kharkiv (харкІв)

a three day weekend, so of course i wanted to go somewhere...i hadn't seen much of the east of ukraine, so that seemed like a good idea...since cloe's parents had been visiting, she knew she needed some down time so she didn't come along for this trip...this was my first time traveling with christina...christina booked the tickets, and also found our accomodation, yippee...she's been in ukraine for a year and a half, she knows a lot more russian than i know, (which isn't at all difficult, seeing as how i hardly know any) and has friends, or at least aquaintances all over the country...

we decided to go to kharkiv...unfortunately, we waited too long to make this decision, so the only train tickets left were not at convenient hours, to say the least...our train to kharkiv departed at 0345...i had a difficult time staying awake...people in ukraine almost never sit directly on a floor, or on the ground, or on outside steps, or anything along those lines...every single one of the chairs in the train station was full...most everyone sitting in those chairs was sound asleep...it's amazing the number of positions possible when sleeping in a chair...anywho...i walked, and walked and walked and walked, as there was nowhere to sit...it would've been so easy to sit on the floor and use my backpack as a pillow, but not a single other person was doing so, so i figured that wasn't the best idea...fortunately, i was able to go to sleep rather quickly just after boarding the train...

the train arrived around 1230 in kharkiv...we were in a car with a futbol (soccer) team, high school age i think? they practiced their english a little with us...
kharkiv is great in that they have a subway system, and there is a stop at the train station...we hopped right on, and made our way to the end of one of the lines...christina had booked us a place to stay in a flat of a local lady...after we figured out where to meet her, she arrived and took us to the flat...in terms of decor, i'd call it.....unrenovated soviet...definitely not new, but that didn't matter to me or christina...
after an hour or two of chitchat/relaxing/unpacking we made our way back into the city centre...christina had arranged for us to meet with someone she knows who lives a couple hours outside of kharkiv...a peace corps volunteer...(side fact: ukraine has the most peace corps volunteers of any country in the world...is this necessary? i don't think so, ukraine isn't an isolated country with no resources...the peace corps has been active here for a while, though they did pull out all volunteers during the orange revolution, back in 2004-ish...i don't know when the PC people came back)

it took us a while to figure out where to find ty...each subway station has a few exits, not always close to each other...we roamed around a bit before spotting ty...he took us to a restaurant decorated with parts of russian fairytales...the food was good, and goodness knows, by that point i really needed real food...(as opposed to the nonstop sugar intake i'd had going for me earlier in the day)...ty lives in a village/town not easily reached, so he had to take a bus at 1800...we finished eating around 1745, we were worried he wouldn't make the last bus, but he did...we continued wandering around town, mostly to orient ourselves...plus, now that it's spring, it's lighter much later...we ended up getting back to the flat around 2130, and both of us went to sleep fast...
the next morning we both slept in...well, i woke up at the same time i always do, but i dozed a bit, as well as reading a book i'd brought...it doesn't bother me to wake up early when i know i don't have to get out of bed...:)

this was sunday...easter sunday...15 april...the date is different from the western calendar, because much of ukraine is orthodox, and the orthodox calendar is different...this year, ukraine celebrated easter a week later than many western countries...we arrived in the city centre, and found a giant setup...two huge easter bread/muffin/cake looking things...(i've forgotten what they're called, pasca, maybe? everyone eats the stuff on easter)...also a couple easter egg trees...and a banner overhead saying Christ is Risen...did i mention this was in the city square? a public city square!! according to ukrainians it is the second largest in the world behind tiennaman square in beijing...it didn't seem that big to me, but whateva...at one end of this square (it's actually a rectangle) is a statue of lenin...(remember how i've said in previous posts that eastern ukraine is much more russian than the west?)...the lighting was awful (gray-ish skies are never a good background) but we took photos anywho...by this point christina had figured out i like to take a lot of photos, and will wait until just the right moment to take my desired photo..

after lenin and the pascas, we went to meet someone else christina knew...vladislav i think was his name? i'm sooo bad at remembering names...ooops...he had plans for the next couple hours, but we arranged to meet up later for a city tour...we went to a cafe briefly, one that had wifi...christina was dying to check email and facebook on her phone...both of us liked the drinks we ordered, though they weren't cheap...note to self, skip that cafe next time...
instead of waiting in that cafe for an undetermined amount of time, we walked back toward the city centre, taking photos along the way...(of course)...we took photos in the giant city square (allegedly the second largest in the world after tiennamen (sp?) square in beijing, china) which had a large setup for easter...i can't imagine such a religious setup in most places in the US...it said "christ is risen"...at one end of the square (it's actually a rectangle) is a statue of lenin, of course we took pictures...lenin wasn't the nicest of soviet leaders (were any of them nice?) so i'm always surprised to see any sort of memorials for him...

