East meets West inside Kyiv's answer to Cheers
ted a gaping void between swank nightclubs and dank bars without chairs where vodka is the only item always in stock. Enter Eric Aigner and Viola Kim.
The husband-and-wife proprietors and hosts run the Sofia bar, a beer cellar just off Independence Square known for its Hr 2.50 screwdrivers and bilingual karaoke, and the Viola night club on Velyka Vasylkivska Street (formerly Chervonoarmiyska Street), another hot, sweaty and friendly dive.
Both are places where, if not everyone, then at least the owners soon know your name and even your drink. This personal touch has made Aigner and Kim perhaps the most popular bar owners in the city after little more than a year in business.
'It's a bar for young people, with affordable prices and in the center of the city, [that's why] people like it,' says Kim of her beer bar.
The couple's management style has also been a hit with the emerging legion of educated young Ukrainians with small amounts of disposable income. For them, the special treatment has been a novelty.
The 34-year old Aigner says he borrowed the concept from his favorite haunts in his native East Germany. 'Our bar wasn't a new idea, it was what we in Germany call Фa bar around the corner,' where you can go wearing slippers and where everyone knows you,' he says.
The 28-year-old Kim, an ethnic Korean from Uzbekistan, grew up in a very different environment. But she and Aigner hit it off almost immediately when he came to the Uzbek capital Tashkent to set up the office of a German consumer goods company.
'The first night we met he was drinking very much, and did not even remember me, but the second time he saw me, he fell in love,' laughs Kim.
For her, it was not quite love at first sight, either. 'I liked men with a full head of hair and no mustache, and I hate glasses,' says Kim. 'But I was charmed by his originality and the way he could think in Russian.' The couple quickly found themselves
married and in Kyiv, where Aigner was posted by his firm. They took a liking to the city, and saw an opportunity in the pizza business.
Commercial success eluded them. For over a year, they struggled to maintain the business, which ended up collapsing against the backdrop of a protracted dispute with their landlord.
Yet the pizza business was not a complete bust. Hot pies were frequently delivered to a basement-level bar destined to become the Sofia beer bar. In the spring of 1996, one of the two Ukrainian owners of the bar left the business, and the bar was looking for a manager.
'I wanted to get Viola a job as a manager at the bar,' recalls Aigner. 'My ambitions did not go any further than that.'
In the end, Aigner and Kim invested their money and ideas in the bar, becoming co-owners. They began saying hello to newcomers and regular patrons alike, and began papering the walls with cartoon likenesses of customers. Kim, who knew the bar and restaurant scene in the former Soviet Union from her days as a manager of a Japanese restaurant in Tashkent, sensed what a unique enterprise she and her husband had launched.
'A lot of things seemed strange for [local] people,' she says. 'For example, they always asked us why we are standing behind the bar. Owners here do not stand at the bar and clean ashtrays.'
By this spring, the bar had a devoted clientele. Success led to the opening of the nightclub this spring. Before the club was fully renovated, Ukrainian and foreign fans of the beer bar turned out for a special evening of inaugural drinking and dancing. 'The first party drew about 150 people, and we ran out of beer at 2 a.m. because we did not expect it to be so popular,' says Aigner. 'Business has been better than we expected, but it was easier to start because of the regular clients we had by that time.'
Not everything has gone smoothly. Before opening the club on Velyka Vasylkivska the Aigner and Kim briefly ran a disco in the Podil district that shut its doors after neighbors complained about late-night noise. And the new club's regular opening was delayed for weeks while the couple chased the many city bureaucrats who had to sign their permits.
But Aigner isn't about to cry over spilt beer. 'For us, this business is pleasure and business, not the other way round,' he says.
'We do not own a car or a flat, but we love our jobs and our guests,' adds Kim. 'We would prefer to keep our prices low, no matter what it costs us, rather than [raising prices] and changing clientele.'
Aigner and Kim are settling into their new city and lifestyle in another way: Kim is pregnant with their first child. She and Aigner already share their home with her 9-year-old daughter.
'I don't feel like I want to go somewhere else, especially home [to Germany],' says Aigner. 'This city has so much action; it's real fun.'
