Ukraine Trip..Third Essay

For me the most memorable images come from the five days we spent in the Black Sea resort town of Alushta (22nd-27th of Sept.) We were fortunate in that a close friend of Gil's wife had a part interest in one of the resorts--called the "Villa Relax"-- in Alushta (population around 10,000), and he provided a room, with meals for us--served up by the cheery and engaging wife of one of the other owners. It wasn't the first instance, nor would it be the last, of incredibly heartfelt and gracious hospitality extended towards us. In addition, Sasha, our friend, helped us rent a car--from Pavel's in Alusha (we were so satisfied with the car and the rate--about $35 per day--that I promised Pavel I would give him high marks when I got to writing about my trip). For two days, then, we were able to explore some of the more inaccessible parts of the Crimea, such as the ancient Khan capital of Bakhchisaray, with its threefold wonders (more below) or the remote coastal fortress town of Sudak--with a hill-topping fort first built by the Byzantines but then was taken over by the Genoese in the 14th century as they tried to capitalize on the legacy and vision of Marco Polo.

As you can see, then, when we came down to the Crimea (we did so through a 90 minute flight from Kiev to Simferopol, where Sasha graciously picked us up and took us the additional hour to Alushta), we began to put the land in a deep historical perspective that was even more rich than the Kievan experience. For now we were on the Black Sea, the "Chorne More," whose mythology began to develop more than 2500 years ago thorugh the ancient Greek tale of Jason and the Argonauts--indeed the kingdom of Colchis referenced in that myth is thought to be the country of Georgia today.

Well, in the space of five full days on the Black Sea we not only found our favorite restaurant of the entire trip (it is located directly across the street from the Radisson along the Alushta "Boardwalk"), but we did the following:

1. Explored the ancient winery of Maasandra and its nearby palace.

2. Visited the downtown area of Yalta, where we met an engaging Russian young woman who operated her own photo studio, and with whom we shared a meal while she told us stories about the place.

3. Took a one day Black Sea cruise, with four destinations--the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, between Hurzuf and Yalta; the palace at Alupka--a Scottish-designed location for the Czars who began to locate down to this part of the Crimea in the 1860s, and it doubled as the palce where Winston Churchill and his delegation stayed during the momentous Yalta conference in February 1945; the place called "Swallow's Nest" (or Lastochkino gniezdo)--a spired, castle-shaped structure perched precariously on a rock promontory overlooking the Black Sea; and, finally, the waterfront of Yalta, where we caught a little of the commercial appeal, as well as enjoyed a meal at a place called Harem...

4. Returned to Yalta, this time with the car, to explore one neo-Byzantine church but, especially, to visit the Livadia Palace (the place of the Yalta Conference among the "Big Three" in February 1945) and then the Chekov House, a charming villa-type location away from the water where the playwright/poet spent the last six years of his life, before dying at age 44. I was rarely so affected as I was by the Livadia Palace--having read about it for years. I realized the signficance of what was decided there in Feb. 1945, and it made me feel strangely as if my friend and I were at the very heart of the place which shaped the late 20th century world. In addition, we managed to "sneak in" on an English language tour--taken by a Mennonite Heritage group from the Midwest and Canada. Indeed, many of the Kansas Mennonites whom I knew when I lived there in the early 1990s traced their roots back to the Germans who had moved to Russia at Catherine the Great's invitation in the late 18th century.

Indeed, one of my chuckles came at this location, since I ran into several Kansas Mennonites and was able to tell them, for example, what the welcoming sign said outside their home town. For example, one was from Marion, Kansas. It has a large wooden welcome sign outside it with the slightly nerdy words "Best Place I've Seen.." I regaled them with that story--to their delight.

5. We spent an entire day traveling to Bakchisaray, taking the winding road over the top of Ai-Petri, the highest point on the Crimea, before arriving in that former Khanate capital early in the afternoon (Monday, Sept. 26). It was at this place that the layered history of the area finally began to make sense to me. Founded/Christianized in the late 10th century, through the labors of the missionaries Cyril and Methodius of Bulgaria; then overrun by the fearsome influence of the Mongols in the mid-13th century. The Mongol influence wreaked havoc but out of it emerged a Turkic-style civilization, that of the Tatars, which introduced a Muslim element into the Crimea. This situation prevailed until the 18th century when an expansionist Russia finally decided it would lay down its roots deeply on the Crimea.