eventually we got into the city centre, and met up with vladislav and his sister...instead of taking us to the churches i wanted to see (they were mentioned in the guidebook) he took us up another street, called pushkin street...a statue of pushkin (famous soviet author) and a small park filled with miniature versions of some of the buildings in the city...in the middle of the park is a sculpture of a couple kissing...cute...they're stretching quite a bit...(this last sentence makes sense when you see the sculpture, it probably doesnt make sense w/out seeing the sculpture)
continuing walking, we ran into a couple christina knew, and ended up talking to them for quite a while...they're in the process of adopting a couple ukrainian children, so they are experiencing another aspect of ukrainian beauraucracy...
we got back to one of the main streets in town, and walked north...eventually we came to a park...it looked as though the park was under construction...vladislav told us they were doing renovations in preparation for the EURO cup...i don't know if the park will be ready in time, it didn't look to be anywhere close to being finished...i'm assuming the workers are working nearly every day in order to get everything finished in time? the start date is coming up fast!!

after walking behind a movie theatre, vladislav took us to the starting place of a cable car...it wasn't fancy at all, but i was still expecting a high fee...but it wasn't!!! only 10griven!!! (about $1.25)...with that price, i was expecting a short ride, but it ended up being around 10 minutes or more...awesome...definitely my favourite part of kharkiv:)...the ride across the park took us to a completely different area of town...fortunately, vladislav knows the town and knew of a close subway stop...we rode the subway back to the centre of town and went looking for a church mentioned in the guidebook...locals call it the candy cane church, it's easy to see why...fortunately, we walked in just after a service ended...i say fortunately, because i have the feeling the church isn't always open to the public...a minute or two after we walked in, the lights inside started being turned off...by the time we left about 10 minutes later, nearly all the lights were off...it was dark inside!!
by that point i was rather hungry, and tired...we figured out a place to go eat, an irish bar...i thought it would have pub food...but when we looked in the window, we couldn't see any food at all...so that plan didn't work...instead, christina and i went home, grabbing a bit at a grocery store on the way back...both of us slept soundly that night...

on our last day in kharkiv, we had no plans...well, that's not true...i really wanted to see the churches in the city centre...we'd come so close to them several times, but i'd only seen them from outside the walls...never in the church grounds or in the churches themselves...it finally happened!! we packed up our stuff, and took the subway to the train station...we found a left luggage office, and deposited our stuff for the day...the ladies working helped us figure out how to set a combination and work the lockers...in the city centre we finally went to the churches:)
after i'd wanted to see these churches for three days, they weren't that great...as soon as you entered the grounds of the churches you could see two boxes...one with scarves for women to borrow, and onewith wraparound skirts for women to borrow...i had a scarf with me, but no skirt; christina borrowed both...the inside of the churches wasn't great, i was a bit let down...oh well, life goes on...

afterward, we wandered a bit more...we saw something that i think was supposed to be an eternal flame, though there was no fire...
mostly unbeknownst to me, christina had made plans for vladimir to meet up with us again...he was 45 minutes later than she said...this time we took a bus north of the city, it went past the park with the cable car...vladimir told us to get off the bus a couple stops later, it turned out to be a park/war memorial...i really really liked it...i believe there was also a memorial to the holodor (the famine in 1932-33, caused by stalin)...simple, moving...
we took the same bus back, hopping off at the earlier park in order to ride the cable car again...hee hee...christina and i loved it...i had a car all to myself this time, and the weather was better:)...when the ride ended we walked to the nearest subway station, and rode the trains back to the train station...vladimir showed us a yummy bakery, of course i stocked up on pastries...raspberry pastries aren't very common...in retrospect, i should've bought even more than i did:)
our train arrived back in kyiv at 0400...ugh...that was a loooooong day at school!

riga

cloe and i got to go to riga, latvia for a weekend...fun times:)...a new country for me, though i'm not the first in my family to get there...(being the first in my family to get to a country is rare!)...the flight is under two hours (listed at 1:50 but only takes 1:35) which is great...latvia is a member of the european union, (EU) and is a schengen country...since cloe is french, that means she got to go through a different line at immigration...her line moved REALLY FAST, she didn't even get a stamp in her passport when we entered the country!! i have traveled a fair amount, and should totally be over this, but i still love getting stamps in my passport...as soon as i'm through immigration in any country, i always open my passport to see where they put the stamp, and what it looks like...

since our flight arrived after 2300, and we knew it would be pretty chilly, we opted to book a hotel ahead of time...this worked out well, as they were able to send someone to pick us up at the airport...it's nice to come out of immigration/customs and see someone holding a sign with your name on it...the ride to the hotel was pretty quick, the airport is very conveniently located:)
i'm glad we had the taxi to take us directly to the hotel...w/out the taxi, there is no way we would've found it...sure, we had the address, but that is far from all the information we needed...the guy on duty met us as the taxi pulled up, walked us to the proper door (the building had quite a few businesses) and told us the code we needed to open the door...then we climbed three full flights of stairs (thank goodness for climbing stairs every day in kyiv) and got to the front door of the hotel...the only signage was a single A4 sized sheet of paper with the name of the hotel printed on it, taped to the door...clearly this place doesn't rely on walk in business...the guy showed us our room, and gave us the set of keys...

