Natural Crimea

[Gylden]

Those clothes hanging on your outdoor clothes line probably get pretty stiff during January.   

Actually we don't use a dryer either (it is an american thing to use one).
The clothes dry faster in the winter due to the low relative humidity (20%).
 

[Vinnvinny]

Dryers are the invention of the Devil, when he had his commercial hat on.

[The Natural]

My girl arrived home in Crimea today, after a long trainride from Moscow. She sent me a sms. I called her up to test if the new number I added to my phone works. She has learned a lot of English in the two months we have known each other. Of course we can't yet discuss complicated matters in a deep and profound way. But I'm confident she will continue improving her English skills. But in one way I hope she won't be too fluent. It's thrilling and so charming to hear how she pronounce some words. weords like for example "vegetables". And when she said "faggott" when she talked about something she forgot 
 
It's getting real close now, just over 4 days and I will be on my way. I have started the packing preparations. Look very much forward to meet her finally and the feeling is mutual, to put it mildly.
 

[The Natural]

I will leave in two hours. Will fly down to Oslo airport and stay the night there and go to Riga/Simferopol tomorrow. Will be there around 1400.
Finally 

[Faux Pas]

Relax and enjoy Roy 

[Hammer2722]

Enjoy your trip Nat. Hope you can keep us posted on your vacation and with some pics!!! Good luck!

[Gator]

I will leave in two hours. Will fly down to Oslo airport and stay the night there and go to Riga/Simferopol tomorrow. Will be there around 1400.
Finally 

You are in the air now, so I missed wishing you Bon Voyage.  Enjoy!
 
Many Americans believe that it is much easier to travel to the FSU from Norway than from the US.  Your itinerary suggests otherwise.  Myth buster?

[Faux Pas]

You are in the air now, so I missed wishing you Bon Voyage.  Enjoy!
 
Many Americans believe that it is much easier to travel to the FSU from Norway than from the US.  Your itinerary suggests otherwise.  Myth buster?

The same thing crossed my mind. I would have thought there was a better connection from Oslo to Simferopol than an overnight stay. Search engines can be tricky.

[Ade]

You are in the air now, so I missed wishing you Bon Voyage.  Enjoy!
 
Many Americans believe that it is much easier to travel to the FSU from Norway than from the US.  Your itinerary suggests otherwise.  Myth buster?

It depends. For instance, the only connecting flight we could get for my MIL last week to Helsinki (for the only direct WE flight to Archangelsk), was leaving at 06:40am. That meant leaving home at 02:30 to get to the airport in time.

There are various flights into SPB, Moscow and I guess Ukraine but they can be at unpredictable times and some (perhaps all actually) carriers only fly one flight a day for 2 or 3 days in a week, for instance. If you are only going to SPB or Moscow, it's not a big deal but if you have to get a connection, it can be a royal pita.

I don't understand why TN decided to layover in Oslo though as there are literally dozens of flights by various carriers from Tomsø to Oslo every day. But perhaps his flight to Ukraine was so early he just couldn't make the connection.

[edit]
Well, I did a quick check and there's a flight to Simferopol  via Riga in the morning at 07:55. It seems like the shortest flight and if he's taking that it's too early to get all the way down from Tromsø to get it. The next one doubles the travelling time.
[/edit]

[The Natural]

Hello all,
 
After a 10 day stay in Koktebel, we are now in my girls apartment in Kerch. I'm in recovering now after a terrible time on Friday and Saturday, but more on that later.
 
My flight on the 25th was before 8 am from Oslo, so I was up just after 5 to have a shower and plenty of time at the airport. Took the bus from the Thon hotel to the airport and had a nice chat with the bus driver as I was the only passenger. He's British and have lived in Norway for years.
 
After checking in and passing security I went to the ATM and withdrew 1200 dollars. The bills looked okay but were not unused. It was 50 dollar bills and one of the bills had something written on it, so I used that one on the flight over to Riga. Buying food and drinks from Air Baltic is no cheap affair. A mini bottle of vodka cost 4,5 Euros and a chicked salad with a small bottle of red wine cost 13,5 Euros.
 
While on the bus out to the plane heading to Simferopol, I remember thinking to myself this young and tall man standing with a girl next to me, looked like he could be from Norway. I figured most people there were Russians. Then I heard them speak in Norwegian and asked them if they are Norwegians. He is and the girl is Ukrainian but spoke perfect Norwegian. Then a guy standing behind me said he's Norwegian too. On the plane, sitting in my row and the row behind me were some Swedish people. Or rather, a Swedish man who has been living in Ukraine for 18 years and have a business making ketchup, his wife and 3 or 4 children and a woman friend from Sweden.
 
