My personal attitude towards Kyiv changed a dozen times, too. That is to say, internally, in my mind, I have passed Kyiv from hands to hands no less than a dozen times. And those hands not always have been warm and caring. And those definitely have never been a loving son’s hands.

Now, I’ll try to list all of that somehow. Naturally, due to my memory selection (or rather, memory inflection) the list has to be haphazard. All right then! Be it so.

Perhaps, the first idea of Kyiv from my childhood years was the city of the Dynamo football club. That is the city of lucky devils who can immediately – without a TV – watch the magical field, so unstoppably  ran across by the demigods from the strongest and – until 1969 – undefeated club of the country. Do Kyiv meant the football field, the demigods, the stadium, the tiers, cought on camera fragments of impossibly beautiful crowd, and so – ineffably beloved faces of totally unknown people, who – like me – are jumping for joy of another goal scored by their demigods. In 1972, I have become for the first time in my life another elemental particle of that Kyiv, that is its stadium, and found out Damin, Blokhin, and Kolotov did exist in reality, and they are not solely TV-phantoms. Of course, that day Dynamo could not but win 2:1.