at that point we realized we needed to exchange money...we were tired, but figured we could try to find an exchange place open, and we were successful...there were 4 or 5 w/in a 5 minute walk of our hotel...woo hoo...i'm usually pretty cautious about such places, (i always prefer to use an ATM card, but since that wasn't an option with this trip, we had to exchange ukrainian grivnas for latvian lats) so we checked out the rates at all the places we could see...which was smart, as the rates varied by quite a bit...living in kyiv, every place that exchanges money has really similar rates, but that isn't the case at all in riga...one place was only half of another, with others in between the two...
after getting some money, and water for me, we went back to the hotel...it was after 0100 by that point...time flies in the middle of the night...we were asleep pretty quickly, as traveling is always wearing, even when the trip isn't long...
the next morning we slept in...we only had two days in the city, but we wanted to relax in addition to touring...plus, the weather wasn't spectacular, so there wasn't much motivation to get up and go...i think we finally left the hotel around 1100?

the areas tourists in riga want to see are quite small, and centrally located...it's a great city for a weekend trip, you can see everything just by walking around...yay!! we found the opera house, in the middle of a park...we stopped for hot chocolate (riga has heaps of chain coffee shops, though i didn't see a coffee bean or a starbucks)...we found the freedom monument, which apparently has quite a bit of history...the soviets didn't like it much, as it symbolized latvian independence; they wanted to get rid of it, or at least move it...but that never happened, so it's right in the middle of a big platz...there are two soldiers standing in front, it could also be the latvian version of the "tomb of the unknown soldier"...the weather was crap, so the photos i took at that point weren't very good...

from the monument we walked into the park a little bit, and had more fun with photos on a bridge with more locks...this seems to be a popular thing to do in this part of the world...buy a padlock, lock it on a bridge, and it's supposed to represent never ending love, or something like that...i wonder how often it works? from there we could see the gunpowder tower, which is now a museum...we didn't go in the museum, i don't know why...with the 'meh' weather, it probably would've been perfect...instead, we walked into another coffee shop, i had a snack...two shops down the street was a souvenir shop, we investigated that next...i found a hat i really wanted, cloe found amber items, i found postcards, cloe found magnets, etc...i don't think we actually purchased anything at that point, but we got an idea of what we might find throughout the city, and started thinking about what we wanted to take with us back to kyiv...

from there we wandered...knowing that the area we wanted to explore was fairly small, we didn't get the map out again for a while...it was easy to say "hey, that must be the ......" ...wandering around took us to a couple churches (neither of which was open at that particular time) and the swedish gate (one of the only remaining gates to the city, i think there were originally 9 gates?) and a couple platzes and more...most importantly, we found a lollipop store!! great lollipops:)...we only bought a couple that day, we wanted to do "quality control"...gotta make sure they are good enough before buying heaps of them, right? we ended up buying them for our coworkers as well, just because we could...who doesn't love lollipops? these lollipops looked pretty as well, which made them even better:)

at that point, cloe was starving, as she hadn't eaten when i had my "snack" (which was two pieces of quiche)...we ended up at a japanese place...not bad, and i love love loved my virgin strawberry mojito...tasty, and good looking, what more does a girl want?
after lunch (which was at 1600 or so, i guess it wasn't really lunchtime anymore) we headed toward another church...st peter's i think...the inside of the church isn't particularly noteworthy, but you are able to go up the steeple (the signs say the lift runs every 10 minutes, though it actually comes more often than that...it's super old school, not particularly fast and doesn't carry a lot of people) which gives you great views over the city...SUPER WINDY...

close to st peter's is the house of blackheads...back in the day this was where the unmarried foreign merchants used to live...part of it is now one of several tourist information centers, and another part is a museum...we only visited the tourist information centre...a nifty looking building...since the weather wasn't great, there weren't many people out, so i was able to take a few photos w/out anyone in them...yahoo...except when cloe was running around, doing her best to stay in range of my lens...she knows i'd much rather have photos without anyone in them, and she was just in that sort of mood...oddly enough, i didn't care...normally that would've annoyed me...hee hee...

next door to the house of blackheads is the latvian museum of occupation...the only one like it in the world...we arrived at 1700, which is when it closed, so we decided to come back another day...from there we checked out at least two more souvenir shops...from those shops to another cafe, i had another "snack"...a lovely piece of cake:)...across the street from this cafe was a hair salon...normally i don't pay any attention to these places while traveling, but my hair had become really long, and rather disgusting at the ends...it was time for a haircut, so i set up an appointment for the next day...i'd been meaning to do it in kyiv, but i was concerned about the language barrier...in riga there didn't seem to be any barrier at all...

