddiel who sang loud songs and made everyone do the conga around the tables.

On the screen above the stage, we were treated to a weird selection of Nirvana videos, fish swimming, men playing drums, and occasional English language texts that said stuff like "I'm very bored".

This wasn't a dream. Its all 100% true. ...and then the dancing began!

Woody going at it

Now, if you don't know any Ukrainians, there's one thing you should know - they love to dance! and, while a singing Gypsy (yes I'm serious) sang a funky bunch of pop songs, his sexy backing dancers and most of my company bounced the night away on the dance floor.

The whole thing was, as my colleague described it 'relentless'.

But, it was relentless in an entertaining way and also a lot of fun to watch. The food was good and its really nice to see everyone outside of the relative calm of our office. It was also brilliant to see some good-old-fashioned slow dancing. I haven't seen slow dancing since I was at a school disco, but the Ukrainians never gave it up. The UK really needs to bring back slow dancing.

Happy New Year

No prizes for guessing what's excited Dan and Rahim

JN1 people after too much Status

More 'official' photos here

сегодня

2012-01-02T20:20:00.000+02:00

The tube

The ...?

Ukrainians will pose next to anything

Ghost town, somewhere in Podil

Pub Rock

Kiev looks naked

2011-12-29T15:29:00.000+02:00

Having completely shed its autumn clothes ready to be wrapped in winter snow, Kiev is currently standing almost embarrassingly naked.

OK, so it is kind of novel to be here in December and not be freezing one's tits off, but its doesn't feel right. The city trees look like they've just emerged from some skinny dipping, only to find that the bushes have run off with their clothes.

However, the absence of -30C temperatures does mean I can still enjoy the city on my days off.

Kiev hides a fascinating world behind the main streets and tacky shop-fronts, so I went exploring yesterday to see what I could find near my apartment. I've been here on Artema street for more than 6 months, but hardly know the area. I found all of this within less than a kilometer from my door...

Oh, and finally, there's Kiev's much ridiculed and highly ridiculous Christmas ~~cone~~, ~~point~~, tree.

Complete with LCD televisions as decorations! It is impossible to to admire such unashamed kitsch.

Sing while you're winning

2011-12-18T03:54:00.002+02:00

At the gym this afternoon, I sat in the changing rooms and watched an angry dad shouting at his three year-old kid. The little boy (Bogdan) was completely unmoved by his dad yelling "Богдан давай!" and he sat there defiantly singing a happy song. As dad got louder, Bogdan kept smiling and singing.

Amused, I turned around to leave reflecting on the need for more 'little revolutionaries' like this in Ukraine. As I stood up, a man was standing right in front of me wearing nothing but a thong.

Ukraine needs a lot less of these.

God created Polish by dropping his scrabble box

2011-12-06T22:13:00.001+02:00

I've never wanted to go to Warsaw. I don't know why, I've been to pretty much every other capital city on the continent but never to Warsaw. Maybe this is because I have read way-too-many descriptions of the city that start with lines such as: 'Warsaw is not as pretty as Cracow, but...' and perhaps this put me off, but given my disturbingly-passionate admiration for depressed looking housing estates and Soviet concrete 'art' - I doubt it. I think its just in an awkward location and not 'between' any other places like, for example, Budapest is. You can't really move in Europe without going through Budapest but to pass through Warsaw you'd have to be taking an unlikely journey from somewhere like Belgium to Belarus. Who does that? Besides, I've never had a reason to visit Warsaw.

All this changed this summer when two very good reasons (Kasia and Justa) arrived in Kiev. They found me on CouchSurfing, I found them at the Metro, and the rest is история.

The flight from Kiev to Warsaw (Varshava in Polish and Russian) is just one hour, so getting there is easy and as the airport in Warsaw is very close to the center, getting into the city is also easy - especially if you have detailed instructions, bus numbers and a map provided by Kasia.

The place really won me over. OK, it's not Ljubljana and it is more similar to Brussels than I would wish on any city, but it is very cool and boy does it have a history. You feel it.

