Dynamo and Folk Architecture

A couple things we had wanted to do if we had time in Kiev have come together in the last 24 hours. Last night we attended a soccer game between Dynamo Kiev and Dnepro Dnepropetrovsk. I could hardy believe the prices; the seats in the best sections were only about $6, and the stadium is only a short walk from our apartment. As in a baseball game, the atmosphere is a large part of the fun, but the action was so much clearer and more exciting than on TV that there really is no comparison, and I had a blast.

A few stats to show the caliber of Dynamo Kiev: They were winners of the European Winners' Cup twice while I was growing up (when I of course thought of them as a Soviet rather than Ukrainian team) and they came close to winning it last year. Historically, they won more USSR championships than any other team, and in the 18 years of the Ukrainian League, they have won 12 times and been runners-up the other 6. Their captain is Andriy Shevchenko, the 3rd highest scorer in European soccer history and voted the world's best player in 2004.

We got to see Shevchenko do one trick right in front of us that I had never seen before: he received a high pass off the back of a heel, looping it forward over his head and leaving 3 defenders behind. The visitors had a shot off the crossbar and a reversed penalty call in the first quarter, but Dynamo dominated overall. Some near misses included a scissor-kick attempt from the penalty spot, a curving corner kick that just went over the crossbar, a shot from within the goalie box deflected by a defender on the goal line, and a 95th-minute direct kick that bounced down off the left end of the crossbar. So the game ended 0-0, but it was an amazing experience. We got a laugh as we stood to leave thanks to a fan who eluded security to shake Shevchenko's hand at midfield and received his hero's jersey as a reward, to massive applause.

Today, we took the metro and bus to the outskirts of Kiev to spend the afternoon in Ukrainian Museum of Folk Architecture and Life, a huge open-air area that has brought windmills, whole farmyards, a village school, and a couple of functioning churches and set them up with authentic tools, furniture, and decoration to show village life from the 18th and 19th centuries. There are over 300 structures on the 370-acre grounds.

There are also demonstrations of traditional arts and handicrafts that visitors can even try: pottery on a foot-driven wheel, archery, egg painting (with wax), and zimbal and bandura players. Handicrafts of spectacular quality are available

for purchase. There also is a one-street neighborhood showing a typical 20th century house from each of the oblasts (provinces) of Ukraine. This visit gave me a new appreciation for Ukrainian culture and an idea of what some things might have looked like for my ancestors that lived in rural Ukraine. It also was nice to get out of the city into a very natural environment again.