10 Eastern European Channels about Hobbies and Leisure

It’s bad enough if someone has a boring job, but it’s even worse if they have an equally dull hobby, or none at all. After all, you can only get through an eight-hour shift at a job you hate if you know you’ll be met with your true passion in the evening. These Eastern European YouTube channels about interesting leisure activities can help you catch the bug of one of the many hobbies available in the world.

From recreating ancient musical instruments, ant farming, learning magic tricks, assembling giant Rubik’s cubes, foraging for mushrooms, and spooky ghost hunts, to fishing, knitting, and more – no hobby is uninteresting. There are only hobbies that either suit you or don’t.

Gordiy Starukh

As a child, Ukrainian Gordiy heard the sound of a hurdy-gurdy and fell in love. However, when he wanted to buy one as a student, he discovered that this pleasure didn’t come cheap (a good hurdy-gurdy usually costs several thousand dollars). So, he decided to make the object of his musical passion himself, even setting up a production line and selling hurdy-gurdies to collectors worldwide – from Canada to South Korea. Now he works in the Lviv workshop of his famous grandfather, Ukrainian sculptor Emmanuil Mysko. Gordiy tries to make the bases of his instruments from solid wood and carves the wheels on an Austrian lathe that’s over 100 years old. To make more people fall in love with the hurdy-gurdy and its authentic sound, the craftsman regularly shares his hobby on a dedicated YouTube channel.

AntsCzech

Any politician who genuinely wants to establish an ideal society in their country should not only study Russia, Belarus, Iran, and North Korea to understand what not to do but also take a closer look at ants. These brainy insects certainly know a thing or two about building complex, efficient, and just social structures. You can start engaging in myrmecology, the scientific study of ants, with the help of 20-year-old Czech Jakub, who has been an avid ant-keeping enthusiast for seven years. On his channel, you’ll learn how to grow indoor ant farms, care for the queen, monitor the actions of ant soldiers, and eventually think not as a selfish individual, but as a member of a smart, responsible, and successful community.

Katya Rybalka

Kateryna Mazurenko rose to fame as a contestant on the 13th season of the Ukrainian show MasterChef, where she earned the nickname "The Goddess of Fish." This is because she’s been fishing since childhood, prepares fish dishes every day (like fish borshch), and works in the family business selling fishing goods. In addition, Kateryna runs a fishing channel where she shows how this popular hobby among married men looking for an excuse to escape their wives can be turned into a true art form. You’re bound to like at least one of these: Kateryna’s professional fishing stories, the huge carp and pike she catches in Ukraine’s rivers and ponds, or Kateryna herself, who, while casting her line, likes to show off her slender figure in sporty leggings.

Vamos ART

Optical illusions come in many forms. For instance, when Putin looks at a map of Europe and sees the western borders of his imperial state somewhere near the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains – this is an example of a twisted optical illusion that can spark a bloody war, one that has already lasted over 10 years. But Hungarian artist Vámos Sándor proves that optical illusions can also be completely harmless from a geopolitical perspective, as long as they’re just cool fake 3D drawings made for fun and a chance to ponder how our perception of the world often doesn’t align with reality. On his channel, the artist creates and teaches how to draw anamorphic images and other visual tricks in the striking style of Trick Art – for example, this realistic hole in the palm.

Knitting by Svitlana Zayets

There are three things you can watch forever: how the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroy Russian forces, how Kremlin henchmen's faces twitch as a result, and how Ukrainian craftswoman Svitlana Zayets knits her handmade masterpieces. The latter is grounding and calming – useful in peaceful times, and even more so during an ongoing war. Taking just half an hour to watch well-groomed female fingers with immaculate nails skilfully wielding knitting needles to create warm socks for winter works better than any antidepressant. The only thing more soothing would be the long-awaited permission for Ukrainians from the US and other allies to strike Russian military airfields. But for now, we’ll have to settle for Svitlana’s socks. It’s just a pity she wasn’t able to swiftly knit some sturdy handcuffs or an entire prison uniform from Mongolian cashmere for Putin to be delivered from Ulaanbaatar, a signatory to the Rome Statute, to the detention centre of the International Criminal Court, where he rightly belongs.

Echa Leśne

Some spend their leisure playing chess, some drink in bars, some watch football, while others explore the forest, as the Poles from the Echa Leśne channel do. This is a special hobby that encompasses many others. You can track the changing seasons and natural phenomena, admire the diversity of plants, and feed wild animals (just don’t be a naive Zoomer with a death wish and stay as far away from boars, bears, and wolves as possible with your cat food). You can also go birdwatching in the forest – capturing birds on camera. It’s a very exciting hobby, but it comes with two challenges: first, you have to get up early, and second, you need to learn to identify birds so you know what exactly you’ve captured in your photo. You’ll have to manage the early rising on your own, but for bird identification, there’s the "Forest Alarm Clock" playlist, where you’ll learn how to recognise, hear, and observe the behaviour of 150 of the most common birds in Eastern Europe.

Hryby UA

However, the most popular forest-related hobby is mushroom hunting. At least in Ukraine, this activity is incredibly popular. But with the onset of the war, it has faced serious restrictions, as Russian forces have turned Donbas and Ukraine’s Black Sea region into the most heavily mined areas in the world. The occupiers mine everything they see – roads, houses, bridges, and even forest mushroom fields. But the further west you go in Ukraine, the safer it becomes to hunt for mushrooms, with the best place being the Carpathians, a true mushroom Klondike. A Hutsul from the Hryby UA channel hunts for porcini mushrooms in magical forests, occasionally fleeing from bears, and records his adventures in a sort of mycological video diary.

Mystery Hunters

If you watch enough Hollywood films, you might get the impression that all ghosts, UFOs, and paranormal phenomena have an "American passport." However, the guys from the Mystery Hunters channel prove with their documentary videos that there’s plenty of psychic weirdness in their native Poland, for example. These ghost hunters explore abandoned houses that locals whisper about, claiming something sinister happens there, as well as other places shrouded in creepy legends. Their task is to investigate, armed with special sensory equipment, whether the rumours about real ghosts, cryptids, or aliens hiding among humans are true, or if they’re just urban legends.

Magicianul Robert Tudor

This famous Romanian illusionist has been performing magic tricks professionally for over two decades (as they say: the best job is a well-paid hobby). At the age of 19, Robert Tudor firmly decided to become a magician, and to this day, he has become a true superstar in his homeland. He has appeared on numerous TV shows (Romania’s Got Talent, The Voice Kids, and others) and made history as the first, and so far only, illusionist to perform his own show on the main stage of the country – Sala Palatului, a concert hall in central Bucharest, which used to be the residence of the king. Besides magic, Robert Tudor is heavily involved in comedy and is happy to share the secrets behind some of his tricks.

KUBASTIK

Exactly half a century ago, Hungarian architect Ernő Rubik invented the world’s most popular mechanical puzzle, which about 99% of people cannot solve. But Ukrainian Yevhen Bondarenko is one of the few who can. He knows absolutely everything about the Rubik’s Cube (as well as the most complex and interesting puzzles and riddles) and loves hosting exciting challenges on his channel – for instance, assembling a yellow and blue Ukrainian flag from Rubik’s Cubes of all possible sizes.