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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Kyiv Struts Its Stuff

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Kyiv Day has been an annual event since Soviet times, a day when just about everyone in town listens to a free concert or sips beer or soft drinks with shashlik or an open-faced sandwich on Khreshchatyk then strolls down Andriyivsky uzviz (St. Andrew’s Slope) to look at more things to buy than one ever sees on every other day, street performers, and, of course, each other. It is always the time when Kyiv has its biggest crowds, a people-watcher’s (especially girl-watcher’s) paradise. Everyone is in a festive mood, and one almost never fails to have an unexpected encounter with some long-lost friends.

This time, however, it was special. Kyiv Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko promised that he would present the best Kyiv Day ever, and Hizzoner kept his word. This time there was so much to do that one day just couldn’t hold it all, and Kyiv Day was turned into a two-day bash, the centerpiece of which was Friday evening’s outdoor performance of Stravinsky’s oratorio, “Oedipus Rex” in Maidan Nezalezhnosty (Independence Square) to an audience stretching as far as the eye could see, topped off with a fireworks display at the conclusion as brilliant as the human fireworks onstage. Nor was everything kept in the usual locales. Even my poor unfashionable Troyeshchyna district, the fartherst quarter of the Left Bank, got to see a balloon race with children chasing the balloons coming down in a field just outside the city’s northeastern extremity.

Photo by Leonid Bakka, The Day

 

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