May 26, 2008 in :))), neeka: life, neeka: photos, ukr: culture, ukr: election '08, ukr: kyiv, ukr: language, world: turkey

On Saturday, I was feeling claustrophobic in Kyiv’s center, so I got into a random marshrutka and went where it took me: to Poznyaky and Osokorky, on the Dnieper’s left bank.

Some of my favorite pictures from the trip:

All photos are here.

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Marshrutka driver seemed like a very religious guy:

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Lots of street trade, just like everywhere else in Kyiv:

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So many flyers everywhere, I don’t think they have any informational value anymore and instead serve as decorations only in this otherwise gloomy area:

Election-related flyers from Poznyaky and Osokorky are in the Mayor 2008 Flickr folder.

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A very strange logo on the store that seems to be selling doors – looks pretty phallic to me:

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Mishuga Street – named, as it turns out, after an opera singer Oleksandr Mishuga (link in Ukrainian), who was born in a village near Lviv in 1853, in a shoemaker’s family:

While meshuga is a more familiar transliteration of the Yiddish word, here in Kyiv the name’s spelling varies from Mishuga (first photo) to Myshuga (second photo).

And then there’s also this sign for a wedding salon on Mishuga St. – composed by some meshugener in an inexplicable mix of Ukrainian (line 1) and Russian (line 2):

A Lenny Kravitz billboard on Mishuga St.:

Kravitz is, of course, a mis-transliteration of the Ukrainian word kravets, a tailor.

Café “Karadenis” – another cute mis-transliteration from the Mishuga St. neighborhood, this time of the Turkish word Karadeniz, the Black Sea: