Agressive briard and his irresponsible and rude owner

This morning Igor was attacked by a big black briard. We saw this dog in a park earlier. There were no friendly feelings when Igor and briard passed each other but both were always on a leash.
This morning Igor was sniffing and playing with a lovely lab - Kelly. Suddenly as a rocket briard jumped on Igor and bite Igor's neck. Briard was not on the leash. Fortunately Igor was. The leash is only 1.5 m long so I started to hit briard immediately. Than the owner came and tried to put briard on the leash. Briard did not let Igor from his jaws. I screamed and started hitting both the owner and the dog. Kelly's owner Julie had some plastic stick. I used it to hit briard and owner. Julie joined me in beating the dog as well. One man who passed by joined too. Igor was crying. I was screaming. Julie shouting. Few other dog owners joined in. I thought Igor's lost. I continued to hit briard. At one point briard let Igor go. Igor was in my hands. He was hurt and in shock just as I was. I checked him and started to comfort him. Fortunately he did not look seriously hurt. The owner of briard just took off. Did not said sorry or anything else. Other dog owners than told me this is not the first time briard attached someone in the park. He attacked a mops and a dachshund recently. The owner was warned but he still does not put his dog on a leash.

Vet said Igor is OK. Apparently briard is an old dog so he lost his sharp bite. Or he lost some teeth when biting mops and dachshund. But if he was younger and with sharper teeth Igor would be in much state.
Both Igor and I were lucky today - but what a morning.

PS. During the evening walk I found out the name of briard is "Chief". His owner never has him on the leash.One of dog ladies told me someone talked to the owner and asked him not to come to the park if Chief is not on a leash. Let's see if that will work but I find such this very supportive.

No eggs

Yesterday I was in local supermarket. Among other things had to buy eggs. Surprisingly usual two long shelves filled with cartoons of eggs had some other canned foods on it. Thought perhaps the shop moved eggs to some other spot and asked a shop assistant where they moved eggs. Shop assistant told me there are no eggs. Not at all. Not even one. I asked if they now when the new shipment will come. He looked at me as I asked something utterly silly.
Today still no eggs.
Either something happened to hens or they found salmonella in eggs and had to destroy entire stock. Curious to see when will eggs return to shelves.

Sunday sand play

Everyday I walk in a park carrying name of Ukraine’s largest hero – Taras Shevchenko. So I wanted to check a place where he wished to be buried - Kaniv.
The place is about 130 km from Kiev on Dniepro river.
Kees and Catharine agreed to go . Although they had no high expectations. We took doggies.
I got usual UA road pics – fields, tractors, vegetable stalls, vintage bikes and cars, police etc. About 30 km from Kaniv we drove along the lake. Fantastic scenery: water, birds, sandy beach... Photos of the place are below:

Kees suggested we check the place. We drove along a sandy road. We drove a bit too far in the sand. The car stuck.
We started to play in the sand. We had no tools so we improvised with plastic bottles. It's a picnick place so there were some bricks for shashlik grill. We put those below tires. But it did not help. We had to remove sand under the car.
When we got tired of shoving sand by hands, we walked back to the road in hope to get some help. But that local road was not extermly busy – plus we were picky as we needed another
4W to get our 4W car out. One truck stopped but when we explained the driver a problem – he smiled and drove away. We got back to "the sand box" to play. When we almost removed all the sand below the engine we heard another car coming near to us. Two Kiev families with a nice black labrador also thought the spot deservs some close inspection. But they parked their car at a distance from us. They approached us. Saw us stuck and shoving sand. Two men give car a strong push and we were out. Igor did not like the black lab so he started to chase him. Unfortunately lab ended in a dirty green water. We had so much fun moving sand with our hands there was no time for taking photos of our sand play. But we left a big hole behind us. Altogether we we stuck about hour and half.
The moment we were out of the sand box, sand started to irritate us.

About half an hour later we were in Kaniv and in a place where Shevchenko was buried. The moment we got out of the car Igor and Vibe found themselves in an argument with local stray dogs. Than at the entrance to the Shevchenko park we saw a sign “dogs not allowed”. Given stray dogs around we decided to ignore the sign. Once in a park we saw numerous stairs leading somewhere up. As we just finished a nice exercise of shoving sand, none of us was interested to climb stairs. We decided to drive along the Dniepro. At one spot we saw two nudists – one with a black towel around his head, another with a hat. We decided to turn back to Kiev.
On a way to Kiev we supported local population – we bought organic vegetables at the road stalls for the entire next week.
All in all – exciting Sunday. See pics at: http://picasaweb.google.com/gordie26/SundaySandPlay?authkey=Gv1sRgCMfAk6v-4Kb0cw&feat=directlink

If interested in Shevchenko here is wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taras_Shevchenko

Photos from Odessa

Photos from Odessa trip Sep 4th to 6th:
http://picasaweb.google.com/gordie26/Odessa02?authkey=Gv1sRgCIbWqvfxvaLcYQ&feat=directlink

Passage in Odessa

Since my first visit to Odessa one of the buildings which impressed me moste is "Passage". This is a 19 century shopping mall/hotel complex decorated in amazing baroque style. The polish architect Lev Vlodek built the Passage from 1898-1899. This fantastically decorated corridor is covered by glass roof while walls are covered with various sculptures.
One entrance still shows off beautiful ceiling mosaics in (to my eye) art deco style.

It’s amazing that all this was build during two years. The shopping mall's grand opening was January 23, 1900. The mall caught fire on October 31, 1901, and to the credit of Odessa fire brigade no one was hurt.
Unfortunately current shops do not fit these lavish place.
Next to the shopping mall is a hotel which was 200 years ago one of most luxurious. The hotel had 162 luxurious rooms with electric lights. The rooms had central heating. Today this is a two start hotel. More Passage photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/gordie26/PassageOdessa?authkey=Gv1sRgCNP7-6fdm9fO7AE&feat=directlink

Funny money (2)

Few photos from the flee market as evidence notes are on sale. If one is totally mental one can also get a ukrainian "Bin Laden driving licence".

Funny Money

Last weekend I have been to Odessa. Since my last visit a year ago Odessa had a major face lift. I took many photos but as it will take some time to sort them I will post them later.
On the small flee market in Odessa I found fake hrivnya bills with portraits of Ukraine's politicians. I took my "favourites": Julia, Yushenko and Chernovetsky -the mayor of Kiev. UAH 200 and UAH 100 are of great quality and if it would not be for a souvenir sign on them they could be mistake for real ones. The note of Kiev mayor is denominated UAH 1,70 which is price of one metro ticket.

I also saw a USD 100 bill with Obama. This bill is of a good quality so to avoid any possible confusion next to being labled on the face "souvenir" in russian, on the back of the bill there is also a note in russian "not to be used for payments".