we walked back in the direction of the platz near our japanese restaurant, as we wanted to see another cathedral...go figure we arrived just after it had closed for the day...again, we took note of the opening hours and vowed to come back the next day...
at that point it was still yucky, and we didn't have any more ways of killing time...not that either of us was particularly hungry, but we figured it was a good idea to have dinner...i'd seen a branch of an american chain restaurant, and cloe wasn't against it...she got to check off an item on her to-do list: try balsams, the local liquer...she didn't like it, at all...hee hee...sometimes i'm glad i can't drink, otherwise i know i would've tried it as well...
not long after we finished eating, many of the lights in the city went out...riga took part in "earth hour" (as i think it's called) when cities around the globe turn off as many lights as possible, for environmental reasons...i wanted to see the house of blackheads at night, which meant we had to wait an hour for the lights to come back on...fortunately, that was easy to do at this restaurant...

the lights came back on at 2130, we saw the nightsights, and got back to the hotel...asleep around 2300, woo hoo!!
the next morning dawned a whole lot nicer...blue skies!! not that we got out of the room any faster, but both of us were a bit more eager to be outside...sunshine does that:)
we started by heading toward the russian orthodox cathedral...sure, we live in a country that has such buildings on every block, but i still love seeing them...the inside wasn't as impressive as i've seen previously, but the outside was different, which was fun...the church was right next to a small park, with a statue...i don't remember the name of who the statue represented (it started with an R i think?) but we took the opportunity to take a couple photos together...when there are only two people traveling, most photos have only one or the other in them, we wanted both...gotta love time delayed photos:)...

because the weather was so much nicer, we ended up retaking a number of the photos we'd taken the day before...blue skies are so much prettier than white/grey skies...
we finally made it to the museum, yay!! i don't know when it was established, i suppose i could look it up...it's a pretty intense museum, there is a lot of information, both written and visual...they've done a great job with setting up exhibits about the various times during the 20th century when latvia was occupied...by both the germans and the USSR...until i walked through this museum, i didn't know that the US was one of a few countries that didn't always recognize latvia being a republic of the USSR...there was a lot of written information, i would've loved to have the time to read all of it...i was able to see a lot, but not everything, because i had to boogie over to the hair salon...
yay for getting my hair cut!! i love the head massage, and my hair looks soooooo much better without all the split ends...afterward i met up with cloe at another coffee shop...from there we walked along the river, cloe loves walking next to water...we saw the statue of the guy who founded riga, according to the myth...not a very impressive statue...after crossing a big street we made our way into an entrance of the central markets...

the central markets are the #1 sight in riga according to lonely planet...4 LARGE buildings with local markets...meat, seafood, fresh produce, dairy, etc...we saw it all...the fish area smelled like...fish...i bought strawberries, just because...there were plenty of people shopping there, so the prices must be reasonable...
speaking of which, the latvian currency is really strong...1 LVL (lat) is equal to $2!! it was easy for me to figure out how much i was spending on everything, just double the number i could see...a euro is about 2/3 of a lat, so it was a bit more difficult for cloe...there aren't that many currencies in the world that are that strong!! seeing as how $1 = 8 ukrainian grivna, the prices in riga were tiny compared to the numbers we're used to seeing in kyiv...

from the markets we walked back into the tourist/city centre area...we knew we wanted to eat before heading to the airport...nothing special...
from there we found where to catch the bus to the airport...the frustrating thing is that there are two prices for that bus...if you buy the ticket ahead of time, it's .5LVL...if you buy it on the bus it is .7LVL...it's not a big difference, but why would anyone want to pay more...we found a machine where you can buy the tickets, but it wouldn't take money! it would only take cards (as in credit cards) which we didn't want to do for a single bus ride...oh well...the ride to the airport was easy, as was getting our boarding passes, and going through customs...again cloe sped through the line, since she is an EU citizen...argh! i would love to be an EU citizen...

we arrived in kyiv on time, took a bus into the city, then the metro, then walked back to our flat...another lovely weekend exploring somewhere new:)

tartars and karaites

Go figure, the day dawned bright and sunny...no snow the day i left yalta...i checked the opening time for the cable car, but it was 10am, and i had no desire to wait that long...(i woke up again at 0600)...so i walked to the main bus station, and caught the next bus to sevastopol...at the bus station in sevastopol i caught the next bus to bakchisarai, a small town about halfway to simferopol...i was lucky in the timing of both buses, they both left within about 15 minutes of me purchasing my ticket...on the first bus to sevastopol i think i was sitting in the wrong seat (until that point i didn't know seats were assigned) but the guy who was trying to tell me i was in his seat gave up almost immediately when he realized i speak no russian...it only occured to me after he sat in another seat that he was probably trying to say i was in his seat...ooops...

when i got to bakchisarai (бакчисараи) i walked a bit and asked about 4 people for directions to a main street called lenina...once i found the street it was easy enough to find a guesthouse...i chose the cheapest guesthouse listed in the guidebook, also the only guesthouse with directions printed in the book...all the rest said to call ahead...which is all fine and dandy, if you have a phone, and if that phone has credit on it, and if you speak some russian...as i realized as i arrived, i have no credit on my phone, i couldn't call anyone...again, ooops...i'll have to fix that sooner rather than later...probably when I get back to simferopol...

