Kiev,
Ukraine 16.06 (Die Frisseur helt) (that’s a joke that the boys kept
telling yesterday ever since we had to go onto the tarmac in Zürich to catch
our AirFrance flight. It’s apparently from an ad for hairspray.)
We met
Stef at the bus stop at 5:39 and were all relatively fit, despite the early
hour. At the airport things went smoothly and we had a coffee and snack and I
was far calmer than I usually am pre-travel. The calm held while we arrived in Paris and
discovered that the time we needed to get from one terminal to the next meant
that we would miss our connecting flight. Luckily, as we learned this, we also
learned that there was another flight 3 hours later, which would get us there
in time to have dinner with our hosts and get to the game on time. (Die Ruhe
helt.) We went to customer service and got our new tickets, called Vladi, who’d
wanted to pick us up, to tell him we were delayed and I ran to the bathroom.
When I exited the bathroom, I couldn’t find the boys and began to freak out. I
reached them on our cell phone and the decision was made to eat some food. (Most
likely the reason for the freak-out. It was already 10 am and I’d not yet
eaten.)
After a
harrowing flight with dips and dives and crazy turbulence, we arrived safely in
Kiev and began our Cyrilic alphabet lessons with Ivo while waiting for passport
control. We then nabbed our luggage and discovered that Steff’s bag had not
arrived. (As I write this, it still hasn’t arrived) Ivo took the opportunity to
show us that we needn’t worry because he knew the language and was unafraid to
go from one line to the next, getting a form stamped and then going back again.
Vladi was
waiting for us with bottles of water and a large station wagon to accommodate
our luggage (Steff’s bag was the smallest of our travel gear.) He has such a
large car because he is an RC model plane flyer. It’s been a hobby since his
days in the Air force as a youth. We eaked out of the parking lot and then
zoomed crazily around highways. Despite using a Vladi’s clever detour, we hit
traffic next to some gorgeous fields with vegetables and cows. In the breakdown
lane, a line of Ukrainians who had no time for such traffic reversed back to
the rotary in an orderely line. Another car simply drove over the field to
bypass the traffic. Vladi spotted the origin of traffic, where cars were
driving normally, about 100 meters or so ahead.
“Good news! It’s just an accident” (the accident was gnarly – a Zhiguli
had been destroyed.) While waiting in the traffic, a spotty young man appeared
out of nowhere and began making inquiries of Vladi. Vladi responded
monosyllabically and I began to imagine that the fellow was begging, until he
began to smile widely, thanked Vladi and ran back to a car which he’d left (and
I hadn’t seen before) to drive slowly forward with the last of the traffic.
Apparently the young man had just ordered the same car that Vladi was driving
and wanted to know if he was satisfied with it.
We were not
only gifted the useful water on that trip. Vladi had also bought us a SIM card.
He had to explain it a bit, as it was written in Ukranian and not Russian. We
got to their house and instantly were greeted with wonderful smells from the
kitchen. Larissa had been cooking. We were worried about being late to the
match once the food began to be served and after the third time standing to
toast something else with our vodka or beer. Luckily, the France Ukraine game
had a rain delay and our game was thus also delayed. We ate and drank and gave
our wonderful hosts their gifts, were shown our amazing apartment and then
Vladi sweetly drove us to the Metro station.
Our Metro
station is above ground. At 9:30 pm it was still light enough that the interior
lights weren’t yet in use. They would simply blink before a stop. When they went
on and stayed on, we knew that we were headed underground. Many metro stations
in the post-soviet space are hundreds of meters underground (700-800 in some
places.) They are meant to double as nuclear bomb shelters. This makes me
wonder about the extreme depth of the Metro stations in Washington DC. Announcements
along our trip were helpfully broadcast in Ukrainian and English; a lovely
effort by the Eurocup host country. Upon arrival at our first transfer, purple
(the color of this Eurocup) signs with football flowers showed us the way to
the train that would take us to the FanZone and finally the Stadium. Really,
all we needed to do was follow the loud Brits and Swedes. At this point, we
began to see the sweet baby-faced guards who were watching the crowds. They are
young police academy students and look like spotty pre-teens with their tall
hats perched on the backs of their buzzed heads.
As we
ascended to the FanZone, an 8 year old England fan was blowing on an obnoxious
horn. We all confirmed how grateful we were that vuvuzelas had been banned and
I began to hope that this other form of horn (a canister with a handle, the boy
blew into an opening and seemed to be able to control the volume with the
intensity of his breathe – it sounded like an angry duck) would be banned next
Cup. As I was beginning to get properly frustrated with this boy, we came upon
another group of baby-officers and the boy demonstrated how quietly and
politely he could make his horn sound. Soon we were in a pleasantly sized and
spaced crowd of fans. The excitement was building but the stadium was not yet
in sight. We were just a jolly group of football fans, walking in the middle of
a closed 4-lane road.
A group of
fans in crosses of Saint George began singing the national anthem and Ivo
admitted sadly that we were likely missing the actual anthem at that very
moment. (We did not yet know that our game would be politely delayed due to the
first game’s delay.) Ivo has always cherished the National anthems at the
International tournaments “it’s what makes them so special.” He’d told me
before about the fact that his grandmother (the woman responsible for his
football fandom) used to think that it was a shame when players didn’t sing
along to their national anthem (I imagine that Spain is excluded from this
criticism, as they have no words.)
