Great! Todays news have been all about the swine flu which now also reached Ukraine. People really start to panic. I think up to 35 people died so far. Especially in the west of Ukraine. And what is Mrs Timoschenko doing? She is closing all schools for 3 weeks, she forbids(!) all events where a crowd of people could be possible including concerts and cinemas.
This practically means I can't go to the DDT concert on sunday. But I'm not sure yet. I guess I have to ask at the ticket shop tomorrow. This evening I was in the city center and a quarter of the people were running around with these medicine masks. It looked quite scary. Now I don't have any idea what to do the next couple of days.
Anyways..
Yesterday, I've been to the swimming pool. It is quite difficult to get in there, because you need a medical certificate from a doctor that you are healthy, or you won't be allowed to swim. Luckily I have some connections to a doctor here in Kiev, who wrote me one of these certificates. I was told that it is also possible to give the saleslady a little bit more money under the table and she will let you in without a certificate. That's how Ukraine works :D
Freitag, 30. Oktober 2009
Mittwoch, 28. Oktober 2009
Party, Propaganda and Vodka
I just noticed that I haven't written anything into my blog for ages. Therefore, it is really time to tell you what happened to me in the last couple of weeks...
Let's start with my saturdays:
3 weeks ago one of my room mates and I went to an Irish Pub to meet up with some friends of his brother in law. We watched the football match Ukraine against England. Ukraine won of course :) One of the friends invited my room mates, 2 girls and me to a club in Kyiv. It is called Zar/Царь and I totally enjoyed it. I heard that it is the most expensive club in Kiev, but we got in for free, because this friend had some connections (It would have been 15 Euros). All the women were so beautiful, it was unbeliavable. But women/girls in Ukraine are generally quite beuatiful and they like to show what they have got. So the shortest skirt possible and the most flashy dresses. The men in this club however, were pretty old and ugly (+ rich I guess). But of course they wanted to hook up with the girls, which failed most of the times. Luckily! Some girls, however, even made out with some of these old guys. Anyways, it was a great party. Fantastic interior, very good music and the drinks weren't too expensive. The club was located in an old water tower (does this word exist?) in a park on a little hill. It looked really nice. And do you know how we got there? It is usual in Ukraine to use private cars as taxis. So you wave with your hand at the street until some car stops, you ask for the price and tell them where you want to go and then they will drive you there. Normally it is very cheap. I think we payed 30 Hryvna for 4 persons. Which is 2,30 Euros approximately. I love it....
2 weeks ago I went to another club called Prime. It was techno night. Sounds more terrible than it turned out to be. We all loved the music at the end and were dancing all night through. The DJs have been so great it's unbelievable. Up to now I only have good experience with music in clubs in Kiev. And this time there were no old men dancing, only very young people. The guys all wore fancy extraordinary clothes and they had great haircuts, which would look totally ridicolous on me though.
Last Saturday we didn't have precise plans so my room mates and I went to Maidan (Liberation Place) to have a beer. We already heard music 500 meters away from Maidan, because there was a huuuuuuge musical festival. Hm actually it was rather a political rally. Julia Timoschenko was hosting the start of her political campaign for the presidential elections in January 2010. She is very rich, she uses the same campaign coordiantors as Obama and she was just voted the most beautiful political leader in the world. I think you all know here. It is the blond one with this chaplet on her head. The Liberation square was totally crowded with supporters and a lot of Ukrainian stars were coming on stage to sing and to tell the audience how great Timoschenko is. I even saw RUSLANA - She is the winner of Eurovision Song Contest 2004. She was great. I was really happy to see her :DDDDDDDDDDD They also composed a song for Timoschenko. The refrain was something like: Julia, Julia, Ukrainia. Very catchy. That's how propaganda works. After the festival was finished we went to a pub with live music..
During my time in Kiev, the friends of my room mate were vistiting us several times to drink Vodka and to eat Pizza. Of course I also had to drink, because they shouldn't think all Germans are pussies. Once they brought this very strong vodka, which at the same time was really spicy. It nearly killed me. And one has to drink tomato juice afterwards, which is totally disgusting. By the way, all of the friends are married. And I think the oldest is 28 years old. But that's totally normal here. If you don't get married as a girl until the age of 22 you are regarded as strange. And men should also start marrying at the age of 26 the latest. And of course the family is always asking you when you get married. And if you are married, they are already waiting for the first child. What I also found out, which is rather sad: Many ukrainian men think that is sometimes better to slap a woman when she is not doing what she is supposed to do. I was totally shocked. I hope Ukrainians will change in the near future in that respect.
