It's not often that you see a Moskvich car in Kyiv nowadays. But in Brovary, I've seen two:





And then there was also this:

Been to Brovary today, was pleasantly surprised by how little garbage I saw there. Also, tons of kids and tons of playgrounds, old and new, everywhere. I wouldn't mind borrowing their mayor.

I'll post more pics later; for now, here's my favorite, of the stuff hanging out to dry on someone's balcony:

Saw this on the way from the dentist yesterday:


"I eat here."







The name of the street is Klinichna. Yes, Clinical Street. Very close to the Institute of Sugar Beats bus stop.

At the polling station on Sunday:



Inside the polling booth - two ballots, both ridiculously long:

On Saturday, I was feeling claustrophobic in Kyiv's center, so I got into a random marshrutka and went where it took me: to Poznyaky and Osokorky, on the Dnieper's left bank.

Some of my favorite pictures from the trip:









All photos are here.

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Marshrutka driver seemed like a very religious guy:





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Lots of street trade, just like everywhere else in Kyiv:







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So many flyers everywhere, I don't think they have any informational value anymore and instead serve as decorations only in this otherwise gloomy area:



Election-related flyers from Poznyaky and Osokorky are in the Mayor 2008 Flickr folder.

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A very strange logo on the store that seems to be selling doors - looks pretty phallic to me:



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Mishuga Street - named, as it turns out, after an opera singer Oleksandr Mishuga (link in Ukrainian), who was born in a village near Lviv in 1853, in a shoemaker's family:





While meshuga is a more familiar transliteration of the Yiddish word, here in Kyiv the name's spelling varies from Mishuga (first photo) to Myshuga (second photo).

And then there's also this sign for a wedding salon on Mishuga St. - composed by some meshugener in an inexplicable mix of Ukrainian (line 1) and Russian (line 2):



A Lenny Kravitz billboard on Mishuga St.:



Kravitz is, of course, a mis-transliteration of the Ukrainian word kravets, a tailor.

Café "Karadenis" - another cute mis-transliteration from the Mishuga St. neighborhood, this time of the Turkish word Karadeniz, the Black Sea:

We've had enough of Chernovetsky (this, more or less, is the meaning of the sticker above), but it looks like he's just been re-elected.

I voted for Klichko. Even though I'd heard enough about the evil people on his team to convince me that he's no good, either, I figured that at least he's got a name to lose if he, once elected, chose to be counterproductive and destructive as mayor.

But he hasn't made it, which is not surprising.



And - I'm really disgusted with Yulia because of her Turchynov project.

Also on Instytutska, the building that was supposed to be an extension for the National Fine Arts Museum:



I may be wrong, but I think it's been there in its present, unfinished, form since way back in the early 1990s. If they ever finish it, they'll probably turn it into a business center, instead of giving it away as a much-needed gift to the state-run museum.

Across the street from this decade-long frozen construction project, there are two new buildings - built from scratch in just a few years:



The one on the left is basically sitting on top of a high school, while the one on the right towers over one of the entrances to Khreshchatyk subway station.

This photo says tons about what Kyiv is like these days:



A Ukrainian-language sign on Instytutska:

Please don't park your cars on the lawn.

Added in handwriting:

Why not?

Soon, we'll have many new neighbors moving into the two apartment buildings that are blocking whatever view we used to have on this side:

We're in Kyiv.

One of the first things that greeted us was this mess at the playground in front of our building - same as ever:

A few more shots from our Sunday walk at Vorobyovy Gory.

Migrant workers (most likely) playing football on one of MGU's football fields (if you can call it that):







(An earlier post and a picture from a similar gastarbeiter game is here.)

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At Luzhniki, something very Soviet was taking place - judging by this poster, at least:



Something called "The All-Russian Military-Athletic Forum 'READY FOR LABOR AND DEFENSE'."

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On the roof of the Luzhniki stadium - where the Champions League final is to take place Wednesday - one could see this lonely figure, most likely a security guy charged with getting the arena ready for the big game:



And across the river from Luzhniki, no one seemed to care about either labor, or defense, or football - or the swastikas (see my previous post):

Here's what the MGU war memorial looked like on Sunday, just nine days after Victory Day:







And here are some swastikas down by the river:



Welcome to Potemkin Village.

