Every year towards the end of May, the city of Kiev, in the Ukraine, hosts Kyiv Days. Over the two days of the festival, which is held to honor the city, the residents of Kiev take to the streets for all manner of activities and a good deal of Ukrainian food. The event typically ends with a free concert in Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the city's central square. In 2010, Kyiv Days featured live jazz, a bicycle festival, a multimedia Gogolfest celebrating famed author Nikolai Gogol, the Kyiv Forum of Publishers, and an international wall-climbing tournament.
The Latvian Association of Blondes hosts both a Blondes Festival and a Blondes Parade toward the end of May in the city of Riga. The festival is a gathering of people with blonde hair. Anyone with blonde hair is welcome to attend activities such as the Marilyn Monroe lookalike contest and the Pink Charity Party, which in 2010 included cocktails, prizes and a live, televised broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest Final.
May is the ideal month to visit Eastern Europe due to the weather and prices. May is Eastern Europe's prime temperate month. The rain of March and April has abated, the brutal cold of the winter is gone, and the heat and humidity of the summer has yet to settle in. Because May isn't a tourist-heavy season, both airfare and accommodation are cheaper, and more readily available. The same is true for train reservations and fares. Eastern Europe is packed with tourists in the summer.
