Trip Report, 7/3-10: Kiev, Zaporhozhye, Crimea, Pt. II

[groovlstk]

To those interested, Part 1 is here:

http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/view_topic.php?id=670&forum_id=6

PART II

After a 90-minute ride, we arrived in Simeiz. V went off to find us a flat or a hotel room while I stayed behind with our luggage in the town's main square and fought off taxi drivers for the next half-hour. Once they found out I was American, one of the guys called a buddy who works in New York City six months out of the year, and he came by and acted as translator/broker. After complaining about blacks and Hispanics in NYC, he went on to offer me a flat, personal tours, vodka, and women. I took comfort in the irrefutable fact that I can always count on finding sleazy cab drivers at home, abroad, anywhere.

Here's the main square in Simeiz:

http://home.comcast.net/~marka136/simeiz_square.jpg

V returned and took me to a car that was waiting for us across the square. She explained that she'd found us a hotel room, it was a bit expensive ($100 per night) and she was happy to look for a flat since they're generally cheaper, but I told her not to worry about it since it was only for two nights. I figured she had decided to be more accommodating to me, although again I was happy she offered me a more frugal option.

One thing that pissed me off was the lack of respect that drivers had for pedestrians. I had experienced it on my last trip so I checked my instincts at Borispol and I always jumped out of the way for cars. But on the way to our hotel I watched in horror as our taxi driver nudged a young girl who was blocking our path with his bumper. She couldn't have been more than 6 years old. Sure, he slowed to a crawl when he did it and the girl's parents didn't even bother to turn to look at the driver after they pulled her to the side, but I don't care if he was Pope John the XXIII, you just don't take that kind of risk around a child. I told him to "slow the F down, I'm in no hurry" but of course he couldn't understand me and V looked at me as if I had just given an impromptu speech on the lesser works of Shevchenko, so I shut my trap.

While we were en route, V got a call from an Italian man--the only way I knew was that she spoke English to him. On our second night together, V told me that an Italian guy was also writing to her through the agency, but that she had no interest in him since he was 20 years her senior and had the unfortunate habit of asking her to send him naked photos. Several times when we were together she fielded calls from this fellow, and her conversations were very short but her demeanor to him was pretty much the same as it was towards me. After she hung up, she'd tell me it was "the @sshole" and behave as if she was annoyed by his intrusion, but her tone when speaking to him was anything but annoyed. This was slightly disconcerting if only because she wasn't being forthright with me, but I have no illusions anymore. If a girl is beautiful, you should assume that she has a local guy or perhaps more. It's hubris to expect otherwise and, at least for the first meeting, it's silly to expect her to put all her eggs in one basket and remain celibate based on a few emails and phone calls prior to my journey. It didn't really bother me--but then when I realized that it didn't bother me, I was bothered by something else: If I had strong feelings for her, shouldn't it have bothered me? (Hell, am I making sense?)

Earlier, V had explained to me that she was planning to work in Italy in Autumn. We spoke about it several times, and after awhile I think I understood the gist: She had applied for a visa to visit Italy, and through the help of a friend from the Danish embassy, she received it. (I have no idea how the Danish connection aided her…). She planned to stay with a Ukrainian friend there and start working. I asked her how she could practice law in Italy since Italian law differed from Ukrainian law. She explained to me that she "understood Anglo-Saxon law," since it was similar. At first I thought she had received a work visa, but subsequently I came to understand that she had only a tourist visa. She was planning to live and work in a city that didn't have a big tourist industry (I can't remember the name, but it might have been Livorno) so she was less likely to get deported when she overstayed her visa. Russian/Ukrainian girls in cities like Rome and Florence come under scrutiny from the police. Anyway, a field of red flags blossomed once I understood the entire Italy thing, and in conjunction with her calls from her Italian friend, I began to wish that I'd stayed in Kiev to meet other girls.  

Our hotel was very nice, and during the 5-minute drive I was happy to note that V was right, Simeiz was a beautiful little town. The roads were more like paved pathways, very narrow and lined with tall evergreen trees, sleepy cafes, shops, and hotels. 

