well, 50+ hours of traveling including 1 bus, 2 trains, and 2 marshrutkas, i'm finally back to good ol' sarny. i would do it all again in a heart beat though if it meant a chance to go back to crimea. it was amazing. i started my journey with a little trip to lviv with Rebeca and her sister, Monica. it was my fifth time to lviv this summer which means i’ve seen pretty much all there is to see in lviv yet i was happy to be the one to introduce beca and monica to the west. after a couple days in lviv, i hopped on an overnight train to kyiv, stayed the night in kyiv, and got on another overnight train the next night to simferopol. the kyiv-simferopol train takes 17 hours so it was a pretty long trip. fortunately my platskart companions were all pretty young and wanted to keep the window open the whole trip, so it was a fairly pleasant 17 hours.
i had been told that they only speak Russian in Crimea before i got there, but i was still overwhelmed by the predominance of the russian language in simferopol. i guess i didn’t realize how comfortable i had become with seeing and hearing ukrainian. i was supposed to meet up with people in a little town called kacha which meant i had to find my way there by myself. i made my way to the kasa and managed to order my ticket in broken russian. about three hours later i finally found my friends at the beach. i had just enough time for a short swim before we packed up to move further east along the coast. we had to take a marshrutka to sevastopol in order to get to our next destination, balaklava. balaklava is a historical city that was founded by the greeks, used as a trading port by the byzantines and genoese, overtaken by the ottoman empire, then by the russians, and finally used as a top secret nuclear submarine base during the soviet union. we hung out there for a while before we took a ferry to a nearby beach called silver beach. we set up camp on a cliff overlooking the sea where we saw the most amazing view of the black sea. since it was overcast the sun’s rays were just barely peeking out from behind the clouds making the sea look so dark and mysterious. we met a couple of interesting characters that night, one russian man in particular named alexander petrovich who played the drums on an empty water bottle while we sang around the campfire. the next day we hiked back to balaklava where alexander preceded to trade issac his new hat in exchange for an old coin that was worth one half of one ukrainian kopek. alexander was a sneaky little guy. after checking out the ruins in balaklava, we continued our journey to yalta. yalta is apparently one of the most popular vacation spots for Ukrainians and Russians in crimea, but i wasn’t really that impressed with it. it was a little too touristy for me. we saw the swallow’s nest, which was actually a pretty big let down. it looked so much bigger in pictures and it cost 20 uah to enter. needless to say, 20 hryvnia (approx. $4) to see a castle is a little too expensive for the average pc volunteer.
the next place on the map was a city called sudak. i think sudak was my favorite of all the beaches. i thought it was just the right size AND there is a beautiful fortress there, and who doesn’t love a nice fortress? we ended up staying there for two days before we moved on to the last stop, feodosia, which was the site of the long-awaited first annual meshfest. the next day everyone split up to make their way back to their sites. i was glad i made it to crimea this summer. it was a nice end to a great summer. if you’re in ukraine and you haven’t made it out to crimea, i highly suggest you get there as soon as possible. it’s definitely one of the best things this country has to offer.
view of balaklava
from the ruins
from the ruins