I still love my internship, and I keep on getting send to these business meetings, where they always have this wonderful food. So instead of doing networking, like everyone else, I'm eating, eating, eating. People always start looking at me when I go to the buffet for the third time. I think I'm the worst person to do networking ever!!!
By the way I stopped going to McDonalds and eating BigMac Menues. Hmm.. Only kind of. Now I'm always eating this McDonalds salat, which is not really the best or I'm going to Pusata Chata, that's the best restaurant ever. Very cheap, delicious ukrainian food.
I'm really scared that I'll be even more greedy once I'm back in Germany, because then I'll think how expensive everything is in Germany. I think I won't buy any food in the first 2 weeks.
Last Friday I've been to the Babushka of my room mate on the countryside. We ate so much and drank so much Vodka, you cannot imagine. But I think Babushka still drank more than I did. I can never be a real ukrainian :( I could't sleep this night, because my stomach hurt so badly.
On Sunday I'll go to a concert of an old Russian Rock Bank. They're called ДДТ. Supposed to be really famous in Ukraine and Russia. We'll see :)
Let's start with my saturdays:
3 weeks ago one of my room mates and I went to an Irish Pub to meet up with some friends of his brother in law. We watched the football match Ukraine against England. Ukraine won of course :) One of the friends invited my room mates, 2 girls and me to a club in Kyiv. It is called Zar/Царь and I totally enjoyed it. I heard that it is the most expensive club in Kiev, but we got in for free, because this friend had some connections (It would have been 15 Euros). All the women were so beautiful, it was unbeliavable. But women/girls in Ukraine are generally quite beuatiful and they like to show what they have got. So the shortest skirt possible and the most flashy dresses. The men in this club however, were pretty old and ugly (+ rich I guess). But of course they wanted to hook up with the girls, which failed most of the times. Luckily! Some girls, however, even made out with some of these old guys. Anyways, it was a great party. Fantastic interior, very good music and the drinks weren't too expensive. The club was located in an old water tower (does this word exist?) in a park on a little hill. It looked really nice. And do you know how we got there? It is usual in Ukraine to use private cars as taxis. So you wave with your hand at the street until some car stops, you ask for the price and tell them where you want to go and then they will drive you there. Normally it is very cheap. I think we payed 30 Hryvna for 4 persons. Which is 2,30 Euros approximately. I love it....
2 weeks ago I went to another club called Prime. It was techno night. Sounds more terrible than it turned out to be. We all loved the music at the end and were dancing all night through. The DJs have been so great it's unbelievable. Up to now I only have good experience with music in clubs in Kiev. And this time there were no old men dancing, only very young people. The guys all wore fancy extraordinary clothes and they had great haircuts, which would look totally ridicolous on me though.
Last Saturday we didn't have precise plans so my room mates and I went to Maidan (Liberation Place) to have a beer. We already heard music 500 meters away from Maidan, because there was a huuuuuuge musical festival. Hm actually it was rather a political rally. Julia Timoschenko was hosting the start of her political campaign for the presidential elections in January 2010. She is very rich, she uses the same campaign coordiantors as Obama and she was just voted the most beautiful political leader in the world. I think you all know here. It is the blond one with this chaplet on her head. The Liberation square was totally crowded with supporters and a lot of Ukrainian stars were coming on stage to sing and to tell the audience how great Timoschenko is. I even saw RUSLANA - She is the winner of Eurovision Song Contest 2004. She was great. I was really happy to see her :DDDDDDDDDDD They also composed a song for Timoschenko. The refrain was something like: Julia, Julia, Ukrainia. Very catchy. That's how propaganda works. After the festival was finished we went to a pub with live music..
During my time in Kiev, the friends of my room mate were vistiting us several times to drink Vodka and to eat Pizza. Of course I also had to drink, because they shouldn't think all Germans are pussies. Once they brought this very strong vodka, which at the same time was really spicy. It nearly killed me. And one has to drink tomato juice afterwards, which is totally disgusting. By the way, all of the friends are married. And I think the oldest is 28 years old. But that's totally normal here. If you don't get married as a girl until the age of 22 you are regarded as strange. And men should also start marrying at the age of 26 the latest. And of course the family is always asking you when you get married. And if you are married, they are already waiting for the first child. What I also found out, which is rather sad: Many ukrainian men think that is sometimes better to slap a woman when she is not doing what she is supposed to do. I was totally shocked. I hope Ukrainians will change in the near future in that respect.
