The ways to chill and have fun have hardly changed within the last thirty years in Ukraine. But if the essence remains, the form has still evolved.
For instance, just like in the ‘90s, watching videos now is the most popular way to relax. Only back then, we watched TV and VCRs, while now we surf the Internet.
Music fans listened to the radio and cassettes in the 1990s. But from the mid-2000s, we hardly turn on the radio, except while driving. Listening to music now is an individual experience. We select tracks and albums via the Internet or use gadgets and headphones.
Within the last thirty years, many nightclubs have emerged and disappeared in Ukraine. But the youth has always wanted to hang out and dance. And if you really look at them, the 90s club life and the current one intensely alike, apart from Social Media Marketing.
Today, we read as much as we ever did in Ukraine. Not less. However, the readers of the ‘90s chose magazines and fiction. Now, we consume online content through social networks.
What has changed within the last three decades in our country is that we visit each other less. Unlike in the 1990s, now we catch up and hang out on neutral territory or rely on something unthinkable in the ‘90s — virtual meetings.
We are not so keen on a holiday in the countryside as we were once. And another change deserves a mention: in the brutal ‘90s, dacha (a country house) meant gardening and potato harvesting. Now it’s more about switching off from the hustle and bustle of city life.
Young X’s in the ’90s were confined to domestic tourism and generally didn’t see much of the world. However, the millennials are lucky enough to spend holidays in Egypt and Turkey. Lucky Zoomers enjoy visa-free European travel now and have been doing so since the days of their childhood. Cheap airline tickets and hostel accommodation made “breakfast in Paris” an ordinary thing for them.
Bonus from millennials: how to play bucks The millennials’ cult game Bucks raged at the end of the ‘90s. The players collected plastic coin- sized bucks with various pictures on them. While collecting, images of Pokemon (Pocket Monsters) topped their wish list.
The Millennials borrowed the rules from the well-known “claps,” chewing gum inserts game popular in the early ‘90s. Back then, the participants clapped over a stack of colourful picture-liners, trying to flip them over. This idea passed down to the newly invented game.
The bucks players each staked an equal amount of bucks; a buck’s rarity determined its value. Players struck a stack of plastic bucks with a metal club (of a buck’s size). The pieces that turned over went to the winner.
And experienced gamers hid a few tricks up their sleeve. For instance, aiming at the side or the bot- tom of the stack could flip almost half the bucks.
In a lighter version of the game, the players tossed their bucks over the table, trying to re- verse their faces. The winner was the one who shifted the highest amount of bucks. Almost everyone played this game of change.
Those who hadn’t got any bucks to play with felt like outsiders. However, in the 2000s, bucks died out, and children began to amuse themselves with other things, like chewing gum stickers.
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