And This Is Why We Call It An Adventure.

Yes, we did make it to the train to Donetsk not only on time, but ten minutes early. I must give thanks to the city of Kharkiv and EURO2012 in general, because all public transportation runs all night long on game days and at more frequent intervals until noon the following day. Since we left the morning after a match, we were able to hop on the metro at a time that was acceptably early AND, being ticketholders, we got to ride for free! Whoo.

Four hours later, we were in Donetsk, Ukraine.

Donetsk is farther east and farther south than Kharkiv, and has a much smaller population. It is more of an industrial city, with its main endeavour being coal-mining (which makes me think of District 13 from The Hunger Games...). There are slag heaps all over the city, which is kind of interesting. There is also no subway system here, so instead we took a tram (similar to the trolleys in SF or Monterey) from the train station to our hostel. The trams here are very old. The tracks on the line from the train station to the area near our hostel went through lots of trees (practically someone's backyard, actually) and Steve likened the ride to Disneyland's Jungle Cruise.

Our hostel is about 3km from Donbass Arena, which is the home of the soccer team FC Shaktar Donetsk. Anyone who follows UEFA Champions League knows who they are. Donbass Arena (and Shaktar Donetsk) is owned by the richest man in Ukraine and the stadium is the largest and most modern stadium in EURO2012, which is pretty cool. Our hostel here is not quite as nice or well-organized as our hostel in Kharkiv, but at least we didn't show up to a building that was under construction! Haha. And we have a small refrigerator in our room, which is awesome and totally makes up for the fact that we have to use a community bathroom.

The highlights of our first day here all involve our trip to and from the fan zone for Game 3 of Group C.

#1: Billy got groped.

You may remember from a previous post that I have this crippling fear of our sweet Billford getting ripped open at airport security. Well, it almost happened. Kind of. Billy did get the pat-down of his life. The security guy squeezed his nose, his feet, his belly, and everything in between. I was quite freaked out, so needless to say, Billy will no longer be accompanying us to the fan zone here.

#2: Maxim. (Maksim, maybe?)

I'm not sure why we even met this guy. But he was cool, I guess? Steve and I were sitting on a curb waiting for the games to begin when this guy looked our way and gave a cheer with his arms in the air. He had a Croatia flag painted on one cheek and a Spain flag on the other (those two countries were playing each other). Steve gave a shrug and a "Whoo!" back, but the guy realized we didn't understand what he said and came over to us. He asked us, in English, if we spoke English. He then tried to explain something to us in what we thought was Ukrainian, but after lots of pointing and shrugging and nodding and comparing words, we figured out that he was trying to tell us that he was from Croatia! Once we said that, he gave us a big grin and a high five before walking away. Funny, but complete sillyness.

#3) The Trip Back.

DISCLAIMER: Moms, you might want to stop reading here.

The fan zone is a good 8-9km away from our hostel. The tram stop we got off at was a bit of a walk from the fan zone, but that wasn't an issue for us. We figured once the games were over (all the games at this stage of the tournament start at 9:45pm EET and end close to midnight) we would just walk back to that same stop and take the tram back. After all, in Kharkiv, the buses and subways all ran until about 1am. HOWEVER. This is not the case in Donetsk.

Upon leaving the fan zone, we saw a whole slew of taxicabs lined up along the sidewalk next to the fan zone exit. We puzzled over that for a few seconds before shrugging and following the hordes of fans out towards the street where the tram dropped us off. In the ten minutes of less that it took us to walk to the tram stop, all the fans we were following more or less disappeared. And we found out, to our chagrin, that the trams do not run this late.

Well, great. It's midnight and we're almost five miles away from out hostel. Are we seriously going to have to walk this?

Yes. Yes, we did.

And it was terrifying, for no other reason than it was late at night in a strange city where we didn't speak the language. Nothing actually happened, except for we were exhausted already and I was super tense the entire time because I kept expecting rabid dogs or serial killers to pop out of the shadows and get us. We followed the tram tracks hoping that a late tram would come get us, but alas, no such luck. It was too late at this point to even grab a taxi. There was a moment of relief when we made it to Donbass Arena, which was well-lit in the night and had a few security guards milling about outside. But it was still 2.5km away from our hostel, and that was the longest 2.5km of my life. Not to mention that the tree-filled neighborhood we had to walk through to get to the hostel cast creepy shadows all over the place. Once we made it back to the hostel (at two o'clock in the morning), I informed Steve that there was no way we were going back to the fan zone because I was not going to make that long, scary trip ever again, and I declared Donetsk my least favorite city in Europe because why the hell would you not have your public transportation running at night when you KNOW that tons of people will be out late watching these late-night matches? Ugh.

So that was our first night in Donetsk. It could've made a better impression, but I'm sure Steve will talk me into giving it a second chance tomorrow. We watch England play Ukraine tomorrow! That will be a fun game to watch live, with the reputation that England fans have, and playing the home team at home. It will be the battle of the fans for sure.