Making the best of winter

There's a lot of general dismay going around the Ukrainian blogsphere about February and this blog certainly hasn't been immune. The weather is always dreary and each day seems like a faded reprint of the day before.

I find myself going through old photo albums looking for proof that yes, at some point dry sidewalks and colorful flowers did exist here, that it wasn't just my imagination.

Despite all that, the temperatures have risen and sometimes the faintest glimmer of spring appears on the horizon. Have faith- it's coming! With that certainty, I wanted to get outside and document what's left of winter. D and I have been cooped up for the past month, working on websites and projects, and today was our first real afternoon of city exploration in 2013! I was so excited to get outside that I practically scrambled out of bed in the morning like a 7-year-old on Christmas day. D had promised to show me a shortcut he'd discovered between the Metalist Stadium and the Holiday Bowling Club.

Euro 2012 (advance) wrap up

In Ukrainian: Kharkov, we thank you! (From) Holland

The soccer fans have come and gone in Kharkov. They've left some indelible memories... especially via outrageous photos and videos!





Things worth mentioning:

Need I say more? Found this picture on vkontakte.

Another picture floating around on vkontakte. Police, meet the fans. Fans, meet the police : )

The water in the local lovers' fountain suddenly turned orange- city planning or prank, I don't know...

Two fans posing at a local photo stop.

This poor reporter... she didn't have a chance as the massive Dutch crowd marched to the stadium!

Do watch!!!!!!!

Orange, orange, orange

You know this is a big event when even Snickers changes their label!

and the Tic Tacs are the colors of the Ukrainian flag

Speaking of colors, the Euro 2012 fan zone in downtown Kharkov is a sea of orange. Beer-drinking, cheering, singing, sun-burned orange.

The Dutch are here en masse. Loudspeakers in the fan zone blast Dutch pop, party songs, and patriotic hymns. I heard the lyrics of "another one bites the dust" changed to "you're never gonna beat the Dutch." Orange volleyballs are tossed into the crowds and kept afloat with the hand not holding a beer. Fans dress outrageously- a man may dress as a woman, a carrot, or a king. Snack wagons advertise Dutch delicacies. The red, white, and blue flag of the Netherlands flies everywhere. It appears on people's backs, cheeks, collarbones, and braided into their hair.

Notice the other guy is drinking beer, haha

The Dutch are really

First photos of Euro 2012!

The city is abuzz with chatter, curiosity, and foreigners. It's like someone stuck a stick in an anthill and stirred things up. A hum of excitement hangs in the sky.

This morning I made a mistake with my metro card (for the first time ever, mind you!) and the metro employee, a middle-aged blonde, came to my assistance and then smiled at me. As I wrote last time, smiling is most definitely not in their job description....more like scowling, so I should have realized that something was up right then. Come to think of it, yesterday my students were trading rumors of a Black Eyed Peas / Fatboy Slim concert and other almost unbelievable things, but I didn't realize that TODAY was THE DAY. I guess I'd kind of forgotten-
- until I stumbled across this in Freedom Square.

Lenin's statue is in the background, overlooking all of this p

Clumps of orange-shirted men from the Netherlands were busy partying, shouting, even taking pictures with cops. This is another frankly impossible act: to take a picture with a cop, yet I saw a group of Dutch guys hamming it up for a photo with about 5 cops in stern black uniforms. The cops even looked amused!

In fact, not only can you take pictures freely in public now, but you can also see people smiling in public. Exhibit A) the metro lady this morning. Exhibit B) these girls.

In my experience this is rather atypical behavior for Ukraine! But then again, I've never been here for an event of this magnitude before.

3 cars of them, actually, driving around downtown, waving, smiling, cheering. And handing out flyers for "Philippine Massage" and "Appartments" at the Kakadu Club.

People here often say всё время улыбаются только идиоты, only idiots smile all the time.

Is Kharkov finally ready for Euro 2012?

Preparations for the Euro 2012 tournament continue to change the face of Kharkov.

A giant new addition near the train station. Sorry, haven't managed to get a shot of this in the daytime yet. I did happen to walk by the afternoon they were installing it- these two guys were hanging on ropes at least 70 feet off the ground, slowly unrolling the banner. The building itself is an intimidating hotel that looks like a ministry building out of Orwell's book 1984.

A Ukrainian friend recently sent me this email:
Did you hear the new English announcements in metro? Do you think they sound like English? I think there are several mistakes there. I made inquiries, and found that it was made by a woman who has nothing to do with English. That is how we save money in Ukraine.