I'll save the gory details, but I had a great time. The Poles I met were all, without exception; friendly, hospitable, talkative, optimistic and more than anything - extremely likable. The only crazy thing is the language. In fact, its no so much the language but the spelling. For the first time in my life, I was wishing things were written in Russian.

While I was there, I bought a copy of Norman Davies epic Rising '44, in an attempt to understand both Warsaw and Poland and on page five he hits on some of the problems this language craziness creates.

"From hard experience, I know that foreign names and places can create havoc in the psyche of English-speaking readers. Indeed, in the case of some languages like Polish, I believe they constitute a near insurmountable barrier to a full understanding of the country's affairs. For it is not just a problem of unfamiliarity. It is unfamiliarity compounded by an incomprehensible system of orthography and by the unique, jaw-breaking combinations of consonants and syllables that are uniquely disturbing. Charles Dickens, who met a number of Polish emigres in London after the rising of 1863 had a wonderful ear for this problem: 'A gentleman called on me this morning,' he once remarked, 'with two thirds of all the English consonants in his name ,and none of the vowels.' The joke is that God created Polish by dropping his scrabble box. But this is not just a laughing matter. If readers cannot retain the names in a narrative, they cannot be expected to analyse or to understand it."

So true, and so true of Ukraine too.

Anyway, thanks Kasia and dziękuję to everyone I met this weekend.

The pictures are here

These are crazy days, but they make me shine

2011-11-23T21:01:00.001+02:00

The postman delivered a parcel this week. It was sent from Wales with a book and six chocolate bars inside. It arrived with no book and no chocolate. The postman posted me an envelope. Thanks postman.

This morning a small street-dog walked onto the bus. He sat down and waited 5 stops and then got-off at Lukianivka metro. He didn't pay.

This afternoon I provided a voice-overs for the Russian President Dimitry Medvedev and the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The girl who comes to my gym with no bra and a see-thru top has returned.

Artema Street last night

Fall off the table, get swept under

2011-11-10T05:55:00.000+02:00

Hot on the heels of my professional TV début, I made another début this week in print in Kyiv's 'What's On' magazine.

This isn't the first time I've appeared in print because I edited text for the European Business Associations weekly adverts for almost a year (not to mention my full page spread in Slovenia's Anja magazine) but as far as I can remember this is the 1st time I have willingly contributed directly to the creative content of a publication.

It's a modest start, but still I wanted to find a copy to keep as a souvenir, so I used this as an excuse for an expensive breakfast in Vernisage. Of course they had a copy and as I thumbed through the magazine over breakfast, I came across an interview by a guy called Martin Nunn - a PR executive and long-time immigrant here in Kyiv. I liked it for two reasons:

Firstly because it is hard not to agree with many of his observations about Ukraine, Ukrainians and Russians. Such as:

"Russians, particularly Moscow-based Russians, tend to have a glorified opinion of their own superiority."

and

"...the roads [in Ukraine] are in a terrible state, but instead of fixing them people buy bigger jeeps. If you go into the tower blocks, the apartments themselves are beautiful, but the communal areas are in a terrible state. It’s this crazy mentality. You have people wearing very expensive clothes, and very expensive shoes, with very expensive cars, walking through some of the worst states of decay I’ve ever seen, into these mini-palaces. Nobody’s doing anything about the gap in between because nobody thinks it’s their responsibility. Until people realise it is their responsibility, nothing will change. The only people going to save the country is the people themselves."

Secondly, because he picks up on the shockingly bad state of the countries PR industry, or more specifically political relations.

"The PR people in government have done more damage to the image of the President than anyone else. There’s a supreme arrogance in the way they work, and it’s probably been one of the most deplorable cases of non-PR I’ve ever experienced"

If you have any doubt how bad it is, read their 'newsletter' here. It embarrasses me and I'm not even Ukrainian.

Anyway, I 'Googled' him and found another interesting article from Mr Nunn here http://www.ipra.org/archivefrontlinedetail.asp?articleid=879. If you're curious and have nothing better to do, I recommend it.

As for me and my media fame, I'm currently working on a plan to move from free magazines to Hollywood film stardom.

I'll keep you posted.

Eddy

Can you save me from the borrowed cloud I'm on?