This is the road off of which our hotel was located:
http://home.comcast.net/~marka136/hotel_road.jpg

We had a nice view of the mountains from our hotel room:
http://home.comcast.net/~marka136/hotel_view.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~marka136/misty_mountains2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~marka136/misty_mountains.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~marka136/mountains.jpg

The hotel didn't take credit cards and I didn't have enough cash on me, so the desk clerk took our passports and told me I could pay later, whereupon I'd get my passport back. Fair enough. It was late afternoon by time we unpacked and got settled, so we went for a walk along the cliffs overlooking the Black Sea. It was extraordinarily beautiful.  We then turned around and went strolling through the winding streets of Simeiz as darkness fell, and found a nice cafe with an outdoor patio overlooking the sea. It was a really good night.

The next morning we went to the beach. We got there fairly early so we were able to find a comfy area and spread our towels. Here's the view from the winding path that led down from our perch on the cliffs to the sea:

http://home.comcast.net/~marka136/crimea2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~marka136/simeiz.jpg

My only complaint about the beach is that it was rocky, and my wussy American feet had a tough time as I limped from towel to water and back again. The water was a bit chilly but since the sun was very hot, it was a perfect combination. I read somewhere that the salt concentration in the Black Sea almost perfectly mirrors that of the human body, and that you can get a sort of high when swimming in it. I can't vouch for that theory, but I felt mighty fine and spent a lot of time in the water. V commented that she wished there was a nude beach nearby since that's her preference. Nude beach = no tan lines, she said. I chivalrously told her I'd accompany her to a nude beach even if we had to go a little out of our way, say a couple hundred miles or so, not because I wanted to gawk at beautiful nude Ukrainian and Russian woman… but because I wished to, you know, support her and stuff. And since I was planning to write a trip report, I knew it was important to report back to the people here at RWD with honest, factual information about nude beaches in Crimea and the beautiful women who inhabit them, regardless of the hardships I'd have to endure. 

Unfortunately there were no nude beaches nearby.

V has light skin, but she refused my offer to share my sunblock. So when we got back to our room in the early afternoon she had a mild sunburn. I have really light skin too, and normally I can get sunburned from a 60-watt bulb, but I'm wary enough now to carry around SPF 48 wherever I go. 

V wanted to watch her serials which, judging from the apparent melodrama and frenetic acting, are every bit as bad as American soaps. One thing I didn't like was that she enjoyed lying in bed in the morning to watch serials for an hour or so. On our first few days together, I went out to get coffee for us in the early AM, did some food shopping, etc., anything besides staying in our flat to watch TV. I'm a very active person and, particularly since I was on vacation, the last thing I wanted to do was watch TV. On several earlier mornings I'd cajoled and teased her out of bed, telling her I wanted to see more of Kiev. She sometimes got peevish and asked me what exactly I wanted to see.

So, hoping to pay my hotel bill and pick up some scrilla, I went to the only cash exchange kiosk that accepted credit cards--that should tell you how off the beaten path this place was for Westerners, forget about ATMs and credit cards. The woman in the shop insisted I needed my passport as ID, so I walked back to the hotel and explained my catch-22 situation to them: I couldn't withdraw the money to pay my room charges unless they gave me back my passport. Soon I was back at the shop, passport in hand. I grudgingly exchanged $200 for grivna--credit card issuing banks are little more than loan sharks when it comes to cash advances--and then returned to the hotel. The clerk was busy with several new check-ins, so I decided I'd come back later to square up. 

I spoke with V and then made plans to have dinner with stoichman (Scott) and his chick. Scott was in Sevastopol, about 60 kilometers from us, and we'd had several phone conversations since my arrival. V insisted first on hitching a ride with a tour group and then ditching them when we arrived in Sevastopol, but unfortunately all the tours started in the AM. Once again, I couldn't help but admire her ingenuity in saving me a buck--most of the tours were approximately 20 grivna per person. The cheapest taxi ride we could find was 200 grivna, round-trip. 

We met Scott and his girl, "Nadia," at a restaurant called Calypso. Scott has shoulders as wide as the Battleship Potemkin, and his girl is stunningly beautiful. The first few times I looked at her, I felt as if someone conked me on the head with a ball-peen hammer--she's that lovely. Nadia and V instantly began conversing like they'd known each other since grade school.

