At a few parties this weekend – the opening of a new local nightclub, a private combination going away/birthday celebration and an elite food-tasting club event – I had the chance to really immerse myself in what variously constitutes ex-pat life in this city.
Friday night at the club opening I ran into, among other people: the lead singer of an ‘80s disco band; a long-time friend now the co-director of the club; an ex-girlfriend; an ex-pat who recognized me from a local bar, and some of Ukraine’s most sought-after celebrity faces, including the daughter of the former prime minister and her rock star husband. It was all very nice, I got to see my friend, and I left what looked like a raging party.
Saturday night I attended a more sedate party to which had been invited local diplomats, minor media celebrities, a local rock star, a farmer, NGO volunteers, people on the Ukrainian government’s payroll, small entrepreneurs and half of all the known Spaniards in Ukraine. (Social circles in Kyiv are nothing if not small.)
Monday night was the latest in a running series of food and wine-tasting parties hosted by Terry Pickard and The Connoisseur’s Club of Ukraine, attended variously by corporate CEOs, wealthy Ukrainians and the parents of my former assistant at the Post. I also spent time, when I could, talking to the chef – cooking is something of a hobby for me, the way golf was for Michael Jordan.
There’s really no comparing the parties in the same way that there’s really no lumping all ex-pats in this city into one big group. Take the private party, where my good friends and I behaved like teenagers – there was shaving foam and sword fighting and some amount of disrobing. It was like the best of house parties back in the West, with drinking, dancing, laughing and so on. Only the cops didn’t come knocking. My friends and I even stripped down to our thermal underwear, which garnered as many laughs from everyone else as it did from us.
I came to Ukraine four-and-a-half years ago, naively believing the city to be overwhelming and unknowable. Years later, it’s still overwhelming, but only in the sense that so much is going on and that, as an ex-pat, it’s only possible to be part of so much of it.
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