Women Who Travel Podcast: Raving in Ukraine

21.12.2023 - 17:47 / cntraveler.com

You can listen to our podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify each week. Follow this link if you're listening on Apple News.

For our last episode of the year, we’re diving into something we’re all doing a lot of around the holiday season: partying. And in Ukraine, where our two guests are based, rave culture has become a necessary vehicle for letting off steam, distraction, and finding joy. Back in November, Lale caught up with Kyiv-based journalist Anastacia Galouchka, who recently penned a story on the capital’s rave scene for Stranger’s Guide, and novelist Haska Shyyan, who lives in Lviv, about what raving means to them and the power of community and safe spaces during unimaginable turbulence and uncertainty.

LA: Hi, I'm Lale Arikoglu and welcome to Women Who Travel, a podcast from Conde Nast Traveler. This interview was recorded in the middle of November when Kyiv was relatively quiet, but with the war being an evolving set of circumstances, things have since changed.

For our last episode of the year, we're diving into something we're all doing a lot around the holiday season, partying. In turbulent times, parties can be a necessary vehicle for letting off steam, distraction, and finding joy, something that's particularly true in Ukraine right now.

Take the capitol Kyiv, where its rave culture, already established before the invasion, has become a surprising and vital part of city life in times of war.

Crowd: [cheering]

LA: It's inevitably changed and ravers have had to make compromises, but the scene remains as vibrant as ever.

Anastasia Lushka: You are on adrenaline all the time and then you get a point where that adrenaline inevitably drops, and now you have to live, but there's nothing left for because all the little things disappear, have disappeared during the first month of the war. So, now you have to get them back, and reinstate them, and open some bars, and open some restaurants, and give those little joys back to people.

I think in the party scene, you can see a lot of how this society develops. You can see the stagnation, you can see sometimes the boredom, but you can also see that driving force of youngsters and- and people who want change and are coming up with more and more out-of-the-box ideas of how to achieve that in their country.

LA: I'm talking today to two guests, both who know the scene well, a journalist ...

AL: It is dark. It is very, very gritty. It is packed with people. Like, you feel people's sweat as you pass by them, and there are women dressed in leather suits, uh, there are men in 12-inch heels and butt cheeks out and looking, you know, amazing.

LA: ... and a writer.

Haska Shyyan: I mean, it's a party in the context of war, it's very much this feeling of trance and