The Hippie, Hippie Shake

Two friends of a friend were visiting from Switzerland and wanted to see the "real" Ukraine. And to go a place that we could drive to in a day. Luckily, about 4 hours from Kyiv is an annual folk festival that has been growing in popularity and sophistication over the past few years. The festival itself is less than 5 years old, but has gained a national reputation in Ukraine. I expected a somewhat larger version of what I have seen many times at Ukrainian folk museums and holidays. There was certainly that element represented here. Many people were dressed in at least the traditional Ukrainian shirt, a "sorochka," and many had the full outfit or dress going. What I did not expect was the large number of young people who were somewhat dressed up in traditional folk clothes and somewhat resembling American hippies. And by American hippies I am referring to the recent generation of "hippies" which, at least in America, have much less of a political ideology and much more of a "lets go get wasted and walk around in clothes that should have been washed two weeks ago" thing going on. After conducting half a day of extensive ethnological research, I've determined that American modern hippies and Ukrainian "hippies" share some things in common.
1) Long dresses on women. Long dresses on Ukrainian women were common for hundreds of years, but based on the past 20 years of the uber-mini-skirt that barely hides a girl's ass here, you'd think the long dress would have completely gone out of style. Not so. These back-to-basics Ukrainian hippie chicks are bringing back the long dress as a fashion statement. I am conflicted, obviously, about what to think of this.
2) Barefeet. You cant pretend to be any kind of hippie without walking around at least part of the day without shoes and socks. End of story.
3) Drugs/alcohol. Although, based on the lack of weed vapors circulating around the Ukrainian hippie fest, as is the norm at American hippie fests, it's clear that at least a sizeable portion of the young Ukrainian hippies had been either consuming some illegal substances and/or drinking heavily since breakfast. If they had breakfast at all. And if they did, it probably consisted of two sausages and several pieces of black bread with some ketchup. Followed by a beer.
4) Pieces of nature and string and crap in your hair. To become one with nature, one must put flowers, weeds, and pieces of string, ideally stained with natural dyes such as dandelion juice, in one's hair.


5) The "hippie shake". The legendary hippie shake originated in the early 60s in response to the unrelenting onslaught of rock n' roll music. In the late 60s the hippie shake was perfected into the uncoordinated flopping, undulating of one's body in response to electric guitar and the influence of eight beers, three hits off a joint, and a couple hits of acid. The modern "hippie shake" shares not only its substance-fueled component with the older generation, but also its complete lack of rhythm or purpose. This can also be plainly attributed to the demographic most often represented at hippie festivals...the spoiled white, middle to upper-middle class brat. No rhythm, just the desire to escape into the "moment."

And certainly, the Ukrainian hippie festival was composed of 99.99% white people. The only person of color, if you don't count the Georgians who performed, was the guy from Senegal who now lives in Paris who performed at 9 PM. Surprisingly, this guy sucked. Nevertheless, true to the hippie spirit everywhere, no one seemed to mind the general suckiness of that particular performance. Conga lines, wedding procession dances, and great mobs of hipper shakers took over the field in front of the stage. Quite a spectacle.
Overall, I will give the organizers and the Ukrainian hippies their due. Their main message, at least from what I have heard from conversations and others, is their desire to champion their agrarian Ukrainian heritage, before it was spoiled by industry, commercialization, and other sucky developments. Living more simply, eating local and natural foods, and celebrating nature and music and dance arent bad things to be doing. Molotsi.

Day o' Dude Fun

It started out very innocently, really. A few of the poker buddies decided to go out to the suburbs of Kyiv to go go-carting. The go-cart place is within a new shopping center/complex. The go-cart place is very high-tech, and also fairly expensive. You get to ride for about 10 minutes, but that is about all of us could take. You have to really hold on tight to get cleanly and quickly around the corners. Before you head out to race, you are given helmets. The assistant took one look at my huge noggin and pointed to the "L" section, which, of course, was too little. The "XL" barely did the job. My crash at the bottom of the first hill earned me a warning from the "green meanies", the young dudes regulating the track. I came in last among our group, both in overall time and fastest lap. While analyzing our 10-minute race for the next 30 minutes, one of our group suggested that we go out to a nearby shooting range and shoot some skeet. I had heard about this range before and had always wanted to try it, and I had nothing to do for the rest of an overcast Sunday afternoon, and my ride wanted to go, so out we went.
We started out at the range with skeet-shooting. Two shotguns, both double-barrelled, and about 60 shells between four guys. I was among the second pair to shoot. During the first 15 pulls, exactly zero skeet had been successfully blown from the air. I combined with my friend to hit the first skeet. I finished with 3 successfully-destroyed skeet, including one "rabbit", in which the skeet is sent rolling along the ground. 3 skeet proved to be the winning tally. Having smelled a bit of gunpowder, we decided to spend some more money on the rifle range. We were given the option of shooting from 100 or 50 meters, and chose 100 meters. We decided to shoot ten bullets from the AK-47, 5 bullets from a WWII, Soviet-made rifle, and 5 bullets from a Remington sniper rifle. You pay by the bullet, about 50 cents to $1 per bullet. And let me say this right off the bat....shooting an AK-47 is immensely satisfying. And very easy actually, which why it was so popular. The WWII rifle definitely had the biggest kick, and was the most challenging. The small Remington rifle, which we shot at the end, almost seemed like cheating, especially given the scope on the top of the rifle. After having completed a thrilling round of firing at paper targets, we walked out to the targets and saw how we did. Further adding to my day's accolades, I had struck the bullseye more times than anyone else. Next time around we plan to shoot the handguns and the automatic weapons.

