Thursday, September 27, 2007

Wrap up

These are some miscellaneous pictures which I did not find a good reason to post.



The drinking building. Probably not the most safe place to be waltzing about drunk, but if you survive all the way to the top there is a beautiful view of Kharkov's city lights.




A party at Misto. Martin is rapping and no-one has an idea what he is rapping about.




Kyryl walking on dead people. The Youth Park used to be a cemetery but the Soviet people - who were not too fond of religious stuff - decided to make a park instead and they left the grave stones of some famous people. This park is not very popular.




Russian Jeep, Lada Niva. If I needed a car I would buy one of these.




In the back you can see a half naked man with a baseball bat. He parked his big car across the track of the tram and he was somehow infuriated by the fact that some people would like to have the tram pass. Maybe it was some strange way for him to show off for his girlfriend in the car.




The Shevchenko theater where I went to see a play of Kharkovian Andrey Zholdak. He makes some very modern sort of 'picturesque' theater without speech (but a lot of screaming and strange sounds), quite cool actually and theater itself is also nice.




This is the equipment they use to fix the pavements, no wonder they are so uneven.




The old Soviet 'shopping universe', has a quite special atmosphere.




"Napoleon called me one day and said that he's missing Kharkov. So I invited him, of course, for a couple cups of tea." This is part of a very long wall with some graffiti which was probably requested, they also painted pictures from post cards showing tourist attractions of European cities. Of the more technically advanced graffiti in Kharkov I think all of it was requested, with so many police men around you online have time to write your name illegally.




The Hi-Fi Club which has good loud speakers but no guests.




The children's institute of puppet theater..




One more demonstration beneath my apartment, when they are not making noise there are some loud speakers constantly playing Russian chanson (the equivalent of American gangsta rap, one popular chanson singer is Michael Klug). All the people around the edges are police people.




Gorky park in the evening, a cosy place to go roller skating.




Some buses, a church and a meat commercial.




This is a cool old Soviet lunch cafe which Semen showed me.




One of my favorite pictures, from the meat hall at the central market. I use it as a wallpaper on my computer desktop.




At one super market you can buy various sorts of weapons.




The market of used books, it is open every weekend. I was told that this street is packed with homeless people in the night, but I never normally see homeless people, I think.




This is a sort of sports center, the front of the building looks very good.




Here the circuses don't travel around with their tents, every city has a building like this and so they just travel between buildings. Very convenient I guess. I regret that I did not go to see a circus performance there. I also regret that I did not go see a match at the football stadium.




You don't have to go far from the center before houses start looking like this, actually it reminds me of many back yards in the center.




Some old arcade machines in the gaming hall at the zoo.




This is close to where Roman and Marina live, at that time there were these tents with people selling water melons everywhere.




Water delivery service. This is a place next to our new office where they sometimes also sell vegetables, delivered by Lada directly from some one's dacha.




Ice cream. In Ukraine you can use as a sales argument that something contains 19 percents of fat, in Denmark that would be like saying "don't buy this".




One weekend I was playing basket with Sasha and his friends near the place where he and Vika lives.




Sasha and Vika also got married recently.




This is from the giant Barabashova 'clothes-and-everything-else market'.




Barabashova also.




This is where the very important people go.




Kyryl going for water. This was the day of Ivan and Natasha's wedding.




Lots of drunk teenagers. Jakob made this picture from the big square on one of the many celebration days. Several meters behind him there were even more people and then the stage where I think a guy from Talking Heads was performing.




The big square after a celebration. They always start cleaning right away.




When going to a sauna here you have to wear funny hats (I also did that at the dacha with Roman and Marina).




That's the opera again. I am still wondering what these architects where thinking/drinking.




One of the omnipresent shooting tents. At this tent you are shooting at a screen showing a movie with a lightly dressed woman.




Scary children mannequins at the very big children's accessories store in the center of Kharkov.




The military school near our new office. Every day we can here them marching by, shouting 'one, to, three'.




One typical, very cosy back yard.




Bottle hunters.




Pimped up Lada.




Beautiful cakes, I am going to miss you.




Funny little car.




A weekend at the cascade, meaning lots of wedding photo sessions.




This building also looks pretty from the front.




Scruffy little dogs, never touch them.




Stargorod. Yet another place where the entertainment is provided by lightly dressed women. It is a cool place because you can get Czech knödel and home brewn beer.




This weekend they have a new election and so for some days these kids have been standing all the way up Sumskaya promoting one of the parties. I wonder if this is a good picture for the voters, to show how many people they can buy to do stupid work for a cause they really don't seem to care about.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

Perfect post - you managed to catch all most vivid "realities".
The Youth Park in the place of cemetery is my everlasting surprise.

dmytro said...

May I ask you about the fat ice cream... how would you compare the number of fat people in the streets in Ukraine and in Denmark?

Søren said...

there are definitely more fat people in Denmark.. they may eat more greasy food in Ukraine but they just eat a lot less, i guess..

Anonymous said...

hey Søren!
Fedt at finde en dansker som blogger om min hjemby!
haha.. faldt over din blog gennem en google søgning om Kharkovs kunst..og der var bloggen så...

Barabashova er også bare det fedeste sted jeg køber tøj osv når jeg er på ferie dernede..!

Unknown said...

Soren you did a perfect blog about my city. However I want to express my opinion in the question about fat ice creams/people.
We don't eat less we spend much more energy.

Søren said...

I see! then what do you spend more energy on..?:)

Unknown said...

Soren, I guess you could notice we spent more energy to overcome obstacle done by ourselves

Søren said...

Oh yes, I noticed that - you very well deserve that fatty ice cream..:D

Unknown said...

Guy, being critical to Ukraine does not mean to close eyes on all stupidity of the Western World
It is too funny that fat milk is cheaper then fat free one for example in Sainsburry (UK) I am afraid not just there. You remind me Marjorie from Fatfighters club of Little Britain
with that logic I can sell you sand or dust they are completely fatless:)

Anonymous said...

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/1626/dsc0068xq.jpg

btw, I was in Copenhagen this weekend and had "funny little car" in my post about it as well :-D :-D