lonely planet calls the guy who owns/runs my guesthouse "an amiable former military man"...he's a friendly old guy...and the place is soooo cheap!! i think i was the only person staying there...it definitely isn't high season...he brought me tea just after I got into the room...nice:)

after resting for a little bit, i started walking...bakchisarai is located in a valley, and the sky was clear, so i knew that as soon as darkness fell, it would be COLD...i walked i have no idea how far to my first sight...a monastary...called the uspensky monastary, it's built into the side of the cliff wall...byzantine monks built the monastary in the 8^th or 9^th century...i wonder how long it took to build...there is another church currently being built in the valley, almost 'under' the current church, i don't know if there will be a move, or if it is simply a new church...of course, with the snow, there wasn't any construction happening...

you're almost there before you realize it's there...after following a snow covered path for a little while, i realized i could see stairs, and the golden top that seems so familiar after a few months in this country...the golden top simply covered an arched gateway, not the church itself...the church was carved into the cliff wall, with a couple "windows" letting in light...a low ceiling, not a lot of natural light in the sanctuary...to get to the sanctuary you walk down a couple 'hallways' which have a number of doors leading off them...as i was leaving, i realized these doors are probably to rooms where the priests and others live...each door had the orthodox cross on it...there are also paintings all along the walls...as seems to happen to me quite often, i walked into the sanctuary in the middle of a service...it seemed very quiet, but maybe that was just the natural accoustics of the small room...

from the monastary i kept walking up the snow covered path...there was no sign directing me, but there weren't any other options, so i kept going...at one point a lady went flying by me going the other way on a sled...how awesome is that?!?! it's dead season for traveling, but people are still having fun:) ...i never did figure out where she got the sled...i wonder how much that might have cost?

my next destination was a place called chufut kale (чуфут кале)...a plateau on the top of one of the sides of the valley...settled sometime between the 6^th and 12^th centuries by christian descendents of the sarmation tribes...(i don't know who they were, but that's what the guidebook says)...one of the last rulers of the mongols sheltered here as well, after being defeated in 1390...the first crimean khanate was established here (for a time crimea was part of the ottoman empire)...after the tartars left, turkic jewish karaites lived in the city until the mid 1800s...(i think I have that date right?)...the people who lived there had some great views on a daily basis...

getting to the plateau meant walking on paths with mostly melted snow, and a lot of mud...my shoes were covered...yuck...chufut kale (which translates to 'jewish fortress') is a city mostly carved out of the plateau...everywhere you go you can see caves and 'windows...later inhabitants built good looking houses, and there are a couple large prayer houses...from one side you can look into the valley on the other side, which houses an old karaite cemetary...there are no barriers to keep you from falling off the edge, straight down into that valley...i wouldn't mention this, except that I kept slipping on stone, snow covered steps...i came close to sliding into that valley...

at some point I realized I needed to get walking back into town...it was a cold walk, thankfully not entirely in the dark...it was earlier than I wanted to eat, but I didn't want to go back to the guesthouse, then leave again...bakchisarai is a very small town, and I was feeling particularly alone...i don't think i'd have felt that way in the summer...dinner was at a place with typical crimean food...yum...not surprisingly, I overate...

an even earlier night than the previous two nights...there is only so much you can do to stretch out an evening when you don't have internet or a book to read...one of my options was taking a bucket shower...not what I was expecting, but thank goodness I have plenty of experience...a little bucket of warm water can go a long way if you know how to do it properly...anywho, my hair was clean for the first time in a few days...granted, the bathroom was concrete, so I was still freezing...at this point I decided I wasn't going to be warm/comfortable again until I was on the train back to kyiv...

The place I stayed in bakchisarai had bucket showers because there isn't a lot of running water in this area...they don't really have the water availability to let people take daily showers the way we're used to doing...in addition to the bucket shower, there is also a squat toilet...again, not really a problem for me, as I have plenty of experience with them...the morning of my last day in crimea was a surprise though...i went to use the squatty and found that the bucket of rinse water was partly frozen!! hee hee...i guess it was a wee bit chilly out during the night:) ...the day dawned with another blue sky though, I loved it...

after another cup of tea, I packed up and set out from my guesthouse...my first stop of the day was the khan's palace in the middle of bakchisarai...remember that the town used to be the seat of the crimean khanate, of course the khans needed a place to live...it was pretty fancy...

I was one of the first people to show up for the day...so each time I entered a building a lady unlocked it for me, then waited around while I looked in each room...those rooms are fancy!! I don't know how the whole thing was kept warm during the winter and during summer some of those rooms must've been toasty!! lots of rooms with natural light, including my favourite room, which was called the summer house...there were small coloured pieces of glass in the windows of the room, which made the whole room feel really colourful, yet really light and airy at the same time...very cool...i wouldn't mind having a room like that in my own house...(if I ever have my own house)

the palace was made of wood and marble, and built under the direction of persian, ottoman, and italian architects...in one of the buildings was a small mosque, for the personal use of the khan, I think...there were several rooms for hanging out, and a room with instruments...i don't know if musicians played regularly, or the instruments were just displayed because that's what existed back then...

