This Sunday, the residents of Kyiv* celebrated Easter. (No, they didn’t just forget to do it the week before: the majority of the city’s religious residents are Orthodox Christians, and so work to a different calendar.)
And in Kyiv, Easter means eggs. Thousands upon thousands of eggs.
For the ten days or so surrounding Easter, the city plays host to a Festival of Easter Eggs, including displays and garlands of small decorated eggs, and 20 human-sized versions like those shown in the photo above. Each is decorated to reflect the culture of the Ukrainian region it was sent from. Sadly, none are made of chocolate.
Dwarfing even these disturbingly large specimens is a single 19-foot decorated egg, the centrepiece of the festival and, according to city authorities, the largest Easter egg in the world. It also glows at night, which could be charming. Then again, it might make it look a little like a huge alien egg spawning smaller ones all over the city. Could go either way.
*Since about 1995, Ukrainians have been pushing for media outlets to use the Ukrainian spelling of the word, “Kyiv”, rather than “Kiev”, which is the Russian version.
And while we’re here, it turns out that calling the country “the Ukraine” is offensive too. “Ukraine” translates as “borderlands”, so affixing the definite article implies the country is just a border territory of Russia, rather than a nation in its own right.
