Vodka, Bears and Elephants: Pumas, Anteaters and Wolves

Friday night this week was Canadian Embassy night, so we spent a great evening there drinking mojitos and eating pizza. We mostly chatted with Americans some of whom came on our zoo tour a few weeks ago. We discussed that our work at the zoo is actually very similar to some of the work carried out by staff at the embassy, particularly where they are advising on business and banking. They encounter the same problems, bureaucracy and the same slow speed of change (and Ukrainian insatiable need to stamp everything with their special official stamps). During the evening there was another torrential thunderstorm and we all had to hide under the beer tent and patio-umbrellas. These seem to happen quite regularly at the moment, as the weather is so hot and humid. They generally follow the same pattern. The heat increases steadily throughout the day along with high humidity – it’s quite unbearable. Suddenly the sky will turn black and an immensely powerful wind will sweep in – so strong that it pulls leaves and branches off the trees. This is quickly followed by the sky unloading so much rain that the pavements and roads turn to rivers. All accompanied by spectacular lightening strikes and overhead thunder that makes the ground shake!
We decided to have a relatively quiet weekend, as it was another bank holiday on Monday. This time it was for Constitution Day. It was actually a bit strange, normally on the other bank holidays the streets are busy in Kyiv around the zoo, lots of street vendors and lots of traffic but it was very quiet this weekend. The zoo was still busy of course, but I’m not sure where everyone else was.
We spent Saturday and Sunday in the zoo, resting in our apartment and wandering around to see the animals.
We popped into the red river hog enclosure so Steve could measure up for some work he needs to do in there, and were happy to see that the construction department have completed the stalls in the house and the doors for the pigs to use.
The lynx enclosure is also coming along nicely, the mesh is starting to go up and the foundations for the house are going down. Over the weekend, the zoo held a public awareness/education campaign and fundraiser for our Carpathian Lynx. This is such an important thing for zoos to do, particularly when we can focus on native species.
Monday, which was bank holiday, we decided to be active and went on another adventure in the sweltering heat (when we got home at 7pm it was 34⁰C, and it had cooled down a lot). We decided to head for the “artists” area of Kyiv called Podil and we would walk up St Andrivsky’s Descent – a steep cobbled street with art and antique stalls. It didn’t take too long to get there by metro and we even managed our first ever change of metro line without too much trouble.
It’s only a short walk from the metro to where we wanted to be, but we got side-tracked with some statues, a very strange front-door and a church that Steve wanted to photograph. We also stopped at an Irish themed pub as Steve fancied a pint of Guiness. I think we have discovered the World's only Irish pub without Guiness, Murphys or Jameson Irish Whiskey!
The market has all sorts of things for sale; old clocks, general antiques, soviet memorabilia (both real and mass produced), jewellery, old books (including the first English book I have seen since being here – a Spike Milligan autobiography!), traditional clothing, handmade clothes and hats, lots of tourist items (Matryoshka dolls, Ukrainian painted wooden eggs, novelty t-shirts, fur hats, vodka glasses etc) and lots of artwork. Some of the paintings were excellent, some were painted well and some were just awful. I did particularly like a modern painting of two zebra, but for us buying art is impractical here under the circumstances. Steve and I were very restrained with our purchases, we bought four old enamel pin badges from zoos – we got Kyiv Zoo (obviously), Moscow, Leningrad and Askanya Nova.
About half way up the street, near St Andrivsky’s Church we saw a zebra skin hanging on the wall. On further inspection we found a stall nearby selling mostly sea shells, but also for sale were a wolf skin, a stuffed turtle, crocodile paws, a puma skin, an anteater skin, a kangaroo skin, a dried shark, horns from various hoof-stock and all sorts of other animal parts – unbelievable! I don’t know a huge amount yet about the animal legislation in Ukraine, but if it’s anything like the zoo legislation here then there will be no laws relating to the selling of wildlife! We saw quite a lot of fox pelts on some of the other stalls, and of course, the fur hats for the tourists.
After we had finished exploring the market we headed to Voldomyrska Hirka Park for a walk in the shade, some cool drinks and to look out across the Dnipro River. The park is at the top end of St Andrivsky’s Descent, and to get back down to a metro station we took the Funicular, the building for which is as beautiful as the metro stations. The funicular cost 1.5 gryvnas, approximately 13 pence (the metro is about 16 pence) so, whilst ludicrously cheap it is actually very poor value for money as it only goes a few 100 metres where you can travel as far as you like on the metro on one ticket!
Steve and I have taken up a Ukrainian National past-time. We are now avid sunflower seed eaters. Everywhere you go there are people selling and eating sunflower seeds. They come in their shells and you crack them open between your teeth giving a nice satisfying pop, although Steve hasn't quite mastered the technique yet judging by the amount of shell fragments all over the floor. It’s quite a slow process to eat them, but very tasty.
I am pleased to inform you that I am now able to exact my revenge on the nasty mosquitoes thanks to a large bottle of industrial strength DEET insect repellent, sent by post from Mum and Dad.

Mosquitoes – You have been warned !