the first room I saw was the divan room...the guidebook says it is dimly lit, but it didn't seem that way to me...the chandelier was lit, and the sun was streaming through the windows...apparently this is the room where governmental decisions were discussed and made...

one of the courtyards inside the palace has two fountains...(in fact, there were a number of fountains all over the palace)...one of them is called the fountain of tears...

there were a couple garden areas, i'm sure they are quite beautiful later in spring and during summer...as I saw them, there wasn't much to see...on the second floor of one of the buildings were museum exhibits of the life of the khans...the clothes they were, the items to be found in the household, etc...the shoes the ladies were looked really uncomfortable...they didn't do a lot of walking; at least I hope not...cooking utensils, tools for shaping/cutting leather, etc...nifty to see, but I never spend very long in those sorts of exhibits...

after the living part of the palace, I ended up back in front...i would've loved to have seen the inside of the big mosque, but that didn't seem to be open...i don't know if it is still in use, or if it was closed for another reason...i was able to walk through part of the cemetary, but not through the entire area...and I wasn't able to enter the two tombs I could see...who knows how much there might have been to see inside each tomb...there looked to be an entrance to more gardens near one end of the compound, but that entrance was closed off...i could see a tank in there, I wish I could've walked around a bit...

by this point, there were more people wandering around, and i'd seen every area I could...i bought one set of postcards and left the palace...(on a side note, crimea in general isn't nearly as good at postcards as the other areas of the country i've seen...yet crimea has heaps to see and do...why aren't there many postcards?)

after the palace I tried to find a center of crimean handicrafts...but it seemed to be closed...i saw signs pointing to the location, but there were no open doors, nor any signage on the door itself...i don't know if it was closed for the winter or just the day...i was gutted, i'd gotten myself to be looking forward to buying a ring with silver filigree...oh well...

from there I walked back to the bus station...it wasn't a short walk, but not long either...and I had plenty of time to kill, so the time didn't matter, either...at the bus station I was able to catch a bus to simferopol almost straightaway...howeva, this bus took me to the main bus station of simferopol, not the bus station next to the train station...so I had to find a marshrutka going in the right direction to get to the train station...(i knew the number of the correct marshrutka, but it isn't easy to figure out the right direction)...

I had a lot of time at the train station, so I found a place to check internet for an hour...the first time i'd been online since leaving kyiv...i don't know if it was a good or bad thing that there were only 4 messages in my inbox?!?!

more time in the train station...for a while I sat next to a lady who smelled like dill pickles...i love pickles and all, but it was overpowering...how does someone smell that stronly of pickles? Not long after she stood up, a man who smokes sat down...at that point I decided I preferred pickles...there was no smoking in the train station, but this man had definitely just finished smoking a cigarette outside, as he REEKED of smoke...yuck...as far as smoking goes, people can do whateva they want...i just don't like the way it affects me...

eventually my train was listed on the departures board, I boarded, and 13 hours later I arrived again in kyiv...

hades riviera

The thing about going to sleep really early is you wake up pretty early the next morning...i was wide awake around 0600...it was light out, but i didn't want to get up yet...my normal alarm clock for work doesn't even go off until 0700!!

my mate cory is going to kill me if he ever reads this, because it's all about my very poor planning...well, more like complete lack of planning...the entire day my plans for what to see kept changing...if i'd figured out a proper itinerary at the beginning of the day i'd have been able to see quite a bit...as it was, i backtracked way too much...anywho...

since friday was the day after the official holiday, i hoped the post office would be open...i was wrong...so i'm still carrying around letters i've meant to mail for around a week now...argh...i really wanted to mail the letters...

my first place to see was livadia palace, i mentioned it in my previous post...i hopped on a marshrutka from a small bus station really close to my hotel...(again, the hotel was quite conveniently located)...i hopped off around 20 minutes later...i think...i'm not good at figuring out how much time has gone by...

i made my way to the kaca to buy my ticket, only to discover that i had arrived 40 minutes before the palace opened...oops...i should mention that it was snowing rather heavily, and i was cold, so this was not good news...there was nowhere indoors that i could see, so i walked toward the gardens, hoping to find a way to kill time...

that didn't work very well, but i did find the romanov family chapel (remember in the previous post when i mentioned that that family had owned this palace at one time?) so i was able to get inside for a few minutes...the chapel is quite small, not really what i was expecting for the family chapel of a tsar...not only the chapel of the tsar's family, but the chapel in which tsar nicholas took an oath of fidelity to russia...before going in i wrapped a scarf around my head, so i would be dressed appropriately...guys take off their hats when they go in orthodox churches, women cover their heads...hmmm...there was a service going on when i walked in, so i stood at the back and watched for a while...at 5 till 10 i walked back to the ticket lady and was able to purchase my entrance ticket...i think it's the most expensive place i've been in all of ukraine!!! almost $7!!!

to see livadia palace you have to join a tour...which is led in russian...there are no tours in any other languages...unless you've booked a private tour on your own? needless to say, i had no idea what was being said...at all...i heard a lot of words like angliski, americanski, and such, but i still didn't know what was being said...so i entertained myself by taking heaps of photos...the first room you see is the gala room, which is where all the plennary (sp?) meetings took place during the yalta conference...it's big and white with a fireplace at one end....you don't actually get to go in the room, you simply stand at one end and use your camera to zoom in on the table and fireplace at the other end...i wonder if it was the real table? How many translators were present at all those meetings? Were small items ever lost in the nuances of translation?