2011-11-04T22:15:00.000+02:00

Today:сегодня

Lippy Kids

2011-11-02T23:15:00.001+02:00

Hurmah, or 'Date-Plums' I've never seen, or heard of them then before but they are good. Thanks to Yulia for introducing them :-)

The 'Dutch Oven' Jerom, his wife and a Pumkin coloured Englishman

A pumpkin

Kiev city administration

The Pushcha-Voditsa forest tram

2011-10-23T02:20:00.000+03:00

I'm a 43rd generation Roman

2011-10-18T06:39:00.001+03:00

Like most Slavs, Ukrainians have a deeply held belief that cold drafts can cause all kinds of serious illness, up-to and including death. Or worse. They also have 'proven' information to suggest that sitting on a cold hard seat can lead to infertility.

Feeling brave I decided to risk both and to head off on a Ukrainian tram mission.

The forest tram (tramvai) number 12

A few months ago my manager told me about a spa resort outside of Kiev which you could reach by tram and that the tram itself was pretty cool because it goes through a forest. I knew then that I had to check this out some time and despite the freezing weather, now was the time. I didn't know the name of the place or which tram to take, but I wanted out of the city and a quick google search for 'Kiev, tram and forest' provided the answers. I was set.

Picturesque Pushcha-Voditsa

The town/spa resort is called Pushcha-Voditsa, the tram line is number 12 and it leaves from Kontractova Ploscha, next to the metro station. Luckily, that's only a 15 minute walk from my home.

If you're unfamiliar with the trams in Kiev, let me explain...

Built in Czechoslovakia in the bronze age, they are almost always driven by tough looking women, they are cold, they are uncomfortable and they are slow. However, this just adds to the experience. They are also super-cheap at just 10p a ride. If I didn't go crazy, I could do the whole day out on less than 50p!

The tram was waiting to leave when I arrived, so I jumped on, paid the woman driver my 10p fare and settled my arse down on a rock-solid, ice-cold plastic seat. I was expecting it to be uncomfortable and I wasn't disappointed.

For the most part, the tram chugs along through some average Kiev districts, some suburbs and past a few strange roadside markets. I shifted around in my seat to keep the blood flowing to my legs, I watched two school kids playing wraps (a game which involves punching your opponents knuckles until you miss) and I thought about life. What else can you do on a tram? Anyway, after 45 minutes boredom (and pain) gave way to a sense of adventure as the tram stopped on the edge of the city and then rolled off into the forest.

This is what I paid my 10p for, but to be honest, there wasn't a lot to see, just tall autumnal trees and a rusty looking tram line weaving off into the future and back into the past. However, that's why its cool. Within minutes you're in a woodland corridor and could be a million miles from anywhere ...but you're there on a bloody-old tram, going very slowly with a bunch of locals and their shopping.

Anyway, the woodland voyage ends after about 15 minutes when you arrive in the perfectly peaceful town (village?) of Pushcha-Voditsa. I didn't know where to got off so I decided I'd stay until the driver kicked me off. This was about 6 stops later at the end of the line and next to a small kiosk where I bought a Mars bar.

Kiosks (small shops) in Pushcha-Voditsa

Then I realised that I had no idea about anything in P-Voditsa and no plan, so I started walking in the opposite direction of the town, up the road to a small lake and into the forest. The place is definitely sleepy, but its also beautiful, quiet and, like many towns in Ukraine, it feels like its stuck in a time gone by. Personally, I love this feeling but it did occur to me that this would also be the perfect setting for a low-budget horror film with kids camping and crazy people with chainsaws etc...

I'll save you the rambling details of the rest of the day. You can see the beauty of the place in the pictures below and here. If the Ukrainians are right about cold seats - I may never have kids now and my buttocks get cold just thinking about those seats, but its still a nice day out. Oh, and with the cost of a Mars bar the whole shebang cost a pocket warming 55p!

Eddy

An old shop window

Roll up and shine

2011-10-03T14:57:00.003+03:00

My God it takes an ocean of trust, it takes an effort it does...