I still love my internship, and I keep on getting send to these business meetings, where they always have this wonderful food. So instead of doing networking, like everyone else, I'm eating, eating, eating. People always start looking at me when I go to the buffet for the third time. I think I'm the worst person to do networking ever!!!
By the way I stopped going to McDonalds and eating BigMac Menues. Hmm.. Only kind of. Now I'm always eating this McDonalds salat, which is not really the best or I'm going to Pusata Chata, that's the best restaurant ever. Very cheap, delicious ukrainian food.
I'm really scared that I'll be even more greedy once I'm back in Germany, because then I'll think how expensive everything is in Germany. I think I won't buy any food in the first 2 weeks.
Last Friday I've been to the Babushka of my room mate on the countryside. We ate so much and drank so much Vodka, you cannot imagine. But I think Babushka still drank more than I did. I can never be a real ukrainian :( I could't sleep this night, because my stomach hurt so badly.
On Sunday I'll go to a concert of an old Russian Rock Bank. They're called ДДТ. Supposed to be really famous in Ukraine and Russia. We'll see :)
Sonntag, 4. Oktober 2009
Theatre, Internship and McDonalds
I forgot to tell you in my last blog entry, that I've been to the Ukrainian National Museum, which was actually quite nice and interesting. Did you know that already the ancient Greeks were settling down in the south of Ukraine? At least I didn't. And did you know that while Kiev was already quite a big city, Moscow was a little town with only 50 inhabitans?
On Wednesday I've been to the young theater in Kiev to see a Russian play with a German friend of mine. That's a really small, but beautiful theatre close to where I live. One has to buy the tickets from a man, who was standing on the stairs up to the theatre. At the beginning he told us that he didn't have any tickets left. Then, after some people passed though, he said that he still has two tickets left for 200 hrivnas (16 Euros) per person, but we had to wait some time. 2 minutes before the beginning told us that he will sell us the tickets for 40 Hrivnas (3,20 Euros) each. So this was very cheap. :) However, it did not start right away with the performance, but with 20 minutes of piano playing and afterwards a short lecture about the history of the theatre. I didn't understand most of what this guy said. First of all because he spoke Ukrainian and second of all, because I would not even have understood it in case of him speaking Russian. Then the show started. I only knew the meaning of every fourth word, but the acting was so amazing that you could understand the storyline. I've rarely seen actors acting in such a good way.
On Thursday my internship started, and it turned out to be much better than I had expected. I basically always have something to do. Write reports, find out stuff about certain companies and so on. I love it so far. I hope it stays that way. Another good thing about my internship: A McDonalds is situated very close by, so I can go there during the lunch break to have a Big Mac Menu (Big Mac, big fries, big coke) for only 25 Hrivna, which is only 2,40 Euros. It's so unbelievably cheap and it tastes the same as in Western Europe. I'm scared that I will end up going there every day and at the end look like an American.
On Wednesday I've been to the young theater in Kiev to see a Russian play with a German friend of mine. That's a really small, but beautiful theatre close to where I live. One has to buy the tickets from a man, who was standing on the stairs up to the theatre. At the beginning he told us that he didn't have any tickets left. Then, after some people passed though, he said that he still has two tickets left for 200 hrivnas (16 Euros) per person, but we had to wait some time. 2 minutes before the beginning told us that he will sell us the tickets for 40 Hrivnas (3,20 Euros) each. So this was very cheap. :) However, it did not start right away with the performance, but with 20 minutes of piano playing and afterwards a short lecture about the history of the theatre. I didn't understand most of what this guy said. First of all because he spoke Ukrainian and second of all, because I would not even have understood it in case of him speaking Russian. Then the show started. I only knew the meaning of every fourth word, but the acting was so amazing that you could understand the storyline. I've rarely seen actors acting in such a good way.
On Thursday my internship started, and it turned out to be much better than I had expected. I basically always have something to do. Write reports, find out stuff about certain companies and so on. I love it so far. I hope it stays that way. Another good thing about my internship: A McDonalds is situated very close by, so I can go there during the lunch break to have a Big Mac Menu (Big Mac, big fries, big coke) for only 25 Hrivna, which is only 2,40 Euros. It's so unbelievably cheap and it tastes the same as in Western Europe. I'm scared that I will end up going there every day and at the end look like an American.
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