These are the announcements I've heard:

• "Train is coming. Please move back from the platform's edge."
• "Doors about to close. Next stop {station name}."
•  once I heard either "hurry up" or "speed up" as the passengers were boarding

To answer your question, the English appears to be okay. A bit accented, but it gets the point across. It's more natural to say "the doors are closing" and they do forget articles a couple of times (ie, "the doors", "the train") but those are small things. It doesn't have to be perfect so long as people can understand it and get the information that they need. I've seen a couple other minor mistakes, like "1th Hospital" instead of "1st Hospital" and this one word:

sguare? you mean square?

 hey, at least the spelling is consistent!

 but overall Kharkov has done a decent job of trying to English-ify itself.

no problems here!

And I've been enjoying the EURO 2012-themed advertising frenzy, especially on the metro trains. These rhyming ads for an electronics store always make me smile.

The ad on the right spells out the sounds of "I am happy very much" using Ukrainian letters.

D tells me that the one on the left references a dirty rhyme :p







Other changes include the addition of perplexing symbols near the metro and on some streets:

 Luckily there's now a guide to these EURO 2012 symbols on the Kharkov Expats Facebook page (but it's in Russian). Some of the symbols are self-explanatory: metro, bus, airport, train station, playing field. Others are not so easy. The movie theater picture represents the fan zones. P&R... park and ride?

Although Kiev has added wi-fi access to parts of its metro, this is not the case in Kharkov as far as I know.

Slightly older news: Kharkov has changed the metro entry system. Tokens are no longer accepted- now you get either a one-time pass (slip of paper) or a reloadable plastic card. These plastic cards used to be rather plain and dark; now they're friendly-looking and bright and have a map of the metro printed on the back. The machines that sell the passes and cards have also been changed. They've got trilingual stickers on them (Russian, Ukrainian, English, if I remember correctly) and only accept certain denominations of bills. Maybe this is why there's always a line around them?

The metro has been showing TV ads of happy citizens using the metro. Pretty cute! Although... the metro attendants do not stand around and smile in real life- instead, they're usually yelling at someone from behind their desks or flirting with a cute police officer.

PS: One final picture, this one from Odessa. Even though they're not hosting any games, they're still getting in the spirit of things.

Happy Euro 2012, everyone!

Euro 2012 Preparations- April

Wow, 40 days left until Euro 2012! Time for another update from eastern Ukraine.

First off, some very sad news: if you've been following local events, you probably heard about the bombings yesterday in Dnipropetrovsk (a large city about 220 km from Kharkov). 27 people were injured and so far no one knows the reason for this attack.

That event combined with political happenings (mainly involving those for and against the ex-prime minister) has created a lot of bad publicity. See this article in the Guardian: Ukraine's Chaos Threatens to Engulf Euro 2012.

But preparations go on undaunted. This giant soccer ball appeared overnight (literally, last night) in front of the train station.

The supermarkets have begun selling t-shirts ($30 USD), flags ($4), face paint ($2.50), magnets ($2-$5), flip-flops ($25), hats ($12-$25), anything with space for the logo or colored in blue and yellow.

Advertising and product promotion continue to pop up around the city:

Beer company offering a ticket giveaway

Coca Cola, an official partner, surprise, surprise

Switch on Ukraine

Here's a beautiful video of Ukraine (promo for the Euro 2012 soccer match):

What do you think- does this video inspire you?

PS: Of course there are already a ton of parody versions out there, like this one. The guys on this show claim that the original ad cost 4 million to make...could that be true?

Euro 2012 Preparations - March

The Euro 2012 football championship is two months away and I've begun to see changes here in Kharkov. Prior to this the most noticeable (to me) preparations had been several ads placed near the train station, including large pictures showing manly men with factory equipment and hard hats and the slogan "Euro, we're ready". At that point I was never sure if Euro meant the football championship or EU admission. The manly men pictures have since been taken down.

Meanwhile, several themed-merchandise vendors have set up shop in the Caravan mall. You can already buy hoodies in bright colors and magnets with the Euro 2012 logo.

Big changes have taken place in the metro. More and more related ads and announcements are popping up on a regular basis. And- remember those cool old signs/maps? (Refresh your memory here.) They've now been replaced with these fancy signs.

I guess the new signs do look more user friendly.... but the old ones were so unique! I told this to a Ukrainian friend- that the old signs were much cooler- and he cocked his head, looked at me, and said "To you, maybe. But not to us."