Once in the arrival hall in Simferopol, there was some waiting time at the passport control and boy was it hot. The young man who checked my passport didn't seem to be in a hurry. Asked if I'm Norwegian and where I was going. Told him to Koktebel and then to Kerch. OK, next!
 
After passport check point I waited a little to get my bag and headed out. We had to put our bags through the x/ray machine and besides than one, some people were picked for more thorough checks. Not me. I sailed through and was met by my girl in the hall. She was waiting for me and had the taxi with her and we drove the 2 hour drive to the apartment we had reserved in Koktebel.
 
Will write in installments. I'm not sure if I can figure it out, but will try to download some photos here on my girls computer.
 

[Chicagoguy]

Glad you made it. I have been looking forward to your reports !

[The Natural]

Thanks Chicagoguy, appreciate it.

[The Natural]

The apartment is in pretty good condition, with a few plusses and minuses. On the plus side, it has air condition which is comfortable when it's over 30 degrees which is was the first few days. It also has a decent sized balcony and the shower had hot and cold water all the time. A lady came to clean every day. On the minus side, we had to share a kitchen with another family. We had one of two apartments on the first floor and it was also two apartments on the second floor. The kitchen should have been better equipped at $ 60 a night. Small things really, but important nonetheless. The frying pan was almost impossible to use as the food stuck to it. No washing brush, dish washing oil, trash bin or coffee kettle. We bought that as well as towels and there was no washing machine. The view from the balcony are directly to a rwo of grape plants and nothing else.
 
But the landlord is a friendly guy. He let us into his own house very close by, as I wanted to check if some money I was expected had arrived to my account, which it had. His house is great looking, big and western standard and he also have a nice yard around the house. My girl commented to me afterwards that he enjoyed showing us because I'm a westerner 
 
The next days were spend on the beach, sunbathing and swimming in the warm waters of the Black Sea. Very refreshing and very hot, but nice. My girl said she was worried I might have problems in the hot sun, but it ended up being her that had a little too much exposure, too fast. I had some ground colour before I came here, so I had no burns even with 3-5 hours a day on the beach.
 
Along the long beach there are hundreds of small beach shops selling souvernirs, food and refreshments. We often stopped for some of that and enjoyed some lazy and relaxing days.
We were pretty exhausted by the evenings which we enjoyed together on the balcony with some wine, vodka and cigarettes. My girl is very easy-going, attentive and kind and gave me a pedicure while I relaxed on the balcony.
 
She persuaded me to go and have a massage because of problems with neck and shoulder pain. I figured I was in for a relaxing and soothing massage. I figured wrong! The therapist, which is an osteopatic doctor working in Koktebel in the summers and in a medical clinic in Kiev other times, checked out my spine and established that my spine is out of line because of earlier trauma and that this causes strain on my shoulder and neck and pinced nerves, if I got it right. So with my girl as the translator, he went to work on me after reassuring me something in the lines of: "Don't worry, I'm a professional and I know what I'm doing".
So the massage was a number of painful stretching and bone cracking exercises that left me pretty beat. But fortunately, none the worse for it afterwards. He said I needed more, so I went back there twice more with a day of break between and it was more of the same. 3 sessions of 60 minutes that left both of us exhausted at the end. Well, he said he corrected the problems and that I will heal more and more over time. We will see.
 
On the 3rd, just after a week after arriving in Ukraine, I decided to get out some more cash. We went to the bank but it was closed for withdrawals, so I had a go at the ATM outside. Tried first for 6000 but the transaction couldn't be carried out and my card came back out. Same with a couple of smaller sums. So we went to another ATM. Same thing. So I tried with the pathetic sum of 500 and that was successful. We went back to the bank and my girl asked what is the problem to the woman behind the counter. She could just as well have asked for information from the woman selling milk at the marked just outside the bank. Meaningless theories like that my VISA card might have a low limit on it. Yeah sure, just a week earlier I withdrew 1200 dollars at the Oslo airport, so a few thousand hryvnas here should be a problem for my card, huh?
It was my girl that actually remembered something I had told her earlier and that I myself had forgotten, that there are pretty low upper limits on these ATM machines in Ukraine. That was it! The upper limit in Koktebel is 2000 hryvnas. So I took out that sum twice, so I had a total of 4500. It was a pretty thick bundle of cash with 50's.
 
On Wednesday, two days before leaving Koktebel, we decided to go on an excursion to see the surrounding mountains. We went with a group of young people on a boat and saw the impressive volcanic mountains before going ashore in a neighbouring village. There were some sightseeing in a museum displaying different rocks, birds and insects before we went up on the mountains. It was a very nice walk in these mountains and quite fresh also as it started to rain heavy as we were on a mountain peak. We walked along paths and there were several groups and one thing puzzled me; we had to pay to walk in these mountains. Apparently no unauthorized people are allowed to walk there on their own.
Well, after a good while, the guide told us all to just follow a road that would lead us down to Koktebel. It was a 4-hour hike that left us pretty beat in the evening and some DOMS a couple of days later. But it was very nice and we were both glad we did it.
 