Dreaming of kishka...

Okay, I wont go into the great details of my parents visit, as my mother's blog (how dare she!) details most of it, but for those of you who dont visit her blog (which is 95% of you), I had to also mention the most memorable moment of their visit. Between 8 and 9 AM I began to wake up and notice the sounds of a dog going crazy, chickens going wild, and what appeared to be the sound of a pig squeeling. After 10 minutes or so the pig sounds stopped, so i dozed off again for a few minutes before waking up. Just to check, I happened to look out the window and notice the newly-murdered pig laying on the concrete in the backyard of my friend's neighbor. The neighbors were working hard with a blow torch and other tools to burn off the pig's hair and clean the pig's skin to be ready for butchering. Who wants kishka?

Party Trolley

I had high hopes for the party trolley, I really did. A friend here was talking up the "party tram" for quite some time, and, because his sister was visiting, he thought it would be a good time to check it out. Rental of the party tram wasnt as expensive as I would have imagined, and I soon found out why. The actual tram is a renovated tramway car, which follows the 19th century tram tracks around the neighborhood of Podil in Kyiv. I would have actually been much more impressed with a full tram tour of Podil, but sadly, that was not to be. The party tram is outfitted with booths and tables that can seat 2 and 4 people. There is a back part of the tram, separarated by a curtain, which i assumed was the make-out room or emergency bathroom, seeing as how the tram didnt have a bathroom, which soon turned out to be a problem for the majority of the party tram goe-ers who had purchased upwards of 2 liters of beer to drink. We boarded the tram in high spirits and waved to those poor souls who hadnt thought to rent the party tram like us. Unfortunately, though, the route of the party tram turned out to be a bit disappointing. The tram proceeded to putz down the river track past the Riverboat Casino (made famous by a certain New Zealander who won $4000 there one night and was promptly arrested for public intox...but i digress) and the metro bridge. Once past the metro bridge the tram turned around and headed right back. This small loop took almost an hour, which was just enough time for everyone's bladders to fill with excess liquid and request an unscheduled bathroom break. Everyone emptied the tram and found refuge in the unisex bathrooms of Double Coffee. With everyone relieved, the tram filled up again and proceeded to head down the same route as the previous hour. Following the second hour, same result: full bladders, but Double Coffee was now closed. Fortunately, the women were saved by a tram goer with a nearby apartment, which also featured an extrememly fluffly white dog.

Correction: That was the "little duckling" dance...

I've spent over 3 total years of my life in Ukraine, and I've seen a lot of crazy dancing and strange moments, but never, until this weekend, did I see the chicken dance. The old people who go to the graybeard dancing hot spot in Hydropark were twisting to the chicken dance. It made my night.
Note on previous post. The chicken dance here is called the "little duckling" dance. When you think about the dance itself, this actually seems more accurate.

You look like a Stanislav

My apartment building is not all that unfriendly, given the usual nature of Ukrainian apartment buildings. This could be due to the fact that the residents of my building are somewhat rich by Ukrainian standards, or foreign (well, at least one foreigner...that Italian guy). By not "unfriendly" I mean that some people talk to me in the elevator. The old lady with the cane and the dashchound (sp?) always talks to me. Some guy the other day asked if I knew what the weather was going to be like the next day. "Nice," I said, which was true, at least according to the Yahoo forecast. So I am now used to the occasional question in the elevator that is not "Going down?" A few days ago a couple got into the elevator a few floors down from me. I am not sure which had the more powerful scent, the girlfriend/wife/lover/secret lover's perfume, or the dude's leather coat. Probably the coat. Still, I was listening to some podcast about the history of the tank between the world wars, which is why the following conversation took me off guard.
Dandy in the leather coat: "Are you Stanislav?"
Me: "What?"
Dandy in the leather coat: "Are you Stanislav?"
Me: "No."
Girlfriend/wife/lover/secret lover of dude in leather coat: "Why did you ask that?"
Dandy in leather coat: "I heard about a guy named Stanislav living upstairs."

The Adventures of Mukhtar the Second

My outrageously over-priced gym features just 2 working treadmills and 3 elliptical machines. Just above these machines are two TV's, one of which is set, at all times, to the retch-inducing Fashion TV. I can only stand Fashion TV when I chuckle to myself thinking about how strikingly accurate "Zoolander" was about the ridiculous nature of these fashion shows. The other TV is sometimes turned to the news, which is a waste, as there is no volume, just the loud thumping of disco/house music on the gym's speakers. Sometimes, mercifully, there is some kind of soccer or hockey game on, which can at least distract me with the movement of the players.
The other day, though, in the morning, the second TV was turned to local station One Plus One. at 9.15 AM, a Russian television series is showing. The show is the Turner and Hooch and K-9 of Russian television programming. It features a crime-fighting german shepherd, Mukhtar, and his handler, Artem. I havent figured out why this is the second Mukhtar. My only guess is that Mukhtar the First was killed in the line of duty in a previous season. I've now watched two episodes of Mukhtar and figured out that the plot will always be the same. In the prologue, some crime is discovered. After the opening credits, which end with an adorable shot of Mukhtar is a policeman's hat, Mukhtar and Artem arrive on the scene to solve the whoodunit for the week. Here is One Plus One's description of the show:

Mukchtar's Return
This dog has keen sense of smell, perfect auditory acuity, generous heart and boundless devotion, but only to its master Artem Kolosov and friends – Olena and Tolik. This restless trio investigates criminal cases with indispensable help of Mukchtar's unique intuition, high professionalism and inventiveness. That's why he is a four-leg employee of law machinery and justice defender. Besides, Mukchtar can always get something tasty as a reward…