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Journey to the Borderland

May 6

Posted by Lindsey Whissel on 05/07 at 03:30 PM

Very restful day…

Today was the most relaxed of our trip so far. We were given a brief tour of the Olympic facilities and got to watch a karate championship; I couldn’t figure out which style it was (definitely wasn’t Shotokan—the style I practice), but it was interesting to watch. If I understood correctly, the competition included martial artists from Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland.

After the tour, we were given the morning to spend at the beach. I’ve never been to Greece, but I imagine it being something like the beaches we’ve seen in Crimea. The Black Sea temperature was not optimal for swimming and I only waded in up to my ankles, but Carrie spent most of our beach-time in the water. The rest of us made like proper beach bums and lazed about reading (and sleeping) until it was time to pack up and head to lunch.

We ate at a wonderful outdoor café owned by one of the Alushta Rotarians. Poor Mark had to accept several more rounds of Vodka and Cognac as the head of our group and the only male (don’t know if I mentioned it before, but in this culture it’s ok for women to turn down their cups, but for men it’s considered rude to refuse a toast). As we were walking back up to the van and thinking Mark was safe, Boris (the filmmaker I mentioned in my last entry) chased him down with two more shots for a final toast. Mark will be a true Cossack by the time he leaves Ukraine.

We had a fairly long drive from Alushta to Feodosia and made a couple fun stops along the way. First, we toured a maritime time museum. I’m not sure of its exact location, but it is relatively new and is underneath a church on the seaside; it’s dedicated to tragedies on the high seas.

Next stop was at Судак (Sudak) an ancient (and very big) fortress. We didn’t have time for a proper tour, but were able to walk around a bit and take some pictures. On the way back to the car, we got to partake in one of the most important travel-traditions for those venturing around Europe— pay toilets. We joked that in the US, you treat your friends to drinks, but in Ukraine (along with many other countries in Europe), you treat your friends to the use of a toilet. I was very proud because I had my first conversation in Russian—the cashier asked us “сколько (how many),” to which I answered, “четыре (four).” It’s the small victories that count.

Ashley and I have invented our own toast. In Ukrainian, to say that you are inside a place, you add a “v” in front of the word and a “ee” sound to the end, so when we were learning with our language CDs, we got to practice saying I’m in the hotel which comes out as “vhotelee.” I’ve mentioned that I love saying poshta (post office), well, Ashley loves saying “vhotellee” and we’ve deiced this should be the way we say “cheers” from now on. It’s also become a sort of celebratory comment or punctuation for certain events (e.g. anytime we hit a particularly large bump in the road).

We’re all staying together at beautiful house in the countryside of Феодосия (Feodosia). I can hear lots of dogs barking in the distance (this is a big difference between the US and Ukraine- stray dogs and cats are allowed to roam freely here). There is a full moon tonight, so I think there’s a chance they could be werewolves, or maybe бабайка – the Ukrainian version of the boogeyman.

Word of the day: лягушка (lah-goosh-ka) –frog. We saw a frog on the patio at dinner which prompted me to ask how to say it in in Russian. I think we terrified the poor thing because he was just out for his nightly stroll and suddenly found himself surrounded by crazy photo-snapping Americans.