My hot, wet and bookish Ukrainian summer

Welcome to my cool civic oases where I hide in the heat of war

A photo taken at a coffee shop I write about below

I ask for coffee and wonder what I enjoy the most: the anticipation of its bitter-and-sour taste or the sweet, encouraging act of telling myself you can have it . A waitress is carrying a red cup with dark, moody water full of caffeine, antioxidants and an occasional heartburn. She places it on the white summer table by my side and says how can you sit in this terrible heat. I reply it’s okay, I can feel a slight wind here. Even if the air was still windless, I would sit outside anyway. It’s +35 degrees Celsius in Kyiv and I love it. My usually cold hands and feet happily swell and their veins, or capillaries (whatever circulates blood in these human parts) dilate under this terrible yet perfect-for-me warmth.

This is the hottest summer of my life.

I think that, once again.

Every new summer I spend in Ukraine, the same old thought sheds its aging skin like a dessert lizard and enters my mind as a new-skinned revelation. Summertime arrives with record-breaking intensity. Thunders are louder and lengthier, lighting is brighter and sharper, rains are heavier and wetter, the sun is hotter and… hotter. This is still childishly exciting and unusual to me. I grew up under the cool shade of the Baltics…