Painting
To be honest I haven’t taken up the brush for a long time but I happened to do it during the Christmas holidays. My family and I shot ahead to the mountains for several days. There was falling down a snow in fantastic fluffy flakes: roofs and fur-trees were covered with windfalls. That was the real idyll that carried me back to my childhood. I had a longing for painting and I created two Ukrainian winter landscapes in oils. Now one of them serves the decoration of our sitting room together with other 7-8 my works. I present most of my pictures. Next to last one was delivered to the auction held by the charity organization “Children’s friends” patronizing orphans. Some of my friends are hunting me for several years asking me to present them a picture. I promise every year that I will paint for sure as soon as I have three-four free days. However I am pressed for time.
Beekeeping
This hobby is rooted in my childhood: there was always a bee-garden at our place. My father, my grandfather and great-grandfather took up the beekeeping. Since the early childhood my brother and I have joined the adults to look after the bees and to listen to their lessons. My father used to say: “Bees’ world is a unique community that has enough things in its stock to teach people. Hive is functioning according to the strict order, all duties are sharply defined: some bees stand guard over their hive, some of them bring the honey and others feed their babies.”
At present I have 80 bee families, I have both modern and rare ones from different parts of Ukraine in my bee-garden. It is situated in the country not far from Kyiv. For summer I take my bees somewhere closer to bee plants. The most part of honey I give to the orphan asylums or give away to my friends. Beekeeping for me is the way of keeping the small part of that world where our ancestors used to live since it will never recur.
Sport
For the first time in my life I tried mountain skis in the Carpathians several years ago. Initially my friends instructed me and the rest of the matter depended on my willingness and endurance. Nowadays mountain skiing is my favourite kind of sport. I prefer trainings without a coach on my own. Gradually I make my routes more complicated. There are the so-called “black routes” on my service record. So presently I consider I’m a skilled skier. I cannot boast by wide geography of won peaks, I’m skiing basically in Ukraine and adore the Carpathians. On the eve of my birthday I made a present for myself – my friends and I ran away to the Carpathians for a day where I was skiing for about six hours. My elder children also go in for skiing and my daughter Lina has already coped with snowboard and she urges me to try. I believe that’s my following bar to clear.
I am fond of diving though I am not very experienced in it. It’ thrilling really. Once at Sarych cape both my wife and I sank 20 meters deep and examined the underwater caves. And later we were shaken by a wide variety of the underwater world of the Red Sea.
My long-standing passion is volleyball. Unfortunately presently my friends and I fail to get a volleyball pitch more than once per year. However this is not right. When the interval between coachings is dragged on I feel that I deprive myself of my due share, and primarily emotionally.
Mountains
In my childhood I was so much craving to see the mountains that this desire influenced my choice of the University in a way. In this way I made up my mind to enter the Ternopil Financial Economic University striving to devote myself not only to learning but also to travelling. At the University I joined simultaneously three study groups: speleology, mountaineering and tourism ones. At the same time I worked as an instructor for the mountain tourism. When a student there has arisen a tradition to go to the mountains with my friends once per year. And since 1990 when in July Verhovna Rada of that time passed the resolution about the sovereign state we have timed our annual ascent of Hoverla to this date.