Southbound

Heading down to Crimea by an overnight train. We are assigned the upper bunks in our compartment, which is a brand new experience for me. I try to figure out how to get up there. With the help of a ladder or steps? Don’t make me laugh. There is nothing like that. Only the lower bunks (occupied by other passengers) and the table below the window (occupied by passengers’ snacks and drinks). Who would want to step on the limbs of the co-travellers or into their dinner? MacRua, a more skilled train goer, demonstrates it’s an easy process. Step on the edges of the lower bunks (carefully avoiding the legs and arms of their occupants), grope the edges of the upper bunks... and swing yourself up. A piece of cake. Well, yes. I just cannot imagine anybody on the fatter-side, elderly-side or creaky-bones-side chewing this „piece of cake“ without breaking their teeth on its crust.

With each pack of clean bed clothes, you are given a free package of paper handkerchiefs – handy. However, this time, there are two other tiny packs, two more bonuses. One contains a wet napkin for cleaning one’s hands and face – why not, that comes in handy on a train too. The other one contains a wet napkin for polishing shoes. You can look all sweaty, messy and crumpled after spending a night on the train, but your shoes must sport a dazzling shine... How to achieve such a task in the middle of summer when most people wear sandals remains a bit of a mystery, though. As well as what would happen if somebody accidentally used the shoe-napkin for cleaning his face.

The next place they took us was down to the sea,
Aboard a great ship, bound for the Crimea...


The Fast And the Furious

Aboard a little minibus in fact – that’s the means of transport which seems to be most popular here and which we board as soon as we get off the train. The bus station teems with chaos, minibuses and their bigger brothers come and go seemingly at random, if you search for numbered platforms, you will search in vain. Asking seems to be the only way to get round. Also, minibuses are not called minibuses – for locals, they are always „route taxis“. Meaning they operate on certain fixed routes, but they will stop wherever you wish. And if you ask really nicely, maybe they will take you to wherever you wish as well... for example right downhill to the sea. Even without asking this possibility seems to be always near. I’ve always liked serpentine mountain roads. In the beginning of our journey, I’m delighted with the constant twists and turns; turn to the left, turn to the right, going uphill, going downhill, shake to the left, shake to the right, nearly making you fall from the seat. I remark that this must be joy for every adventurous driver. After two hours on board, without any break, without a bit of a straight road as a relief, I’m beginning to reconsider. Maybe being assigned to Crimea is the punishment for the nastiest drivers. At one side of the road, a steep hill is constantly falling down to the seaside. Crash barriers are scarce and bollards seem too fragile to offer a safety net – that is if there are any bollards at all, which is not always the case. A good reason to practice careful driving? Hardly. The continuous line in the middle of the road is here merely as a decoration since nobody seems to care about it. The turns are here to be cut across sharply. The road is here to serve as a racing track. Maybe the drivers vent their frustration this way, maybe they simply enjoy it. Maybe they secretly compete who manages to cover the distance in the shortest time. (Though meeting one particular madman with intense glassy stare in his unmoving face I cannot help thinking about the drivers partaking of all kinds of energizing substances, not neccessarily legal.)

Anyway, the most peculiar minibus experience occurs in the middle of a city, the ancient Sudak, not on a winding mountain road. The minibus – sorry, route taxi – that stops in front of us when we want to get to the famous medieval fortress does look a bit smaller than its colleagues. It’s packed inside, but as a city person used to buses and trains being packed like a can of sardines, I have no objections against entering it. I bow my head to get inside through the door... and cannot straighten it up. The roof of the minibus – well, hardly more than a bigger car – is somewhere in the height of my shoulders. A minibus for kids... or hobbits. People who were not lucky enough to occupy a seat are standing bent, hunched, crooked in various bizzare positions. At least the ceiling is padded. I spend the journey bowing deeply to the exotic bus from hobbitland and watching a giggling young girl bent in a similar position by the door and with great effort trying to keep her ample breasts from falling out from – too tight? torn? – bikini top. Male passengers get not only a unique experience but free sightseeing as well.


Like a Rat in a Maze...

Finding accomodation in Solnechnogorskoe – a cozy village on the Black Sea coast, obviously a tourist retreat, but still calm and unpeopled in comparison with more famous places (beaches in Yalta resemble a human sea, wading through which means jumping over bodies and stepping on limbs) – presents a real managerial challenge. After the minibus drops us off, we turn into a narrow side street, lined with houses on both sides. Or actually with fences, here and there broken by little gates – the houses are crouched under greenery behind them. They all look like private dwellings, and when MacRua boldly opens one of the gates, I feel like intruding to someone’s backyard. The feeling strengthens as we wander through a maze of narrow walkways shielded by trees, among houses, some big, some small, some shabby, some neat, all hidden in greenery and – as it turns out – most of them really private, but at the same time offering accomodation to adventurous tourists. Adventurous enough to step on other people’s porches, knock on unmarked doors and avoid curious and not always friendly-looking dogs. That’s the way it works here. And it’s fun to walk through the endless maze of yards and backyards, interwoven with a web of paths. Impossible to tell where one property begins and another one ends, impossible to tell where we’ve already been and where not, impossible to tell where is where after a while. And it’s an adventure for one more reason as well – all the rooms seem to be occupied. Endless knocking on doors, endless stream of refusals. Well, it’s the summer season in a popular tourist place... but only a coward would book accomodation in advance. So we refuse to give up and finally we are rewarded with a friendly landlady offering us to stay in a tiny hut squatting in the shade of a a fig tree and a laurel tree. A hut big enough to contain: two beds (and a super-narrow alley between them), a tiny table (and an unneccesarily big mirror standing on it) and a couple of fat spiders. Impressed by its size (or the lack of it), MacRua immediately nicknames it a henhouse. But who needs more? There are toilets and showers a short way away (accomodating even bigger and fatter spiders), a tiny kitchenette, and in front of the house a table with two chairs, sheltered by the boughs of the trees. And it’s a one minute walk to the beach – actually, the beach is almost at our backyard. A perfect place. Well, minus the spiders...