2011-09-25T17:24:00.001+03:00

Happy birthdays and goodbyes 26.5 floors above Kyiv.

NadobrAnich

2011-09-22T18:22:00.001+03:00

One Friday afternoon in Kyiv in Autumn

Bizarre as it is, Trukhanivska island like most of the other islands in central Kyiv, remain beautifully quiet and defiantly free. It's hard to imagine that any such territory would remain free and accessible in the heart of other European capitals.

Untranslatability

2011-09-15T00:01:00.000+03:00

I thought Russian was hard, but apparently the Polish language distinguishes between a male cousin who is the son of an uncle ("brat stryjeczny") and a male cousin who is the son of an aunt ("brat cioteczny"); and a female cousin who is the daughter of an uncle ("siostra stryjeczna") and a female cousin who is the daughter of an aunt ("siostra cioteczna").

Ouch!

See wikipedia for more linguistic befuddlement

What's the difference? 33 differences between Oxford and Kiev.

2011-09-13T22:15:00.000+03:00

As a follow-up to my, much longer, '101 reasons to love Kiev' I have been compiling more lists. I don't know why, maybe because I once read High Fidelity and have way-too-much in common with Rob Flemming than I like. Anyway, in an attempt to summarize the differences between Oxford and Kiev in the fewest possible words. Here's two lists:

List A. 22 things you see in Ukraine but don't see in the UK, well not in Oxford anyway...

1. Policemen smoking
2. Big, no, MASSIVE adverts. Sometime who apartment blocks are turned into adverts
3. People on motorbikes with no helmets
4. Trains with cabins, music, curtains and beds
5. Babushkas (grandmas) with colourful head-scarves
6. Stray Dogs
7. Grown women behaving like children in public
8. iBoxes (useful automated machines for paying for things)
9. Cyrillic writing
10. Dried fish
11. Ukrainian Bags
12. Small 1-man currency exchanges
13. Animals for posing with (Monkeys, Eagles etc)
14. Flags in cars
15. Ladas with spoilers (they are the best)
16. Ukrop
17. Semki
18. Slims (slim cigarettes)
19. Real fur coats
20. Bars inside corner-shops. You can actually buy a pint and drink it in some shops.
21. Milk in a bag
22. Security guards, with guns ...in the lingerie section of a shop

...and, List B. 11 things you can find in Oxford but not in Ukraine.

1. Cycle paths and people cycling with helmets on
2. Double-Decker buses
3. Wifi on buses
4. Vegetable samosas
5. Men dressed like teenagers
6. Hungarians, Slovakians and Nepalese people
7. Shops without security guards
8. Self-service checkouts
9. Charity shops
10. Talking bus drivers
11. Police cars in pursuit

Hungarianism

2011-09-09T18:33:00.000+03:00

I had a pint at lunchtime and the barmaid was Hungarian. This reminded me that I had 2000 Hungarian Forints (about £5) in my wallet which I could change into usable money.

So, I walked into the change bureau M&S and the old woman in front of me was buying a big wad of Forints. I changed mine back into GBP (£5.67 to be exact) as the old behind the counter joked that it would be 'cruel' if I couldn't change them.

I walked outside and a woman walked past me shouting at her child in Hungarian.

Mi ez? I thought. What's for dinner, szalonna and goulash?

Kiev is Kyiv is Київ is Киев

2011-08-30T11:10:00.005+03:00

The Black Sea will smile and grandfather Dnipro will rejoice...

Happy Birthday Ukraine

2011-08-24T18:43:00.000+03:00

Maidan Nezalezhnosti, aged 20.

Nightshift

2011-08-22T07:44:00.000+03:00

Hop on, but don't hop off...

2011-08-21T04:01:00.002+03:00

Kyiv is fast becoming a hot tourist destination. I'm being serious - this year it even has a 'hop on, hop off' tourist bus which will take you around the city! (amazing huh!?)

The only problem is, it really is a tourist bus. If you hop-off, you won't see it again for hours.

