Crimea River

Such were my material circumstances en route to the Crimea.
Tea, yogurt, and hard-boiled eggs.  Jealous?

The first thing I actually wanted to do when I arrived in the Crimea was cry. I just wanted to sit down and cry my little heart out until I couldn’t feel pain anymore. There are several reasons for this: for one, I had just spent 18 hours on a train; second, I learned the hard way that you do NOT, under any circumstances, try to steal a towel from Ukrainian State Railways; third, I had no idea how to get to the centre of town because Sevastapol has a very confusing urban geography, and when I tried asking a marshrutka driver who had stopped to pick up a large group of people he started screaming at me and then flipped me the bird. 

As you can imagine, this was really, really upsetting for me. Apparently in The Orient (defined in my geographic imagination as anywhere outside the Pacific coast of Canada) it’s quite commonplace to yell and flip the bird, but I am Canadian and this is completely unacceptable. I was so horrified that someone would do that to me that I sat and, as usual, considered writing a strongly-worded letter to the Sevastapol transit authority, assuming that these marshrutki are regulated and not anyone with a van can just start one up. 



Quarries!

Actually, as it would appear, literally anyone with a van can start up a marshrutka business. This is something quite foreign to me. In the Ukraine they are a bit more regulated than the furgon trade in Albania, with signs and defined stopping points, but if you can get your greasy little hands on an old Mercedes van and can weld some iron bars together in the back to make seats, then you are in business.  



Disembarkation proved to be
disorienting and emotionally
difficult.

Naturally, I have thought about transplanting this brilliant system back into the heart of pro-environment and public transit Canada, Vancouver. Imagine, if you will,: 1) a number of old Mercedes vans crowding the UBC bus loop with several fat old men with a shirt rolled up to their armpits screaming the destination and then herding students into their respective vehicles; or 2) a 7-year-old kid hanging out of a van circling Westbrook Mall screaming the destination and having it stop every time a student flags it down. Groups of hipsters would flock to the Main Street-Commerical Drive marshrukta, rich kids would abandon their BMWs and Mercedes Benzes for the sleek and rugged look of a 1985 orange Mercedes delivery van, and all those women who collect bottles at UBC would be delighted by the roofracks when they are taking the day’s haul back to Shaughnessy.

Until all this catches on, however, I’ll have to stay in eastern Europe to really maximize my love, and utter contempt, for affordable public transit. So feeling sorry for myself was not in the cards—this was life. If being treated poorly by a Ukrainian was a part of growing up, then I was going to do it. As usual, I rationalised that I would hate driving a marshrutka and having to deal with someone like me.  So I sat at the bus stop and talked with an old woman who confessed that English is the international language, but that she refused to learn it.  I told her she had gotten this far already and that I agree—it's not worth it.  



These three had an easier time
navigating the peninsula, I'm told.

When I had purchased my ticket to Sevastapol, I wasn’t really thinking about where I would go. I assumed the Crimea was enough of a destination and so I just blindly went. As such, I had no plan or idea of where I would stay in Sevastapol and was devastated to disembark and find nowhere to stay. I was still new to the scene and I was not expecting hoards of babas to swarm me at the station with cardboard sheets pinned to their jackets offering rooms. When they did I was immediately wary of their mysterious and pixieish ways, and I decided to stay clear of these Crimean sirens and opt for a café with wifi instead, where I discovered some form of lodging/hostel in Balaclava. Naturally, this was exactly where I wanted to go: I love the Crimean War, I love the Charge of the Light Brigade, and I love the fierce rivalry between Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. All of this took place 150 prior in the little inlet of Balaclava, famous the world over for the aforementioned things and the namesake for appropriate ski-wear in Canada and a street in Vancouver that several of my friends have lived on.

 

So I bid adieu to the fair Sevastapol and my cool and hate-filled memories associated with it, and decided that I would spend my pre-birthday in Balaclava, reliving as much as I could of the great battles between the Turks and the Russians, and figuring out how to get to Yalta.