As we
approached the stadium and walked through a small barrier, I’m embarrassed to
say that I felt like I was in the fourth Harry Potter movie. Those special
effects used for the world quidditch cup stadium were the only thing near what
I was seeing now. The stadium was out of this world.
We came in
and then walked around half of the stadium to get to our section. Choosing to
avoid the concourse, we walked around the exterior and tried to judge from fan
sounds and announcer sounds if how far into the game they were (no one thought
to check their watch, for fear of disappointment.) We saw blue and yellow
uniforms playing against dark uniforms on the screens through the gate and
thought that the game was already on. Little did we know that they were showing
the France Ukraine match.
Our seats
were crazy close. I’ve never been that close before. (FCZ’s stadium has a very
large racing track around its pitch, which creates a good barrier for flaming garbage
and crazy fans, so one could never be
this close. The speed and intensity was so much more impressive at this
distance. We were sat among Sweden fans and a smattering of England fans. My
sense of self-preservation led me to cheer for Sweden, but Steff and Ivo stuck
with England, despite the company it meant that they were keeping. A drunken
English man with a mid-lands accent harassed his beloved team with a string of
insults, from calling players “muppets” to “bastards” to “fockin’ eejits.”
Things that
we saw that were not televised: Upon arrival, we saw a string of nattily
dressed guards in black marching up a stairwell. At the half-time, a group of
guards with green pinafores came to our section and removed racist banners that
had been draped over the rail. The guards for the field had three levels, so
far as I can tell: light yellow-green pinafores were the young and yawning
guards, darker green pinafores were more beefy, older, more serious guards.
Guards in orange pinafores were in charge of the others. In front of our
section, in the second half, there was a light-green guard sat every 3 feet. In
front of the more passionate Sweden sector (in the Northeast corner) were light
green and dark-green guards every 1.5 feet. In front of the more passionate
England fans in the Southeast, throughout the second half, the number of guards
became uncountable. Dark-green and orange guards stood shoulder to shoulder
against the railing. They picked up England fans who had jumped over the rail
during their second goal and seemed to multiply. After England’s 3rd goal, a fan jumped the railing
and the guards and began running on the track toward the pitch. An orange guard
took the man down, with an arm around his throat and was joined by 4 other
guards who then threw him into the crowd. During this time, more England fans
jumped over the rail and were instantly…inspired…. To climb back to their
seats.
After the
England win, we stayed through “We Will Rock You” and half of “3 Lions” and then began to make our exit. As
we left, the nattily dressed guards were back, marching over catwalks toward
the stadium and down the stairs, herding fans out. The most upsetting guard
situation was something that would appear banal: The OMON. The Omron stood in a
straight line with weapons and helmets, not moving. Other guards we would later
see, (blocking some metro entrances and lining others) included men and women,
some who were smiling, and giving directions. The Omon need only stand there to
scare me. These are the same soldiers whose actions in Chechneya give one
nightmares. These are the soldiers that we saw in Petersberg on a lovely city
ramble, who were in a courtyard behind a police building beating dummies with
sticks and cheering wildly. Their blue camouflage gives me the shivers and I
was glad to be leaving them behind. Our trip home was far less sardine-like
than I imagined and our walk home from the metro was long and peaceful. People
sat on benches in front of their buildings and chatted and smoked. The craggy,
potholed sidewalks made me glad that all that vodka at dinner was through my
system. We stopped at the 24 hour “magazin” near our place to pick up a
toothbrush for Steff and some Kefir for the morning and headed to our
apartment. I took a cold shower. I stupidly (or sleepily? – we had been up
since 5am and it was now 1:30 am) hadn’t thought to move the faucet’s handle to
the blue stripe when no hot water greeted the red stripe.
This
morning we slept in. I was up at 10 and did some work and the men slept on
until 11:30. At noon, Larissa (the other half of our incredible hosting team)
had told us to call around breakfast time and called us herself to ask if we
planned to sleep all day. We went down to meet her and she’d prepared an
amazing breakfast for us. She took us to the market and then we went out to the
farmer’s stalls to get fruit and veg and milk products (we’d bought something
like 5 sacks of frozen Pelmeni dumplings in the supermarket) I waited in line
for fruit and veg while Steff guarded the groceries and Ivo and Larissa went
into the dairy trailer. The line was faster than expected and suddenly I was
confronted with the prospect of ordering my own produce. I held up two fingers
and a thumb and said “drei corgette? Gurke?” The young lady chuckled and
grabbed three cucumbers. “Ist das alles?”, she asked in German. I was relieved
and embarrassed and continued my order until Ivo came and began saying numbers
of kilos for the fruit that we needed. I’m unsure what it would have come to if
I’d needed to understand how many Grivna I owed.
Ivo just called the airline (at my insistence) to
inquire about Steff’s luggage. A recording told him to pusk “1” for Ukrainian
and “2” for English. Ivo speaks Russian, not Ukrainian, so he pushed “2” an was
promptly hung up on. He called again an pushed the “1” key and was able to
ascertain that the bag was in the airport and would be delivered in the next 48
hours. So that’s good.
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