 
 

[ML]

Nice write-up.  Thanks for sharing!!

[Muzh]

Hi Roy. How come I don't see pictures of bare-chested people? 
 
Kidding aside, let's see you guys together.

[Faux Pas]

Congrats Roy! Reading between the lines, sounds as if you and the lady had a good "connection"?

[The Natural]

Hi Roy. How come I don't see pictures of bare-chested people?   

There were bare-chested people everywhere. Like here:
 
 

[The Natural]

A few pics of me on the beach and in the Black Sea:
 

[The Natural]

And with her permission, one of us together taken with a timer:
 

[Muzh]

ALL RIGHT!!!
 
Good Job.   

[Jumper]

Glad you had a good time,
and very cool  report, thanks for sharing!

[Hammer2722]

Keep up the great TR Nat. Pics look great too!!!

[Handycam72]

Great to see your report Natural.
 
So you had a great time in Crimea, and looks like you met a great girl too.

[The Natural]

It was Friday morning on August the 5th. My girl had previously bought two bus tickets for Kerch and the bus were to depart at 5 and we had to be out of the apartment by noon. I wasn't exactly feeling like a million dollars, but I wrote it off as a side effect of the brutal massage the previous day. We packed everything ready and relaxed in bed until it was time to go. We made the walk with all of our things to the bus station which is essentially on the street roadside. We sat down in a small cafe, ordered some drinks and a borsch for me and prepared for a 5 hour long waiting time for the bus to depart. But I just kept feeling worse. I started to feel cold, so we went a little further to a place where I lay down under some pine trees. But I just kept feeling worse and worse, so finally I asked my girl if she could go and see if she could find a taxi driver that could drive us to her apartment in Kerch. She did, and even though it was a 500 hryvnas expense, I was relieved to make the two hour drive in the comfort of a car rather than wait more and sit in a crowded bus.
 
We arrived at her place at 5 and all I could think of was getting to bed. I had a high fever by now and felt cold even though it was a hot evening. My girl measured the temperature under my arm to 39,5 C, covered me in blankets and placed cold towels over my forehead. A little later I dashed out of bed and into the bathroom and did some serious belly-up. It was then I realized I had probably gotten myself some sort of food poisioning.
 
I theorized it might be from the slices of raw tomatoes and cuecumber I had with the egg sandwiches. But my girl rather think it's the milk because a couple of days earlier she felt pretty bad after drinking just a little of the milk. I, of course, finished the rest of the 1,5 litre bottle. Now, I have drunk hundreds of litres of raw milk back home the past 6 years and never had any ill effects. But the food hygiene here in Ukraine might be somewhat, let's say, more relaxed.
 
I wasn't feeling any better the next day, so we had to postpone our planned meeting with my girl's mother. But on Sunday I felt much better, so we took a taxi and went to see her. She had prepared lasagne and an Uzbeki dish which tasted great. Her mother is nice, I like her even though we can't communicate much. But I did pick up on some key words combined with body language, that she prefers Pepsi from Coke.
 
Then in the evening the sequel to my disease struck. I started to get a sore throat, couching, running nose and running downstairs, to put it that way. Skitt, I thought to myself. Here we go again. Fortunately no fever this time but I was bedridden again. But I had no energy to do anything but lay in the sofa watching english speaking movies on my girls computer for the rest of the evening and on Monday. She was taking real good care of me again, proving how loving and caring and empathic she is. As I glanced at her observing me, I could see the worry in her eyes.
 
Today when I woke up, I felt much better. YESSSS. We could finally take the small bus to the center of Kerch. That cost 2,75 hryvnas a ticket. As I needed to withdraw some cash, we went into a bank. But as we were waiting in line at the cashier, I remembered I didn't bring along my passport which might be necessary, so we found an ATM machine in the building which I then proceeded to go to work on. Same as in Koktebel, smaller and smaller sums were requested but no money came out, not even 2000 hryvnas. The limit here is 1500 and I had to get what I wanted in four goes.
 
We strolled a nice pedestrian street and sat down at a restaurant for some drinks before walking some more around, down to the beach, looking at and filming the life there. Kerch is nice, have more of a city feeling than Koktebel but strangely enough, much less crowded in the streets, beachfront and in cafes and restaurants.
 
On our return home, we went to a big supermarked to shop some food and drinks and also bought a box-set of casserolles for my girl. She is very pleased by that and has used it to make us a pizza which is served right now, as I finish this little entry into my diary.
 

[Muzh]

When I was in Kharkiv this past June/July my MIL scolded me for buying milk at the supermarket (Target). Apparently, some milk being sold at supermakets is tainted.