Cover me

(some browsers fuck with the spacing and I can never figure out how to fix it -- very annoying)

The National Art Museum of Ukraine defines 'national' pretty liberally, including ethnic Ukrainians who lived/worked in other places and people of other nationalities who worked or spent time in Ukraine. (That's a fact, not a value statement.) I was sort of struck by how much the village scene paintings from 100+ years ago look exactly like what you see out the window of a train going across Ukraine today. Ukrainian peasants had a pretty turbulent, horrible last century -- Stalin made sure of that -- but you wouldn't know it from looking at their houses.

Anyway. I think living in Kiev would mostly make me very grumpy. The winters are long and cold and snowy (windy too, I bet) and spring apparently lasts about two weeks and two of the three early-June days that I've spent here have been just-barely-bearably hot. But the Kievans do take good advantage of the few warm/hot days they have and on a day like today when the weather is perfect, it's pretty glorious. There are little outdoor concerts all over the city and you can drink beer in the parks and depending on where exactly you are the river has little beaches or islands or outdoor 'cafes' that serve plastic cups of beer or abandoned industrial grit. On weekends they pedestrian-ize some of the main streets and this afternoon there was a little parade and a stage on the main square had traditional music and dancing (including an act by an 'art collective' of little kids).

There's just a good vibe here, even at the brew pub with the adequate cover band. The Kievans were getting down to Bon Jovi and the Beatles, but they really got excited when the cover band played the only Ukrainian song of their whole set. If people like the Ukrainian music so much, I don't understand why I don't here more of it here (and so then less of Sting and George Michael -- east Europe loves those two). I guess there's not a huge market but still, you'd think a country of 45 million people could give the cover band a little more to work with.