You're reading: Freaky fan fun

A pair of Dutch adrenaline junkies, accompanied by a friend from Kazakhstan, decided that life in the Kyiv fan zone was too boring. So they decided to sneak into the Chornobyl zone in search of fun.

Luckily for them, the stalkers were detained by police on June 18, said Interior Ministry spokesman Volodymyr Polishchuk. Otherwise, they would face the prospect of wild animals and the possibility of getting lost in the radioactive exclusion zone, the 30-kilometer radius where no people are supposed to live.

This is one of a handful of stories going around as thousands of foreign football fans flooded Ukraine and co-host Poland for the Euro 2012 football championship. The adventures of foreign fans range from sad to funny. Some were spiced up with criminal incidents.

The Interior Ministry says Euro 2012 has been relatively calm, despite isolated instances of trouble. Lost passports and lost people have been the most common incidents registered, according to the British Embassy press service. It only recorded about a dozen such cases.

David Ford, a British fan who came to Ukraine to see the games, got lost on the streets of Kharkiv after Portugal beat the Netherlands on June 17. His friends left for Donetsk with his cash, his cell phone and his documents. Fortunately, he was found by local police. He eventually caught up with his buddies again.
Another Brit, a disabled football fan, was forgotten in a Kyiv restaurant by his “friends,” police said. An unnamed resident of Kyiv helped him out by buying a ticket to Kharkiv, where his friends were supposed to wait for him.

In desperate circumstances, foreign fans have shown extraordinary resourcefulness in seeking help. In one case, a football fan spelled “HELP” with his shaving cream in the middle of the road after finding himself in a strange village.

He partied hard in Kyiv’s Hydropark Dnipro River recreation area and eventually fell asleep there. When he woke up, he realized his wallet and documents were missing. He decided to hitch a lift to the Crimea, where his relative lives. But luckily, his common sense kicked in quite soon – around the village of Kriukivshchyna in Kyiv region.

A villager sympathized with his foamy cry for help, and called the police, who then toook care of the partygoer.

There were a few crimes registered that involve people who pretended to be football fans. Kyiv’s police department said a duo from Brazil that arrived under the guise of football tourism tried bank card scams. They were both detained by the police.

Kyiv Post staff writer Anastasia Forina can be reached at [email protected]