Yalta Intourist Hotel

Jeg husker jeg alltid lo litt av navnet da jeg var liten. Balaklava. Balle. Høhø. Og for et merkelig navn. Jeg husker jeg fikk en forklaring på at en gård beliggende på Krokmoen kunne ha et så rart navn, uten at jeg helt skjønte den. Grandonkel ble kalt "Klaver'n" fordi gården hans hadde navnet Balaklava. Balaklava på Krokmoen.

Jeg skulle ganske langt ut i skolegangen min før jeg fikk en forklaring jeg ...

... staan. Even rust aan de kop, baantjes trekken in het zwembad, naar de dierentuin en tijd voor goede gesprekken. Het valt tenslotte niet mee om “getrouwd” te zijn met iemand waar je geen relatie mee hebt.

Verder rijdend over de Krim zien we ook hier weer stapels meloenen! Velden vol, vrachtwagens vol en verkoopkraampjes te over.

Het 4e gezicht van de Oekraine voelt als totale vrijheid. Op een rots ...

... train, waiting to be off again for the open windows to connect the air make it flow again, ruffle through hairs and cool the half-naked skins of the passengers. Women were down to their panties, men to their shorts, not caring, the heat undressing all shyness from them.
We played cards and drunk vodka until it was time to go to sleep. Sleep came easily, but the beds were too short, too narrow, too hot and the soft movement of the sleeping and waking bodies across the wagon ...

... Crimea - Sevastopol, Alushta, Yalta, Simferopol An overnight 16 hour train ride brought me to the southern coast of Ukraine in the Black Sea. For the last ½ hour of the ride we passed massive security and lots of barbed wire. All this was for the protection of the Russian underground submarine base at Balaklava. If I were a military buff I would have stopped and done the tour, but James Bond ...

... We also spent a good half hour one afternoon watching local boys pull stunts on bikes and roller blades on the stairs leading up to Lenin's statue. Crimea is peppered with Lenins and streets called "Lenina" or "Karla Marxa." In Yalta, we rented an apartment as that is what you do, and ours was very nearly the definition of poor taste. the interior design was so terrible as to be comical. Unfortunately, the springs sticking up in the mattresses were less funny.

... it, smiled, the bodyguards dispersed and he lifted my pack up to help put it on. All within 30 seconds. I walked away quickly and then took a minute to cool my nerves. With all that done, I checked in and went through security. On the plus side, I had made it to the airport with plenty of time! Made it to Simferopol and this time was prepared for the cabbies in arrival and walked right through them. For the persistent ones who followed me around the airport and ...

... I've been on this trip. But I remember when McDonald's captured Moscow for the first time back in the '80s and they had to train the Russian staff how to smile when they asked if you wanted fries with that. We drink our natural coffee and look out over the pebbly beach at the sun sparkling over the water and the deep blue of an early summer sky. After the last few days of clouds and fog behaving like some efficient Soviet Intourist guide and obscuring everything I really wanted to ...

... over the top of Mt. Ay-Petri is one continuous set of switchbacks; a necklace of "s"s stringing its way through dark forests. We stop half way up to walk the short trail to the Uchansu Waterfall (after having to by a ticket at the trailhead, crowded with more souvenir stands). There's not much water tumbling over the rocks, more of a lacework of rivulets, but quite lovely. Yvgeny sys it's the ninth tallest in the world. Back in the car we climb the rest ow the way to the ...

... with an English architect who never even visited the site. Voronstov would send him sketches and the architect would mail back plans and eventually through the labor of hundreds of Count V's serfs, he had himself a copy of a medieval English manor. At least on three sides. On the facade facing the sea he went with an Arabian fantasy theme. He was also a bit of an amateur horticulturist, creating both an English and a French garden on either side of his estate and having ...

... rund um die uhr schaulaufen stattfindet. jede menge kneipen, restaurants und diskotheken saeumen den weg. und natu**lich ein mcdonald's. davon gibt es auch drei in chisinau, ab** d** in yalta ist besond**s witzig, da in blickrichtung ein** gewaltigen leninstatue stehend. und d** gute zeigt auch noch in exakt die richtung des klassenfeinds.... schon sehr amuesant. d** strand besteht aus kies, was ich als nichtprofistrandgaeng**in als sehr angenehm empfand. ging imm** nur zum schwimmen an ...