These pics (from Ukraine) are from a ShoutyFace page that I follow. People post snap shots of the view from their home windows. It's an interesting, fun idea but most of the posted views seem to be of middle to upper class, posh vistas. That is, I haven’t seen any pics from windows in Boston’s Allston, Brooklyn’s Bushwick or Chicago’s Lower West Side 
neighborhoods. Nor have there been any scenes from rural West Virginia trailer park windows.Nope. I’ve seen snaps from an upper floor, midtown high-rise (looking toward Central Park). There was a shot of a Dallas sunset as seen through a homeowner's expansive, glass roofed swimming pool pavilion. A woman proudly posted a shot of her big Virginia back yard (we’re talking acres) with its large pond.
*KACHING*
Ya 
To be fair, this Window View site, does occasionally show pics from folks who aren’t
quite so blessed by the god of affluence. Fer instance, lately I’ve
been seeing shots from people in Ukraine. Now then, who knows, maybe these shots are taken from ultra posh condo buildings and the neighborhoods are 
I want to see more of Ukraine now, before Putin and his tiny dicked retinue bomb and burn the landscape, before they kill off/enslave the independent people who call Ukraine home. Ukraine voted overwhelmingly for independence from Russia in 1991; it was the the crossed Rubicon after which the USSR fell.
Fuckers.
- As the US warns Moscow could strike at any time, President Joe Biden will convene his National Security Council on Sunday morning to discuss the latest developments in Ukraine.
- French President Emmanuel Macron is set to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin Sunday as an Elysée Palace source says Paris hopes to “construct a useful roadmap for the coming days.”
- On Saturday, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky reasserted his trust in his country's intelligence and said Ukraine would not respond to provocations from Russia.
- And, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned Russia is planning "the biggest war in Europe since 1945." (source)
Joint military exercises by Russia and Belarus close to the Belarusian border with Ukraine were due to end today but the Belarusian defense ministry has announced that they will continue. They have been seen as a significant element in the Kremlin’s menacing posture towards its neighbour. (source)
Seeing the views from Ukrainian windows brings the fear, the coming pain and horror, so much closer.
I've been there. Horrible to think of it becoming a war zone again. There is so much suffering in Ukraine's history already.
ReplyDeleteCentral Kiev is beautiful, but outside that, yes, a lot of it is just ranks and ranks of dreary concrete apartment towers that were built right after World War II. It's not a really poor country, but it's not like the West.
What took you to Ukraine? I'm fascinated.
DeleteMost of the pics I've seen remind me of how East Berlin looked right after the wall came down. Oppressive.
That was in 2007. I happened to be really interested in eastern Europe at the time, and after doing some research, I chose Kiev as the best place to visit -- most eastern European cities had a lot of crime against tourists, but Kiev had made a real effort to cut it down. When I was there, there were a lot of police in the streets. I never felt in any danger.
DeleteThose apartment buildings are crappy because they were just building the cheapest possible housing as fast as possible to replace all the housing destroyed in the war. When I was there I heard that better housing was being built as the country became more prosperous, but there were still huge areas of the old concrete towers left.
The weirdest thing about Kiev was the car parking. The city has far more cars in it now than it was designed for, and there's not nearly enough parking available downtown. On the other hand, the sidewalks are typically about fifteen feet wide. So cars would commonly park on the sidewalks. I very often saw a car drive up onto the sidewalk and move slowly among the pedestrians until it found a good spot to park. Not as dangerous as you'd think, but it took some getting used to.
The drinking there is incredible. They had about two hundred drownings a year in the river because of people going swimming while drunk. The penalties for drunk driving were incredibly harsh, but they had to be -- I'd hate to think what it would be like if drunk driving were tolerated.
Fascinating!
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