***
I made a last minute decision to go to Eurovision in Kyiv. Eurovision is a big pop music contest between most of the European countries. Each country has its own competition as to which singer to send, and then they all meet in one country to compete in a huge media spectacle. This is the 50th Eurovision song contest, and ABBA was discovered by winning it way back in the 1970s. Each Eurovision is held in the previous year’s winner’s country.
Well, no one really expected Ruslana, Ukraine’s Pop Goddess, to win last year’s competition, but she did. And suddenly an event watched by 100 million people was coming to a country serviced by Peace Corps and USAID. It’s a boon of course, as thousands of Europeans coming to a country is always a financial windfall. The problem was infrastructure. Even Kyiv, modern European city though it’s rapidly becoming, simply didn’t have the facilities to receive that many tourists. It didn’t even have a venue. The only place large enough to accommodate the competition itself—the Sports Palace—had been left to decay for the past forty years.
And then suddenly there was political upheaval and the country—and any preparations for Eurovision—ground to a halt during the Orange Revolution. The revolution over, people began asking again about Eurovision. The general consensus was that overhauls to the Sports Palace would not be done in time. Yuchenko lifted visa restrictions for EU citizens for the length of the ten day contest, but then methods of getting tickets sales online (a new thing here in Ukraine) floundered and tickets still weren’t on sale a month after they should have been. Eurovision made back up plans to hold the contest in Norway if Ukraine didn’t come through.
But apparently they did. I was busy being sick and had forgotten all about Eurovision until I was in Kyiv and realized that the final was the next day. Well, I’ve always had a thing for large gatherings. There’s something when a crowd reaches a critical mass that awakens the social animal within you. Not a mob feeling, but the opposite, a feeling of excitement that multiplies itself exponentially. It’s way beyond the feeling of a concert. When a hundred people or a thousand cheer, you have the ability to just stand there. When ten thousand or a hundred thousand people cheer, though, you can’t help it. You, independent as you thought you were, find yourself controlled by the gestalt emotions of the crowd. There is some social instinct that runs that deep, even for someone as cynical as me. Which is why I enjoy these things.
Large crowds are always problematic, though. Prices soar, and sleeping accommodations become scarce or unavailable. Things like even going to the bathroom are now major, planned, costly events. So I have devised the in-and-out system. I have been to Mardi Gras, Love Parade, New Years Eve in Times Square, The Orange Revolution and The Running of the Bulls. Each one was a gathering in excess of a hundred thousand people. And for each one, I spent less then 48 hours in the city, and did not pay for accommodations. Get in, see what you got to see, don’t bother sleeping, and get out.
Eurovision was done the exact same way.
***
Carrie and I arrived in the afternoon, the whole trip on a whim. I had brought it to the Zhytomyr crew the previous evening after getting back from Kyiv, but neither Carrie nor Steve wanted to go. Amy was out of town.
I had lunch with Diana that afternoon, and it turned out she was going, a revelation coming shortly after Carrie text messaged that she had changed her mind. So the three of us got on a marchrutka. Rain clouds threatened to ruin the day, but Diana assured us that the Ukrainian government had flown planes that would drop chemicals in the clouds to make them not release their water. Sounds ridiculous, but I know they did this for Victory Day in Moscow, too. I told Diana that if the technology really worked, America would be using it. She told me I sounded arrogant.
The rain clouds held, and no rain fell. Huh.
Much of the reason for going to Eurovision was to meet Europeans, and hopefully get a few travel contacts for the summer. While Diana went to meet a friend, Carrie and I went to check out Eurocamp, a campground set up on an island in the middle of the Dniper river. The tents were those or like those from the Orange Revolution, and the whole camp was being touted as a recreation of the revolution for curious Europeans. Ironically, save for Russians and Belarussians, the only Europeans in the campground were Ukrainians. The campgrounds were the cheap alternative to hotels price gouging for the foreigners, but I guess that even a Ukrainian price gouge is easy enough to afford when you’re on the Euro. There were no Europeans at the campgrounds, at least none that we can tell. Russian was still the only language heard.
Tents like those used in the Orange Revolution at Eurocamp
What was on the island were lots of drunk Slavs, Ukrainian punk bands playing on a stage, a small amusement park with carnival rides, a shooting gallery and small paintball field. There were booths filled with Ukrainian food and drink and it was a heady, festival atmosphere. Three events of note came from the Eurocamp visit:
#1: Carrie suggested we do this carnival ride that consists of being strapped into seats that revolve on a horizontal axis, which is then on an arm that revolves on another horizontal axis. The result is you’re spun around in the air while you’re already spinning around in the air and with G-forces you get a pretty hurl-worthy experience. The scariest part of this was not the bottom arc of the revolution, where you are hurtled towards the ground and your face is about two feet from it before being whipped and spun up to the apex of the arm. It’s when you’re two feet from the ground and realize that this was assembled in a Peace Corps country. No offense to Ukrainians, but I get a little worried about these things coming apart when built by drunk carnies in Oklahoma. Add in the inevitable entropy of technology making its way east to the former Soviet bloc and suddenly I had visions of this paint-flecked contraption losing a bolt just as we were hurtled face first towards the ground.
Which made it more fun, really.
The ride Carrie and I tried out
#2: The worst rendition of “Nothing Else Matters”, ever. A pedestrian bridge crosses over the Dniper between the city and the island, and it was on this bridge that a Ukrainian on an acoustic guitar with a head microphone plugged into a one foot high amplifier belted out the most out of tune, atonal English I have ever heard as he sang the omnipresent Metallica song. It was so bad, as a matter of fact, that I had to videotape it.
The worse rendition of "Nothing Else Matters". Ever.
#3: Also on tape and also never failing to get a laugh, is the sheer stupidity of a couple of drunk Ukrainians. The pedestrian bridge is a suspension bridge, and a few people had climbed up onto the gang way running up the wires to the apex. In true Ukrainian fashion, several patrolling police looked up, saw them, and then kept walking. I was at the end of the bridge when from another group of policeman I heard: “What’s he doing?” in Russian. I turned back and saw that one of the men, a guy wearing all black, was now doing a Spiderman impression, gripping one of the wires with his feet on the gangway, hanging out off the bridge and over the water, which was some sixty feet below.
Some kids crawling around the gate onto the bridge's gangway
The policeman who had yelled now felt compelled to act and ran up to the lowest part of the gangway, climbed up onto it and began walking over to the man, who had since brought himself back to safety. When the man saw the cop, he began to run! This meant he was charging up the gangway towards the apex of the suspension wires, and he must have somehow though he could outrun the cop down the other side and off the bridge. The problem was that two other guys, also illegally on the gangway, were coming down that side themselves, and the guy ran smack into them, where the cop grabbed him. The cop then forced the three men to the lowest part of the gangway and had them climb down to where to other cops were waiting. Having captured all this on my video camera, I waited for them to cuff the men, but they didn’t. After a stern talking to, the three men were let go.
The cop chasing the guy in black
On the bridge after the action
***
Carrie and I walked to the center of Kyiv, to Maidan, the huge square where the Orange Revolution had taken place. While we waited for Diana to meet us, we ate ice cream, sitting in the grass on a hill overlooking Maidan. A little girl behind us blew bubbles that floated over our heads and popped in the grass while thousands of Ukrainians watched and dance to the music of a Ukrainian ska band in the square below.
Maidan by day. The crowds would get bigger at night
That band finished and modern Ukrainian folk band came onstage. Ice cream finished, we decided to head down and watch the band from the crowd. The lead singer with the handlebar mustache was wearing a wife beater and a beanie while he busted out melodies on a wooden flute. The percussion banged and an electric guitar wailed, but the true hero of that group was the accordion player. I didn’t know accordions could be so cool. This guy was wearing orange pants and a sleeveless vest, hugely muscled arms rippling as he jammed, yes jammed, on this amplified accordion. It was awesome. And when we wasn’t wailing on this thing, he was jumping up and down and head banging as either the flutist, trumpet player, or guitar player took their solos. In Ukraine, an accordion player can truly be a rock god sex symbol.
The coolest accordian player in existance
We met up with Diana, and discovered where all the Europeans were. They were not at Maidan as suspected, but over at the Sports Palace. I figured the Sports Palace would only be open for the Eurovision final, scheduled for 10:00 PM. After all, the Sports Palace is actually a huge concert hall, and are you just going to sit inside it all day? It turned out that Ukrainian bands were on a stage constructed outside the Palace, and that was the Europeans’ current source of entertainment.
Unfortunately, there was no getting within two blocks of the Sports Palace without a ticket, and tickets were running into the hundreds of Euros. The Euro is beating the dollar and the dollar is severely beating the hrivna, and my salary is based on the value of the hrivna, so I couldn’t afford it. I couldn’t afford it, Carrie couldn’t afford it and the thousands of Ukrainians listening to the ska band on Maidan couldn’t afford it, either. Diana and her friend had managed to sneak past the perimeter that stood guarded by police officers, two blocks out on every side of the Sports Palace, and came back with reports of Germans spitting out Ukrainian beer and old Italians trying to pick up teenage girls.
Following Diana back, we tried to sneak into the Sports Palace perimeter as well, but with the finals approaching, security had clamped down and you literally could not get into a two block radius without a ticket. People with flags and signs in English that read “This is a Ukrainian Ghetto” and “There is no Justice in Ukraine” stood outside, waving them at people walking through the gates.