Ukraine's political playschool

2011-08-21T03:49:00.005+03:00

I'll try and provide some context to this video when I have time, but here's a short clip from down-town Kyiv today, filmed on my way to work.

in balaclava, having a riot

2011-08-15T12:16:00.005+03:00

"We advanced down a gradual descent of more than three-quarters of a mile, with the batteries vomiting forth upon us shells and shot, round and grape, with one battery on our right flank and another on the left, and all the intermediate ground covered with the Russian riflemen..."

James Brudenell, the 7th Earl of Cardigan describes the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War.

My arrival at Balaclava was mildly less dramatic (we stepped off a bus and stumbled through some bushes towards a memorial and quiet valley of vinyards) but the drama described by Cardigan was easy to imagine from the viewpoint across the valley. One thing which struck me was how far Balaclava feels from home. Ukraine is a big place and tucked away in the far South-east Crimea is at the far end of it. Balaclava is a long way from Kyiv (15 hours by train to be exact) let alone from London and this is 2011. Fighting 1850's style on behalf of another country (in this case the Ottoman empire) after sailing so far from home must have been hell.

Today, there's not much to see from the viewpoint of the memorial (which is almost exactly the same as the viewpoint from the painting above) except the edges of Balaclava town and that's where we were heading and so, in true Ukrainian fashion we waved down a car, jumped in and weaved down the valley to the town.

Having given its name to the famous headgear which was still being put to good (bad) use by rioting crowds across the UK last week, the tiny alcove settlement was also a super top-secret USSR submarine depot. As a result, the cost is punctured with a series of concrete cave entrances which disappear into the mountains. They are exactly like the dessert island evil headquarters depicted in James Bond movies and Thunderbirds. If you wanted to destroy the world, those caves are exactly the kind of place you'd take your white cat.

Despite this, Balaclava today is a friendly holiday town with a lively harbor, new shiny hotels and all the same tacky theme restaurants you'd expect to find at a seafront resorts from Brighton to Alicante. However, with the crumbling concrete military complex and the numerous old Ladas zipping around the streets, it's not hard to imagine yourself back in the USSR and that's what makes the place so cool. You can wander through 150 years of military history, then jump on a boat, watch black-sea dolphins and dump yourself on a beach for a beer and a dried fish. What more could you ask for? ...a bus to Sevastopol? bez problem.

The real cost of the UK's most expensive apartment

2011-08-05T15:31:00.003+03:00

In April this year, numerous UK newspapers revealed that Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man, had paid the highest price ever for a UK residence.

He paid a record £136.4m for an apartment in the One Hyde Park development in Knightsbridge.

Last week, on the 29th July a methane blast at a coal mine owned by Akhmetov claimed the lives of 28 workers.

In just five days two other mining accidents in Ukraine have raised the death toll to 40.

Here's a statement by one of the employees at Akhmetov's mine.

Quote:

The coking coal costs huge money and people are expendable. They will blame the mountain master who died and all will be okay. Please show this. I know I probably have no chance for working here after this, I am now jobless, but I want you to show this.

Yesterday I helped bringing up the dead guys to the surface. I cried half a night after this. I overheard the conversation [that] there was five percent of methane, instead of a half-percent. If there is a leak, nobody leaves. They just add some fresh air and keep working. Otherwise, you would lose your job.

In wintertime, the shower has no heating. There are no robes, nothing.

We get [used] like animals. It’s minus 30 outside. You have to wash yourself in cold water, you come out - there is no heating. Your robe gets covered with mold.

You work so hard, you sweat really bad. If you sit down, you are out in the dump for Hr 800 ($80) a month. If you unzip you robe, you also go to the dump, or you have to pay Hr 2,000-Hr 3,000 ($200-$300) [as a bribe] to get better treatment.

They pay kopecks and take back everything they give. I want to tell them, take my robe, take my life, my shoes. What else do you want from me?

The full text is here:http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/110141/#ixzz1U9iWzrdu

...and here's a statement by SCM, Rinat Akhmetov’s holding company

Quote:

That’s why investing into the most modern infrastructure and technology to ensure safe labor is the main task for the holdings’ managers. SCM constantly invests into coal mines’ modernization and labor safety. And will keep investing, to make coal miners’ work safe to the maximum!

The complete statement is here: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/110137/