Donetsk community
Living in Donetsk, I always treated the concepts of “Donetsk character” and “Donetsk community” with some derision. I smiled when “#37 Donbass” drove away to “Dark Mounds Are Sleeping”. I took the phrase “Donbass doesn’t mess around” with some sarcasm. I didn’t understand the widespread obsession of football fans with Shakhtar. Even my sister, who supported Shakhtar, I always considered a bit crazy in this regard. Donetsk people seemed “slightly thuggish”, showing off and proving to everyone that people from Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk were weaker than ours.
And then I met my wife’s colleague at the Kyiv train station, and I had this feeling of being “a guest at home” — which is silly: Kyiv, a train station, someone is coming to visit you, but you’re not at home, and guests are supposed to come to your home, but you yourself are not at home.
And today I was at a Donetsk “Burger joint” in Kyiv and realized that I don’t just miss my hometown, my home, Azotny district — I don’t just constantly worry about my relatives who stayed there.
And I felt what “Donetsk community” really means just by seeing the eyes of a man who also seemed to have come to the Burger joint from who knows where, in a car with AN license plates.
Take care. Live long!!!