A piece of culture

Yesterday I was in Kiev (Ukraine) and I've seen a VERY weird thing. I knew before that us - Eastern Europeans are famous for our envy and vengeance :) (There is nothing to hide), but what I saw something, that really shocked me. A man with a knife (not even a penknife, but quite a big one) was pricking a tyre of a car, which was parked near the metro station. He was doing this just in front of me! It was midday! He pricked it and left...I couldn't even think or say something that moment. Probably the owner of the car has really annoyed him...or...was it an envy? Someone HAS but, he DOESN'T.

In the post-Soviet countries we have a huge gap between people. And it's not like in Latin-America where you have really poor people, that don't have a place to live and people that live a good wealthy life and have everything. Here is different. You can see really poor people - tramps, then just poor people that have a place to live, but not enough money to survive. The lower middle class shows that you have a bit of money, apartment, food, clothes, but you've never been abroad, you don't have enough money to go out; middle class - you have a good normal life, sometimes you travel, go out and can afford good trendy clothes, you have a car, apartment and probably "datcha" (a country side house), upper middle class - you travel a lot, you have apartment for you and one for your son/daughter, "datcha", two cars, trendy expensive clothes, finally you have money to bribe the police, the doctors and the university teachers of your children. I don't want to finish the list with the rich, because we still have our dear oligarchs, how can we forget them?

All this creates the huge misunderstanding and hatred and envy and revenge. You can evidence so many unfair things that are happening and people, that just accept them, because to battle them you need to have...guess what? Someone CAN bribe, but you CANNOT. If you have money you have everything in here. Everything can be sold and bought. And I mean it.

It is normal if someone cuts your new shiny leather bag in pieces when you are in the metro or pricks your car's tyres or puts a black magic ("sglaz", "porcha") on you (this is something that everyone believes in and does). If you want to get a guy, who doesn't care about you - again you have this bloody magic "privorot". If you don't like your neighbours or work mates you can put a spell on them and they will be suffering from the diseases. Gosh, it's TOO MUCH! I don't exaggerate, I just grew up in this "magical" atmosphere and I can tell you that our people are really crazy about this kind of stuff.

I'm writing this not as an awareness of people or of the countries itself...I just want to show you a piece of very strange, but at the same time very interesting culture. I just wanna share with you, how the real world can be so unreal at the same time. And that's my story for today.