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...