V had better English than Nadia, and she used this to her advantage. Towards the end of dinner, she announced that Nadia wanted us all to go to the restaurant's disco. Scott and I discussed it, and although my taxi driver used this as an opportunity to ditch us, I decided we'd go to the disco after Scott generously offered to let us spend the night at his flat. I strongly suspected that it was V who wanted to go discoing--Nadia lived locally and if she wanted to go to the disco with Scott, she didn't need V and I to come along.

After a stroll through Sevastopol, we walked back to the disco. Here are some night shots I took:

http://home.comcast.net/~marka136/night.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~marka136/sevastopal.jpg

On the way, V found a disco she liked better than our restaurant's disco, but it was indoors (on a hot, clammy night) and the guys at the door said nyet because Scott and I were wearing shorts and sandals. V argued with the doormen and apparently they relented, but we'd already begun walking to our restaurant's outdoor disco (it was literally 100 ft. away). We found a table near the dance floor, but V was clearly pissed. She told me that Nadia really, really wanted to go to the other disco, and she grilled Scott and I on why it wasn't good enough for us. I got a little pissed because I knew V was using Nadia's lack of English to her advantage by putting words in her mouth. It was obvious to me that Nadia was happy to go anywhere as long as Scott accompanied her; she had a great deal of affection for him, and vice versa. Regardless, we relented and went back to the other disco. After paying our cover charge, Scott dejectedly pointed out that there wouldn't be many single women there since they'd naturally prefer to go to discos that didn't charge a cover unless they had a boyfriend or sponsor.  

V and Nadia danced for awhile, then came back to pull us onto the floor. I've never really enjoyed dancing and I was wearing sandals, so I declined and told V I'd join her later (when enough beer and vodka had accumulated in my bloodstream to throw caution to the wind). V was wearing a pair of shorts that would have made Daisy Duke's shorts look like sweatpants, and several local guys asked her to dance with them. She took them to our table and asked my permission. I nodded my approval each time, knowing that my ambivalence meant that there was nothing much between us, at this point. It was a bit depressing. Outside of the Italian thing, her bossiness, etc., she was a decent, beautiful girl and I should have felt more for her, but I didn't. I had felt good about her until we'd left for Simferopal, but now it was as dead as that creepy crawly bug I'd stomped on in her apartment.  

I decided to be a good sport and danced with V for awhile, and then we all left and crashed at Scott's expansive flat. I woke up early, a bit hungover, and after thanking Scott for his hospitality we were on our way back to Simeiz. Later that Saturday we were scheduled to fly to Kiev, and the next morning, Sunday, I was to fly back to the US. I'm sure V saw the writing on the wall, so when we got back to Simeiz she told me she wanted to stay in our hotel room and watch her serials. 

I went to the beach alone; it was so crowded that just to get to the water it was impossible not to step on someone's towel or arm/leg. I had bought my mp3 player along with a pair of tiny speakers, so I staked my claim on about 2 square feet of stony territory just beyond reach of the waves, and listened to Kenny Burrell's guitar while admiring the scenery. A girl of perhaps 16 who was with her family must have realized I was American and asked me for the time in English. She then sat next to me and we had a nice conversation. This girl had the most incredible body I've ever seen--I'm not exaggerating--and making matters worse was that she was wearing a tiny thong and during the course of our conversation it was obvious she was flirting with me. I've encountered girls like this in the US before--they're just beginning to understand that their potent sexuality gives them a royal flush when playing with men, and they tentatively experiment with it. Sort of like a tiger cub playing with its mates--you can see the big paws, the speed and aggression, and you know the potential--but for now she's playing around, charting the limits of her abilities.  

