Primorsky Park Yalta

Traveling with a Communist

October 31, 2009

My guide and driver during my visit to Sevastopol and Yalta was Alex, a former Soviet Union Naval Officer and Communist Party member. He is Ukrainian but he speaks more Russian than Ukrainian and also says that most people in Sevastopol and this area are more closely allied to old Mother Russia than to the Ukraine. It is easy to see why when in Sevastopol as there are ...

De 4 gezichten van de Oekraine

3 september van boerenerf naar naaldhak, Lada vs Lexus

De verschillen in de Oekraine zijn enorm. Vanochtend werd ik wakker met het kraaien van de haan in een inimini boerendorpje met 4 zeer nieuwsierige Oekrainse mensen die toekeken hoe ik de slaap uit mn ogen probeerde te wrijven. Angelique is wat fitter in de morgen dus had al een heel handen en voeten gesprek gevoerd en vertelde me ...

... in someone's back yard for 150 grivnas. The man whipped out a map, and scratched his head further, until we made him understand that he should just take us back to the bus station, we will give him 30 grivnas, and he should be happy with that. So with that, we sat on the curb at the bus station, trying to pick out someone who could take us to a room. I knew that these sea-side resorts are teeming with grandmothers, probably clones of eachother, who live in shabby old houses ...

... are staying with the things and the rest are going to the city of Phoros. Phoros is a small city, it gets life just during the summer with turists, I think that in the summer the turists are far more than the actual inhabitants. In the summer nights, a thing which I saw later on in different cities of Crimea, gets am atmosphere of carnaval - music, lights, fireworks, resting people, people just walking, laughing everywhere etc. You feel as if you get in a ...

... one speaks yours, figuring out local buses is enough to feel like giving yourself a great big pat on the back. I went to get a picture of a beautiful church I had passed on the bus a bunch of times then grabbed some supper. I stopped at the same little kiosk on the street as I had the past two days to get a beer for the hotel. As I walked up the guy was smiling and pulling a beer out of the fridger before I was even there. I thought I must have made a friend ...

... part and involved jumping rocks to crisscross the river, swinging under/over trees blocking the way and half scaling rocks along the river bank at some points. First we went up the river (via the rocks in it) to a little swimming area. Then we headed back down along the edge of the river. The guide would test a spot and if didn't seem right, we would all turn around and try another way. The scenery was breathtaking! I think I took about a hundred photos since none of them seemed ...

... in addition to 100 rose bushes he added the year he moved in to commemorate Pushkin's 100th birthday. Today the garden is a tangled profusion of cedars, palms, cypress, lilacs, honeysuckle, wysteria, magnolias and more. Stone pathways, benches and a small brook lie amid the green and floral tunnels of foliage. This time, by sheer chance, I managed to find my way back to town without a cab. The promenade was filled ...

Famous site of the WW2 conference of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt, on the strategy to end the war and ultimately the division of Europe into east and west that would mean abandoning so many of our allies to be trapped behind the Iron Curtain for decades. C'est la vie! The Black Sea water is freezing cold ...

... to melancholy and ultimately wasted away. When she died, the Khan was inconsolable and wept for the first time in his life. He told his noble advisors that all his life he had been like a stone, but now he could only weep, and commanded them to have a fountain built to represent a stone weeping. What the Khan wants the Khan gets and The Fountain of Tears was built in front of the princesses tomb. Catherine later had it moved into an interior courtyard where it stands today ...

... story from the info sheet in my room: "During the following next half a century the hotel betrayed its destination more than once. Those revolutionary days the hotel's walls served as an outpost and defensive fortification for white guards. There was a military hospital and a sanitarium during and after the Great Patriotic War. While changing its status the hotel reconstructed three times: in 50-es, in 80-es and in 2001 year. Remarkable that in spite of numerous ...