Greetings from Vinnytsia !
We just returned from a 3 day international music
and land art festival. It was a wonderful event,
lots of music with bands from all over Europe,
including Sweden. Also much traditional Ukrainian
music and dancing, done in traditional dress, both
on the main stage and at various impromptu spots
throughout the grounds. We camped with the 30
young volunteers from Karen's organization who were
part of the clean up crew. The campground was all
small tents, we never saw anything that remotely
resembled what we would call a camper. Also there
are no pick-ups in Ukraine. One of the Peace Corps
volunteers who has been here a year and a half says
he has seen maybe 5 or 6 the entire time he has been
here. Firewood was provided, so everyone had a
campfire to cook over, with a three legged holder
for the pot they were cooking in. It was very hot
- about 90 degrees everyday, with no shade in the
campground (the campground was a pasture.) We
will write more later, but these are some of our
observations: 1)
Speedos do not look any better on fat Ukrainian men
than they do on fat American men. Likewise for
women and small bikinis.
2) A two man tent does not
work for two men (or a man and a woman) with stuff
unless they keep the tent flaps open and stick the
bottoms of the sleeping bags outside the tent.
3) the absolutely most
wonderful shower in the world is very cold and is
taken together and lasts for 3 minutes and comes
after waiting only 1 hour and 52 minutes in line
4) when it is very very hot
during the day and your tent is one of about 1000
crammed in the middle of a pasture the only way to
stay cool is to either sit in the middle of a
river or go into the forest and spread out your
towel and take a nap
4) even if they did not go to
bed at night there are still some humans in the
world who think it is a good idea to sit in the
middle of a campgound and play saxaphone and bongos
and guitar at 6:30 in the morning
5) some land art is very good
and some is not
6) most of the music was very
good. The two best bands (in our opinion) were
from France - Nourou was the name of one, we will
find the name of the other.
7) borscht cooked in a large
kettle over an open fire is wonderful and is even
better than borscht cooked on a stove, even though
borscht cooked on a stove is still very good.
8) they do not have
marshmallows in Ukraine even though we looked
several places. We wanted to show them s'mores,
but without the marshmallows it just isn't the same.
9) when it is very very hot
during the day it makes sense to wait until about
7:00 in the evening to start the program, even
though the program is scheduled to run 8 hours. We
are sorry to report that we missed the fire dancing,
even though it would have been great to watch. It
did not start until 3:00 in the morning. Most
people did not seem to think that this was a
problem.
10) there were several Peace
Corps volunteers there working; we knew this was a
good place to be when we found many other volunteers
there, just for the fun of it.
Anyway, we had a great time.
The event was called Sheshory. It used to be in
the Carpathian mountains (western Ukraine), but
needed to move when the event site ran out of
room. So they got the Nemiroff vodka plant about
an hour outside of Vinnytsia to be the main sponsor
(it reminded us of John C Fremont Days with all the
Budweiser signs) and moved the event to a very large
pasture located between a forest/hill type area and
a river. Many hundreds (thousands) of people, and
many more than they had planned for. It was a
great time. Many many young people, but also many
families and older people too. We hope that they
can figure out a way to keep up with the crowds in
the future, there is nothing in the world quite like
a 3 day old pit toilet (Turkish type) that has been
used by many more hundreds of people than was
anticipated. Lots of beer, no other alcohol sold
and no drugs. (Ukrainian police do a great job of
just being visible, and having the drug dogs walk
through occasionally.) Anyway, a great time had
by all and we are looking forward to next year.
Karen's organization is involved with running this
event, and since we are new they let us off the hook
this year and said we could just enjoy ourselves,
next year however we will "get" to work. Take
care
Don and Karen