So, the little visit to the Khans palace, the site of inspiration for one of Puskhin's poems, as well as an interesting jewel in the complex history of the Crimea, helped take me to a level of awareness of the are that I didn't previously have. But this was only the first of three gems in Bakchisaray. Later on in the day we found the sharply sloping (upward) path to the Upensky moastery--a church, with monastic cells, built into the side of the cliff face--and then, a km or two further on, to Chufut Kale, an ancient (going back 1500 years) series of holed out buildings or rock formations atop the cliffs that surround Bakchisaray. That is, we probably had to climb nearly 1000 feet in elevation to find the remants of old churches, synagogues (there was even some Hebrew scrawled in the rock), graves (the daughter of one of the Turkic Khans is buried there) and then get one of the most remarkable views of the entire trip. I learned the Russian words for it: "krasenee ved..."--a beautiful vista, and I repeated the word to every person we came upon on the way down the hill.

The day was getting late, but still we had miles to go, because we wanted to visit the most Russian city of the Crimea, the place of the Soviet naval fleet, Sevastopol. We found a "Lonely Planet" restaurant which, predictably, played bait and switch on us with respect to whether they would take credit cards, but we enjoyed a dinner overlooking the sound that led into the Black Sea--wrapping the blankets around us as we had the entire upstairs patio to ourselves. I felt quite proud of myself to be able to find this location derived almost solely from an out-of-date map in our Lonely Planet book. We didn't have time to visit either the location of the major battles of the Crimean War, which were in the neighborhood (Balaclava), nor did we have time to visit the ancient ruins of Chersonese, where the Greeks had a colony and where Volodymyr, more than 1000 years ago, first was baptized and thus opened the gates of the old Russian civilization to Christianity.

6. Finally, we spent a day visiting Sudak, where the twists and turns of the road on the way to the coastal fortress, were almost as compelling as the fort itself. We stopped along the way at a St. Nicholas Church, about 15 miles East of Alushta, where a liturgy was being held above the crashing waves of the sea. It was a sight I will never forget.

These activites helped to make our Black Sea five days the most memorable of the trip for me. Thank you, indeed, to Sasha, Pavel, Andre (the other owner of the place), and the good weather. We didn't have anything less than 75 degrees during the day, nor anything cooler than 62 degrees at night. Simply stupdenous. Then, finally, there was the unforgettable 30 minute swim in the Black Sea. I suppose that a Black Sea swim is one of the things I would want to do before I die--and, at times, I felt as if I would die in the swimming--since I let myself go out a little further than I should have. But I gamely swam to shore, amazed at the majestic power of this eternally powerful sea.

Finishing Up at Odesa/Odessa

Our Ukraine visit came to a close with two days in Odesa, before returning to Lviv for two more days. In between Odesa and Lviv, however, we flew over to the most exotic locale of our trip--the country of Georgia, on the Eastern shore of the Black Sea--but I won't recount anything of that trip here...

In any case, after the pleasant five day resort-experience at Alushta, we were thrown back into the minor corruption of Odessa. We managed to get a competitively priced taxi to our out-of-the-way hotel but when we needed to go to the airport two days later, the taxi company quoted one price to us which was only 60% of what he ended up demanding from us at the airport. Because we didn't like that kind of treatment, we objected to paying the extra amount, out of principle, though the difference would only have been about $4. But the driver was chagrined, and he brought the local police into the situation, and so I silently slipped the cabbie the additional money, while my colleague was still arguing over the righteousenss of his position. I didn't relish facing the possibility of missing a flight to Tbilisi over a four dollar dispute. Yet, as we see, this kind of treatment "adds up" or "wears you down."

That having been said, Odesa was a simply a remarkable place, a town of energy and aliveness, with possibly one of the most beautify opera houses in Europe, with a first-class philharmonia, and then street after street of restaurants, shops, churches, and other indicia of prosperity or, at least, of places where monied people could spend their cash. The Potemkin Steps, celebrated in a 1920s movie about the revolutionary movement in Odesa in 1905, were impressive, though not different, really, from any other long granite staircase. The promenade at the top of the Potemkin Steps, as well as the squre ordered built by Catherine to symbolize Russia's approach to the Black Sea, were important to understand historically, and I reveled in it. Because we had come to Odesa the night before on a night train, both of us were a little tired, and so we retired to our room finally to take a break for a few hours before heading out bright and early the next day to Georgia.

Conclusion

Ukraine is not fully ready for tourists at this point. Next year Lviv will be the site of many of the Euro 2012 games, and so it is upgrading itself now. This is gratifying, since the single terminal at their airport makes the city comparable to Garden City KS's facilities rather than that of a major urban area. In addition, the Crimean beaches, though romantic, are not any different than some of the rockier North American beaches. But you don't go to Ukraine just for these reasons; you do so to realize and be part of a global historical dynamic that is unfolding right before your eyes. With a history reaching back deep into the folds of time, and a desire to situate itself in a powerful way for the 21st century, Ukraine is just about ready to come of age. It faces enormous challenges, not least of which is the endemic corruption in many industries. But the graciousness of many people, the beauty of my surroundings, the awareness that this was the place where much of our modern world was built--all these things made me grateful for this once-in-a-lifetime trip....

Or, maybe twice?

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