| Wednesday, 8-Mar-2006 03:00 |
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Ukrainian Carpathians 1: Bajkery v Karpatakh
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I promised one fellow that I would put up some pictures of the biker round-up I went to during my first visit to Ukraine in the Summer of 2004. These aren't the best or most revealing pictures (I didn't take them; at the time I was roaming Ukraine with just a videocamera in hand), but they are something. This roundup takes place on an abandoned airfield outside of the town of Kosiv and near the village of Sheshory in the Ivano-Frankivsk oblast every year in July, as I understand it. The guys zoom their bikes up and down the airstrip, showing off and giving rides to the people who mill about. There is, of course, shashlyk, horylka, and beer available in a tent. Things can get a bit hazardous at the event. I am not kidding nor exaggerating when I say that one guy nearly lost control of his bike as he zoomed back toward the crowd; he hit the breaks a bit too late, and if I had not seen him coming as soon as I did, he would have hit me and my friend Anna.
Anyhow, the round up coincides with the Ivana Kupala celebrations that take place in both Kosiv and Sheshory that are VERY worth attending. During the day in Kosiv are performances of Hutsul dance and music troupes, and then for two nights is a concert in a field near Sheshory of post-folk rock groups from all over (but mostly Ukraine, Poland, and Russia) that are influenced by Hutsul music and Carpathian sounds (or at least that was the gig the summer of 2004). It was like a typical music festival anywhere else, with counterculture and folklore types mingling with average music lovers. There was a campground full interesting people (I met some Polish hikers who were hiking the entire arc of the Carpathians that summer). There were fires, and hey--jumping over fires on the very festival day that one is supposed to and in one of the very lands from whence that very tradition hails! I wish I had pictures and/or videos, but the liter or more of vodka I drank with three other guys before heading to the show encouraged forgetfulness. Well, it was good that I didn't bring my videocamera and that my friends did not bring their fotocameras: it rained off and on and off and on constantly. That's typical in July in the Carpathians. People say that the best time to travel there is in the late summer to early fall. Anyway, I was there with my second-cousin Ostap and his buddies from Pidhajtsi, and we stayed at the house of a good friend of mine who is from the nearby village of Jabloniv. Part of her ancestry is Hutsul, and she knew how to dance Hutsul style, so we did a lot of dancing together (I know Hutsul dances well, and I can dance it for real, free-style, and not as a choreography, which is very different). Her uncle was at the festival and asked who I was, and he invited me to return in a month for his son's wedding. He said, "Then you can really see how well we have kept our Hutsul traditions." Someday I will get a videoblog site to post clips of me dancing a real arkan and other scenes from the wedding.
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