A passer-by walking past the Kyiv City Hall on the morning of July 30 might have thought they were hallucinating.
The reason being, more than a dozen two-meter-high bright-pink snails were standing on the sidewalk facing the city hall entrance.
They were actually coffee-vending vans shaped as snails and parked outside city hall to protest a move by local officials to ban the sale of java on wheels.
The dispute started earlier this year when Kyiv authorities began closing mobile coffee vendors that worked without permission. Owners of the customized vehicles say that no such permit exists in the first place, and have asked for a special license to be created for street food and coffee vendors on wheels.
Apart from the snail-shaped vans of the Magic Snail company, several dozen simpler coffee vans were parked next to city hall on July 30 to support the protest.
