Yesterday, on the 9th of May, there was victory day in former soviet republics. Just in case somebody doesn't know, on the 8th of May in '45, in the late evening, the nazi Germany surrendered, and the war ended. The event took place in the central european timezone, but according to Moscow time (2 hours ahead of central european) it was already the 9th, that's why the end of war (Victory Day also in some countries) is celebrated on the 8th in Europe (in countries where it is celebrated at all), and former soviet countries celebrate it on the 9th, as Victory Day or Great Victory Day.Although this day is mostly famous of the parade in Moscow on the Red Square, celebrations take place all over the country, and many events commemorate the Victory already the days before the 9th. In Ekaterinburg, the events started on the 5th, but of course the main attractions were yesterday. The biggest attraction is the military parade which take place in every big city, in the center.
We started the day early, because of course we could only get close to the parade on foot, the half city was closed from traffic. But we cought the 10am start, and surprisingly in spite of arriving only at 9:50, we had better place than lot of people already there when we arrived, we stood on a fence by a public light post.
From the place, we could see all military machines quite well, but not the troops, which were located on 1905 square, by the Lenin statue. The tanks and other machines were interesting, and they were also shooting with cannons. The "star" of the parade was the S400 "Triumph" artillery, which looks cool and can shoot up to 400kms away.
After the parade we spent some more time in the city, visited wartime car exhibition and listened to a very short concert (they played 1 song after 10-20 minutes of settings and went away). We luckily caught a marshrutka home to catch the Moscow parade on tv, it also started at 10, just in Moscow time. It was cool, of course it's bigger than Ekat's but already at Ekat's is almost impossible to catch some place from where you can see everything, in Moscow it's completely impossible, all good places are reserved for veterans and politicians and the fairly good places are occupied by early morning fans (6h-7h) :) But we had quite ok place, just not at 1905 square. I bought magnet and victory glass cup. The "colors of victory" are orange and black (and of course red), on this day you could buy practically anything in this color, clothes, cups, magnets, flags, etc.
After watching the Moscow parade (which was really fantastic, fortunately the speeches followed the "technics", so we did not have to wait for country leaders to finish their speech), all tv channels played Russian and Soviet war movies (already 2 days before 9th as well), we watched some, they were good. I don't remember titles. Also Julia downloaded one in witch people playing war game go back to the WWII, title is "We are from the future" (Mi iz budushestoe... or sthg similar), i recommend it. It's not a light comedy, but not so depressing either, and it's exciting. I won't tell u who wins at the end :)
In the evening we went back to the city, at 8 o'clock there was a free concert in front of the uni. Irina called us to bring some beer as near the concert they don't sell beer. We had 2 baltikas in the fridge so i brought them, of course we were not let in the concert area with them, and Irina didn't show up for long, so we enjoyed the first few songs from outside. Inside they only sold non-alcoholic beverages and ice-cream. Many people were there, and very famous bands performed (one from Ekat and one from St-Petersburg). I don't know their names and i couldn't find them, i will ask Julia and put a Youtube video here in the next post.
