Kiev

January 14–16, 2005

On the screen of a cash machine inside the airport:

Get your receipt
Conduct another transaction?
Aid Beslan school siege victims
Charity
Yes
No
5% discount on holidays in Egypt and Thailand

Of course, traces of “the orange revolution” are ubiquitous.

Although ideological clashes do occur from time to time.

But they fix them right away.

Yanukovich

As you’d expect, Khreshchatyk, Kiev’s main street, has been carved up into an improvised encampment of the kind 1960s singer-songwriters outside the Soviet establishment used to set up.

Yushchenko — President of the People’s Revolution

Exchange bureau
American valenki boots in exchange for drug-laced oranges
Urgently needed: enema to treat Yanukovich’s wife’s meningitis

Underground, however, they don’t have time for revolutions. The hunt for new advertising techniques has resulted in disfigured escalator light fixtures — they’ve been turned into spam tape.

Why do we need advertising? To make money. What do we do with that money? Spend it on upgrading our surroundings. The Kiev metro was too stingy to hire a designer capable of distinguishing between the letter “Ж” and a collection of three random symbols to do half an hour’s worth of work. This is a sign on the platform wall in “Maidan Nezalezhnosti” station, below Kiev’s central square.