It was renamed when place names were de-Sovieted about five years ago. Interestingly, like Dnepro, the regional names have not been changed so they are still the Soviet names that had to be changed for the city, so Dnepropetroesk and Kirvograd oblasts remain. It also lives on on the billboards for the show every year. Just in case you don't remember what it is now. Kropyvnytskyi, which I have trouble saying, Victor told us it's new name is for a writer, I thought, but Garry remembers it as for an artist. Wikopedia says he was a writer, actor, playwright born near the city. Apparently the population voted to rename it the original name of the city, which was for a Russian princess Elizabeth but Russian historical names post 14th century weren't allowed. It had a number of names prevoiusly, even several during the renaming.
Anyway, early before dawn Friday morning, about 5:30, we picked up Max and headed to Dnepro to pick up Victor. Garry drove on the way there, and we made good time on the first part of the trip, on some nicely repaved highways. There were still some old patched bumpy hole filled roads, too. Detours were made where they were rebuilding roads, some snacks I'd packed eaten, there was a bathroom/coffee break at a gas station, and we passed some vehicles, including the military truck in the photo, but around ten am we arrived at the show.
There were a couple outdoor displays with Canadian flags that we had to check out, a few things we hadn't seen in Ukraine before, and we were hunting for infomation about buying a truck scale, because Max says we need one. There's a new law that half the fine for an overweight truck is for the farmer, not all on the trucker, so it would make sense to weigh trucks of grain we are sending away with grain to sell.
Eventually someone wanted to use the toilet so we went into the indoor exhibit. They were handing out free masks at the door for people without masks.
Not that everyone was wearing them properly, but it did make you feel safer. Garry made me take mine off for the photo. Covid cases are up in Ukraine again now, I think we are back at orange, after going green in the summer.
We found lunch back outdoors, probably ordered more than we needed, it was good, but the meat was cold. Impressive looking, as you can see in the photos. After eating, we found a few more things the guys were excited about, and checked out the animal exhibition.
One thing they saw that Garry had to buy was at a Canadian flagged exhibit, an auger on wheels, something he had not found in Ukraine before. We also saw a number of drones to spray crops, but we didn't buy one of those! They even had them in the demonstration area. There was entertainment outside on stage, but we were too busy to check that out, you could hear the music.
One thing that they were looking for was something that they had already bought, a New Holland tractor. It was interesting to find out that the tractor they got three years ago is now way more expensive new. This tractor is a little smaller but they got a GPS system for the new one. Watch for it in the next post.
The drive home got interesting. Max drove home and tried to take different route that he taken before, since looked like it was availaible on his map, but a bridge was still not finished. The drive got real interesting when the map program had us get to a very small bridge the van barely fit through. We looked at it for a few minutes before they decided to go over the tiny bridge. We made it, but I was too nervous to take a photo.
Eventually we made it home, after dropping Victor off near his home in Dnepro. We did find the scale Max wanted to look for, I spotted one walking ahead while they were looking at the augers. We also looked for small tractors for our friend Jessica, so it was an interesting day. We did think this girl's show footwear merited a photo. Not sure how much of the show she enjoyed.
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