The most bizarre thing about the June 27 semifinal match between Portugal and Spain that took place in Ukraine’s eastern industrial town of Donetsk was crowd chanting. Apart from rather unimpressive attempts of Portuguese and Spanish fans to cheer for their teams, the entire 50,000 Donbas Arena was overwhelmingly shouting “Russia!”
In fact, the Spain-Portugal standoff attracted so few foreign fans — judging from the stadium appearance — that the rest of the fans flocking to the Donetsk fan zone ran into a problem.
It appeared that the usual routine when both Ukrainian and Russian fans would ask the prettiest fan girls to take photos with them turned out nearly impossible, due to the near absence of either Spanish or Portuguese female fans in the fan zone. It appeared that the only non-Russian speaking girl with the Spanish flag was, in fact, Canadian. Wearing a traditional Spanish skirt and constantly showing herself off, the other girl turned out to be a model promoting Carlsberg, the tournament’s beer sponsor.
All this left the Russian fans, an overwhelming majority of the crowd, occupying the nearby bars in expectation of the evening semifinal. It seemed that Donetsk to them was more than just a host of the Euro 2012 tournament, as they simply couldn’t stop praising the city in the manner more fitting to the resorts in the French Mediterranean.
Such was the case with the four guys from Rostov-on-Don, some 200 kilometers southeast from Donetsk. Wearing Spanish and Portuguese jerseys, they described steel and coalmine town Donetsk, hardly a resort destination for most Ukrainians, as being way better than their hometown, a major Russian city also with a population of over one million.
They were so impressed with Donetsk in terms of the cityscape, climate and better local beer that they were talking about coming back again — not for football, but just for a long weekend of drinking and night clubbing. Even the evident scam the duo experienced during their visit didn’t seem to spoil their impression of Ukraine’s rough and touch blue collar heartland.
In one Donetsk club they were offered a photo session with scantily clad models with the promise of publishing it online, so that they could boast about it to their friends. After paying Hr 200 ($25) for several shots, they found that none of them were actually published on the club’s website. It was a bit of a disappointment, given their description of the girls, who wore ultra-tight t-shirts and shorts which ended well in the upper part of their thighs.
After grieving about it (albeit not for long, perhaps, thanks to the wise decision to switch from local Lvivske beer to the Irish whisky), the friends’ ringleader Yura went on telling his buddies about a real drama which happened to him one day earlier.
It was all about a brunette girl in dress, colored in red and yellow — after the Spanish flag.
He met the girl from Donetsk in a VIP area of the fan zone. He ran after her to offer a taxi ride – to any place she wanted to go. First, she refused, but the fellow had to use all of his charms and the fact that he was coming from Russia seemed to have made him somewhat exotic to the Donetsk heartbreaker.
While in the taxi, Yura chatted with the girl, who was going to one of the city’s fanciest hotels to meet her friends. The guy could see that his Rostov charms were working. “I could see she was melting down,” he exclaimed, while ordering another Jameson.
When their ride was over, a local Spanish fan came out leaving it up to her new acquaintance to pay. Yet, when the taxi driver demanded Hr 80 ($10) for what was (or so it seemed to the guy) a very short ride, Yura was outraged and argued. It didn’t really cool him down when the taxi driver suggested that he pays quickly, or else his gorgeous girlfriend runs away.
When the money issue was finally settled the Rostov fellow came out of the car, only to have a last glimpse of the girl in a Spanish flag dress leaving in another taxi, waving and laughing at him. No matter how hard he tried to search for her – both at the fancy hotel and the VIP area of the fanzone – she disappeared for good.
This story made a lasting impression on his friends, especially given that meeting a Spanish, or Spanish-like girl, seemed in Donetsk that day to be an obsession for many.
As he finished telling his story, a new portion of whisky arrived. Borya, who seemed the oldest and more experienced of the four, offered to drink for the upcoming great night of soccer and then rushed the buddies to find a face painter to cover their faces with Spanish and Portuguese national colors.
In his view, this was the surest way to do away with the love troubles of one of his younger friends.
Kyiv Post staff writer Vlad Lavrov can be reached at [email protected]