I don't know what the other rooms we saw were...the rooms on the ground floor were set up as they were during the yalta conference...(7-11 february 1945)...the rooms on the 2^nd floor were set up with exhibits of photos about the romanovs, the russian military, and other russian life...about half of those exhibits had english captions, so i was able to understand what i was seeing...it was while we were on this floor that i realized just how cold i was...this is mid march, and it's still pretty cold...the meetings of the yalta conference took place in mid february, how did they keep the place warm? In all the photos everyone has on warm coats, but i'm wondering if they wore those coats during the meetings as well? As cold as i was, there was no way you could've paid me to take off my coat...

this is where my lack of planning was just plain stupid...after the palace tour i caught the marshrutka back to yalta and ate lunch...a lovely little cafeteria style place right next to my hotel...from there i walked to alexander nevsky church...i'd seen a couple photos, and wanted to take my own photos...the outside of the church was far more interesting than the inside...the iconostasis was partly covered, as if it was under repair/renovation, and there was very little lighting...

from there i walked back to the wee little bus station, and caught another marshrutka going back the way i'd already been...i wanted to take a cable car up a ways to a place called the ay-petri plateau...i got off that marshrutka at 1455, only to see that the cable car was closed...the sign said they closed at 1500, and i was ahead of that, but apparently they didn't wait all the way to 1500 to close...darnit...if i'd gone from livadia straight to the cable car this wouldn't have been an issue...actually, what i should've done was taken the marshrutka as far as it would go in the morning, and seen vorontsov palace, where another of the yalta conference delegations stayed...(the brits i think?)...that palace is in alupka...then the cable car....but i didn't plan, and ended up missing those two...

from the missed cable car i took the marshrutka back toward yalta, hopping off at a place called the swallow's nest...it looks like a pretty fancy castle...it's really small, i didn't bother going in...it's the view of the castle that you go to see...the castle was built for a private owner, there is no historical value as far as i know...it sits on the edge of a cliff, it's really pretty...

then the marshrutka (i'm getting really tired of typing that word) back to yalta...i should've done all these things, then seen the church in town; i know i would've had plenty of time...originally i thought of walking a path from livadia to the cable car station, but the weather was such crap i didn't think i'd be able to see anything...so i guess i wouldn't have been able to see everything anywho, unless i'd done it all backward...if i ever get back to crimea i know what i'll want to see...in yalta anywho...

once back in the city i walked along the waterfront promenade again...crazy windy...still fun to watch people...i took a few photos of some of the statues, it had been too dark the night before...one of them was pushkin, i don't remember the others off the top of my head...

a lowkey dinner, another supermarket trip...i decided to try two drinks i hadn't had before, and was sorely disappointed...one of them appeared to be lemonade in a glass bottle...after nearly breaking my hand to get the cap off (why don't i carry a lighter?) i was gutted...it was a cream flavoured lemonade...not at all what i wanted...i really dont like the smell of cream drinks...yuck...the other was a fruit mix...i wasn't quite so gutted, but i wasnt impressed enough to finish it...darnit...

another early night...

a fortress in crimea

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like Ukraine doesn't have very many holidays...and by holidays, I mean days off work, not days like valentines day, or maslenitsa (a holiday to welcome spring)...international women's day (which I don't recall ever hearing about in the states) fell on thursday this year, (8 march) so the ukrainian government decided that everyone didn't have to work friday either, (though a make up day was 3 march...the make up day wasn't so fun, as it was a saturday, but i'm always happy to have a 4 day weekend)

since long weekends are few and far between, I decided to go far from kyiv...i took a night train 13 hours to simferopol, the capital of crimea, an autonomous republic in ukraine...crimea is now mostly ethnically russian, thanks to the soviets who deported all the locals way back when...crimeans only really started coming back from exile in siberia in the late 80s...eeek...when all of them were sent away, russia (USSR back then) moved its own people in and they're still here...when ukraine became independent 20 years ago, there was a squabble with russia about crimea, and that squabble is still going...currently there is a russian navy base in crimea, I believe their lease goes until 2042 (maybe longer?) or something like that...it was set to expire much earlier, but the current president is very pro-russia, so almost as soon as he took office, he extended the agreement by about 20 years...crimea is a peninsula on the southern coast of ukraine, sticking out into the black sea...

for the first time I had a 4 bed compartment on the train...it's 2^nd class I think, as opposed to 3^rd class which is what i've always had previously...there were fewer people, and a door could be closed, but in terms of the actual beds themselves, I didn't notice a difference...i ended up with these tickets because that's all that was left...the people in my compartment were quite nice...there was a kid in the compartment next door who whinged, a LOT...when the train was starting in kyiv he kept saying “papa I want …....”...over and over and over again...i don't know what it was he wanted, but I wanted papa to do something about it...as far as I could tell, papa wasn't even responding to him...in the morning the kid was running up and down the hall outside all the compartments...it ended up being pretty hot in my compartment, I woke up numerous times during the night because I was so hot...