The Night of Museums/International Museum Day is today - but downtown Moscow already looked pretty artistic on Friday:

If Yuri Luzhkov needed an anthem for his trips to Crimea, Joseph Brodsky's 1991 poem on Ukraine's independence (RUS) would, unfortunately, be a good fit.

(The poem is posted on the blog of Soviet dissident Natalya Gorbanevskaya.)

A quick note:

I'm really excited to have discovered this blog about Crimea and Crimean Tatars:

My Simferopol Home

Marusia, the blogger, also has a page at MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/tsarinamaria

Lots of good stuff.

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The 64th anniversary of the 1944 deportations is on Sunday.

No photos from this year's Victory Day, as we were returning from Istanbul on May 9. Instead, here's the stuff that our building's concierges posted on the walls by the entrance and inside the two elevators (as they say here, one elevator's for the wife, the other's for the mistress, to keep them from running into each other :))



This is the official poster that must have been distributed by the city authorities. What caught my eye first was the non-Slavic look of the soldier - most likely because I've had such an exposure to all the xenophobia of the Russian blogosphere, including a few ugly recent posts about Central Asian war vets here in Moscow... What's also interesting about this greeting is that it's signed by "President of the Russian Federation V. Putin" - who, on May 9, was no longer the president. Sort of.





These two were made by the concierges (who are the sweetest elderly women, by the way). They are wishing WWII vets "health, happiness, financial well-being and peaceful skies above [their] heads." The second one must be from last year; it reminds of the stuff we had to make at the kindergarten.



This one is from Feb. 23, the Defender of the Motherland Day or whatever it's called here now - but it was put up in the elevator again on May 9: a somewhat poetic greeting to "all the dear men, regardless of your military rank."

(We also had some concierge art on March 8, the International Women's Day, but I never took a picture.)

We've finally watched Emir Kusturica's Zavet tonight. Although I prefer those of his films that make me both laugh and cry - Time of the Gypsies, Underground, Life Is a Miracle - I really enjoyed this one as well. It's funny in a silly way, perhaps somewhat sillier than his previous "funny" films. But what's really pleasing to realize is that Kusturica has managed to remain a prankster and a jester despite his involvement in the all-too-serious Serbian politics.

I keep thinking of Kusturica's friendship with Nikita Mikhalkov and keep comparing them: Kusturica shows up at the Moscow International Film Festival dressed like a bum, forcing Mikhalkov to run and get him a more presentable suit; judging by Kusturica's films (and his son's role in Zavet), he's not suffering from Mikahlkov's superiority complex; Kusturica has created what looks like a wonderful ethnic village, Küstendorf, while Mikhalkov has gotten himself a heavily guarded mansion with a budget-funded road leading up to it. All in all, I like Kusturica better. I wish we had someone like him in Ukraine.

Two Russia-related episodes in Zavet that I've found amusing and perplexing, considering the stance of the political force that Kusturica supports in Serbia:

In the first episode, the old man is watching an awards ceremony of some sports event, during which the Russian/Soviet anthem is playing. The old man is moved to tears - while his grandson is shown spying on the gorgeous tits of his teacher who is bathing outside. Multiple close-ups of the tits - and the anthem (to which Mikhalkov's father has composed the words, by the way, and not just once, but twice) as the accompaniment. Weird.

In the second episode, there's a brief sighting of a Lukoil gas station, followed by a mildly Tarantinoesque scene, in which one of the evil guys gets his balls chopped off by the old man's grandson. Too wild to be a product placement type of thing, I guess.

Still in Istanbul...

Küçük Marta at Küçük Ayasofya (Little Marta at the Little Hagia Sophia):

I've just added pictures that I took around Istanbul's Taksim Square in the evening of May 1 - here.

I, of course, wanted to post them right away, and write about how surreal it all seemed even after it was long over (I missed the bedlam that took place in the afternoon - read this post by Carpetblogger to learn more), but I'm really good at creating backlogs and staying faithful to this blog's title.



It's too late now and I'm too exhausted to be coherent, so here's just one tiny and meaningless observation:

Turkish riot cops are, for some reason, transported in totally civilian-looking buses, many of which carry ads for kids' stuff: