I was there at Sean's invitation for City Day, the day the Kharkiv celebrates both its emancipation from the Nazis and its birthday: 351 years this year. In Ukraine, that is considered to be young (Kyiv and Zhytomyr are both over 1,000 years old)!
Sean and I in front of a statue in Kharkiv
Here's statues depicting the bondage of Ukranians around a statue of Ukraine's most celebrated poet, Taras Shevchenko
City Day also happened to be Susannah's birthday, Susannah being one of the girls that trained in my link. Thinking I was on the other side of the country, Susannah hadn't told me she was having a party in Kharkiv. I got off the train thinking Sean and I would be hanging out, but instead it turned into this big party with volunteers all over the oblast coming in to help Susannah celebrate. The citizens of Kharkiv also decided to help celebrate Susannah's birthday by putting on a big concert with Ani Lorak, one of Ukraine's more popular pop stars. If Anny Lorak doesn't sound that Ukrainian to you, it's actually because her stage name is simply her real name spelled backwards: Karolina.
Susannah getting video of the concert
Me, Sean, Mike and Adam at the Ani Lorak concert. Because everyone else was holding a beer, I grabbed Susannah's.
It was a pretty fun concert, and Kharkiv decided to keep on celebrating Susannah's birthday by putting on one of the best fireworks shows I've ever seen. And you're talking to an Orlando boy who was raised on Disney fireworks shows. One of the cooler visual images was all these fireworks exploding behind and sillouetting a huge statue of Lenin, his arm outstretched.
Lenin gives you...fireworks!
More fireworks
Later that night found us in an outdoor club shaking some booty and later we ended up playing guitar back at Adam's apartment. I was crashed out by 4:00 AM, but from what I understand, the music kept going until long after the sunrise.
At the club
At Adam's apartment
Kharkiv and Susannah welomed their birthdays in style.