simferopol is nicely set up for transportation...at least I think it is, because the train station is in the same place as the bus station...if I had been planning to stay in simferopol I wouldn't have said that, because the stations aren't close to the city center, but for a quick get out of town, I was happy...i got off the train, and 5 minutes later I was on a bus...it was a small bus, and as I learned quickly, rather old...the engine had very little energy...we spent a lot of time going really slowly, as very little speed was to be had on hills of any kind...plus, it was snowing...weather I did not expect...at all...the same kind of snow we've had in kyiv for the last couple months!! it's clearly been cold here the entire time it's been cold up north, there was plenty of snow already on the ground...is it normal for crimea to have all this snow in winter?

my first destination in crimea...sudak...it's known for a genovese fortress...the fortress overlooks the water, which is quite pretty...lonely planet doesn't have a map for sudak, as it's a smaller town, so I used google maps and printed one for myself...with that map it was easy to find the fortress...as I walked through sudak I passed heaps of people selling flowers for the holiday...it seemed like every guy on the street was either carrying a bouquet, or selling flowers...they take this holiday seriously!!

the genovese captured the city in 1365 (it's on the great silk road, the city was fought over for hundreds of years) and in 1371 started work on the fortress...it's still in good shape, especially the towers...the towers all have names, none of which mean anything to me...they're all named for various consuls who ruled for a year at a time...

it took me a while to find the entrance to the fortress...it's on a hill, and you can see all sorts of paths going around the hill...clearly people spend a lot of time on this hill, probably in warmer times of year...i followed some of those paths, but they kept taking me to closed doors...argh...eventually I found the ticket kasa, and entered...the outer walls and towers are still in good repair, but there isn't much inside...hmmm...still, I followed all the walls, and climbed where I could...

as I walked back through town, the weather was much more pleasant...no more snow and driving wind...the sun had come out and dried things up a bit as well...at the bus station I asked for a ticket to yalta, the guidebook said it was possible...but the ticket lady said no, and sent me back to simferopol instead...oh well...the ride back was heaps faster, thanks goodness...in simferopol I was able to jump on a bus to yalta almost immediately...

yalta has been popular with russians in particular because of it's humid climate...for rich aristocrats with delicate health, doctors always told them to go to crimea...yalta in particular I guess...yalta is known as one of the places those rich kids came...there are heaps of nice dachas all over the city...there is also a statue of lenin, a lovely promenade along the sea, and lots of shopping...the city is in a natural “bowl” surrounded by the mountains or water...

yalta is known for another historical reason...in 1945, near the end of world war 2, the “big three” met here to divide europe...that is, divide it up as to who would have the most influence in government in each country...the US delegation was led by FDR, who wasn't easily able to move around, so all the meetings took place in the palace where the americans stayed...the brits were led by winston churchill...the soviets were led by joseph stalin...it was in yalta that stalin got his wish to control most of eastern europe...during this set of meetings, the UNO (United Nations Organization, which I believe is now headquartered in new york, and known as the UN) was also founded...interestingly enough, the Ukrainian SSR was recognized as one of the founding republics of the UNO...

the americans stayed in an estate/palace called livadia, which was originally built (or bought) by the romanov family..yup, the romanovs that were shot to death a few years later...livadia palace is the biggest palace in crimea...i'm not sure if that means anything or not...the brits stayed in vorontsov palace, and the soviets in yusupov palace...

enough history for the moment...my bus arrived, and I was again thankful for good placement...the bus station was on a main street, and though the map didn't show the bus station, it was easy to follow the street all the way to the center of town...yalta is well set up for walking, I guess that's what all those sick people spent hours doing every day back when...i found the hotel I was looking for pretty easily, and got myself a single room (though it has two single beds?) for around $12...woo hoo...i know this isn't high season, but it is a holiday weekend, and the hotel is really well located...the front desk clerk spoke enough english, and was nice...

I ditched my bag and headed to the promenade, to watch people as much as anything...it was just over freezing, but there were heaps of people out walking...it got dark quickly, darnit...people were rollerblading and riding bikes...there are a bunch of carnival type games set up on this promenade, if I were traveling with someone we definitely would've tried our hand at a few...it's not the same when you're by yourself...

after walking and eating, my next goal was a supermarket...the hotel doesn't have breakfast, and i've gotten in the habit of eating in the mornings over the past few months...(i've never been a regular breakfast person unti this year for whateva reason)...since it was dark I wanted to find a supermarket quickly and get back inside...of course it took me a while to find a place even though as I was walking into town from the bus station I could've sworn i'd seen heaps of places...argh...

the only problem with traveling when it's still pretty much winter is that the sun goes down pretty early, and leaves you with long evenings, and nothing to do...