The Sports Palace had been transformed. A Kyiv Peace Corps Volunteer told me that they completely replaced the asphalt in front of it and the power lines to it, and the exterior now glowed green under hundreds of new lights. The inside had been gutted and completely rebuilt in the span of two months by 700 workers, he said. Ironic that they still haven’t gotten my phone to work in Zhytomyr, or that water citywide is shut off at night because they can’t replace the leaking pipes, but, you know, that’s how it goes. Ironic, too, that all the Ukrainians with the signs were trying to get the attention of Europeans who came to Ukraine to go to a venue that Ukrainians couldn’t get near without tickets they couldn’t afford.
But there was always Maidan. On the same screens used to broadcast Yuchenko’s speeches was being broadcast the Eurovision finals, so we decided to head back that way. Walking down Krechatic, Kyiv’s main boulevard that had once been packed with tents, we were treated to the dozens of musical acts and street performer that had come out to feed off the crowd. Violins sparred sonically with folk guitars that fought with techno. One spot on Krechatic had a mini-rave going on, with a fire twirler whirling flame while people danced in a circle around him. A fashion show paraded up and down a catwalk to thumping pop. We arrived in Maidan halfway into the finals, having stopped off at McDonalds for dinner. The competitor on the big screen was from Denmark, and after him followed Sweden and Macedonia, each act wailing about this or that to cheesy pop, all of them wailing in English. All but five of the 24 finalists sang in English (one of the five sticking to it native tongue was, predictably, France), lending credence to why Peace Corps teaches it here. It’s not some brand of cultural imperialism; it’s because when business people from Germany and Taiwan sit down to talk shop, they talk in English; it’s because more people speak English as a second language as a first; it’s because it’s the lingua franca of the world. And it’s thanks to British colonialism, not out of any deference to Americans.
Even Ukraine’s entry added some English lyrics to their song. I hadn’t realized that Ukraine had even made the finals. In fact, when their song started playing, I assumed it was to keep the crowd happy during the commercial breaks.
Not so. GreenJolly, the two DJs that became national heroes overnight, were onstage singing while girls danced around them. And all they had done was take the rallying cry of the Orange Revolution, chanted in Maidan and all over the country every ten minutes or so, and put it to a hip hop beat. “Razom nas bahato ee nas ne podolati!” (Together we are many and we will not be defeated!), repeated it over and over and over and over. There’s some call and response lyrics here and there: “Yuchenko? Da! Yuchenko? Da! Nash president? Da! Da!” and then back into the revolution’s motto, ad nauseum. Sadly, it’s catchy beyond belief. For two months you couldn’t go to a club, walk into a classroom or even go down the street without hearing it blared from a speaker, radio or car stereo.
And to have it played then, this rallying cry of the revolution, this theme song of Ukrainian freedom, to have it played then in a competition watched by 100 million Europeans, well, Maidan went nuts. Imagine more ten thousand people pumping their fists in the air, waving flags, jumping up and down and absolutely screaming this phrase over and over and over for the three minute length of the song.
It was fantastic. The surge of crowd feeling, that upwelling of emotion, was stupendous and it ran as high as, well as high on that guy on the catwalk, fleeing from that cop towards the apex. And in some ways that’s an apt simile.
The crowd singing "Razom Nas Bahato"
Cheering on GreenJolly
Just ahead of us in the crowd was the only European I saw that whole day: a skinny guy wearing glasses, given away by his discomfort, always looking around and taking things in while every other person, in true Ukrainian fashion, stood and watched the screens, backs ramrod straight. When this explosion of emotion happened, his jaw dropped and stayed dropped as he looked around in wonderment for the entirety of the song.
Can you spot the foreigner?
I wanted to tell him: “you’d have to have been here during the revolution to understand a little, and you’d have to be Ukrainian to understand completely, but here’s a clue: when Ukrainians are put their emotions on the table, they do it completely. So take the support a crowd gives for their side in a competition, add in the intense feeling conjured up by this song, a feeling of when a country joined together for freedom and won, mix in the knowledge that a Europe that has always considered Ukraine a backwater buffer to Russia is now glued to their television sets and hearing this song, and you’ll start to understand where this comes from. Jacob Sveistrup of Denmark may be singing about love in a second language, and people in Denmark might be cheering him for it, but they can’t compete with the emotion felt right now because these people aren’t cheering for GreenJolly. They’re cheering for themselves.”
And that runner sprinted to the apex and then found himself carried aloft by the winds, leaving the fist-shaking cop far behind.
We left Maidan before the end of the show, leaving in the middle of the singer from France, which I felt was a fitting way to go. We caught one of the last metros of the night and got out as fast as we came in, which was the only way to do it.
You know, I never did meet any Europeans.