Built in 1949, the Christmas decorations factory near Kyiv is now a shadow of its past glory. Out of 700-strong workforce, only 30 women are left working in the brick workshops that have no proper heating. The production of a Christmas ball starts with the glassblowers. Without any protective gear, they first melt glass pipes in the 650 C stream of gas to blow them into Christmas balls. In the silvering room, transparent baubles are coated with a silver solution and only then hand-painted. The factory works around the year producing some 500,000 Christmas balls to be sold in Ukraine. High school students come on field trips every December discovering that a Ukrainian fairyland is still stuck in the Soviet realities. To read the full story, click here. (Kyiv Post staff)
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