I left the beach in the early afternoon and went walking around town. I bought a few souvenirs and then saw a group of babushkas running in my general direction. I figured they were late for a bingo game or something, but when they got to me they surrounded me and began chattering excitedly. After 10 minutes of pure chaos, I understood that the woman at the cash exchange kiosk I visited two days earlier had mad a bad mistake. I thought I'd withdrawn $200 from my bank, but instead the office clerk debited my account for 200 grivna. I was happy to make amends (I still had my original receipt and it jibed with their account) but it took another 20 minutes of confusion as we tried to work out the exchange rate for $180. At the time it occurred to me that I could have been getting jobbed, but I'm happy to report my CC bill was consistent with what they claimed. The women were visibly relieved and very grateful to me after we'd settled, I imagine a mistake of that magnitude may have cost one or more of them their jobs. On my way back to the hotel, I remembered that I had yet to pay for my room and sure enough the goon squad was waiting for me in the lobby. OK, well the manager wasn't quite a goon and one man doesn't comprise a squad, but he was at least 5-3, 120 lbs., and pure muscle. Add to that he had an aggressive haircut, so I coughed up the $200 I owed the hotel before things got ugly.

One thing I admired about V was that no matter where we spent the night, she always tidied up before we left. Staying in a nice hotel made no difference to her, and soon I was folding towels, helping her make the bed, and cleaning the bathroom as we prepared to leave. We grabbed a marshrutka back to Simferopal and then boarded another to take us to the airport. At the airport I was asked to open my luggage as the clerk at the x-ray kiosk didn't know what to make of the spare digital cam batteries I'd packed. This was the 3rd time in two trips to Ukraine that I was asked to open my bags, and the next day on my departure from Borispal I was asked to empty my pockets to prove I wasn't part of a fabled gang of American grivna smugglers. I cooperated but I was a bit pissed because I recalled my experience when departing Dnepropetrovsk two months earlier--I had a nice bottle of Crimean red wine tucked away, swaddled in my tidy whities. But when the customs guy rummaged through my stuff and closed my suitcase, he left the bottle unprotected so it broke en route to NYC. I have a host of purple-blotted clothing that might pass for fashionable at a Grateful Dead concert, but little else. I was tempted to explain to the clerk that I had an entrepreneurial spirit and planned to corner the local marshrutka market, all I need was a few old VW Vanagons and some local muscle, and soon I'd be knee-deep in Galinas and grivna. But in this post-9/11 world, I can't bring myself to hassle anyone involved in airport security.

While on the tarmac waiting to board our Aerosvit flight, V got another call from her Italian guy. She talked to him sweetly and then dutifully cussed him to me after she hung up, but at that point I only hoped he was a decent guy and that he was serious about helping her. I had no illusions that I'd be seeing V again after we parted in Kiev, but I like her as a person and I want her to be happy.

We spent the night at Hotel Bratislava in Kiev, and we were both too tired to do more than have dinner at a café next door and then crash. The next morning she accompanied me to the airport and then left for the rail station, where she would take the 12-hour heartbreak express back to Zaporozhye. I had so many conflicting feelings as we hugged and kissed goodbye--this girl had come back to Kiev with me just to see me off, even though I knew she realized we were a bust at least two days earlier. She could have left me at the Simferopal airport and saved herself a day + a brutally long train ride home, but she refused my suggestion. I could only come to the conclusion that she did it out of the decency in her heart, and nothing more. You guys who debate the issue of whether women are essentially the same everywhere can talk all you want, and perhaps V is a statistical aberration, but I can't think of a single American woman who would have acted the same.

My flight home was not a pleasant experience, as I had to come to terms with the fact that I'd spent a lot of money and a precious week's vacation with nothing to show besides a pair of sore feet and the email address of a 16-year-old girl I met on the beach. (And for you pervs out there, the email address got tossed long before I returned to American soil). Additionally, I wasted a week's time of a decent girl. But that's life.

However difficult it was to swallow, at no point did I decide the effort wasn't worth it or that I'd give up.

[Erwin]

My flight home was not a pleasant experience, as I had to come to terms with the fact that I'd spent a lot of money and a precious week's vacation with nothing to show ..

G,

Why did you spend or waste so much time with V?  

What was your mission, objective and goal before you went to Ukraine?

E

 

 

[Albert]

Sorry to hear of the outcome of your visit with V.

It has been reported many times on these forums the extreme riskiness of traveling to see only one gal for the first time.  And even more risky to go off on a trip with this gal to places where you would have little opportunity to ditch her and try your luck with other gals.

But, then there are no guarantees, even when you know the gal better.  A couple of years ago I spent 4 weeks in Simferopol, Yalta, Sevastopol, etc., with a gal whom I had (a few months before) spent about 10 days with off and on in her home city over a time span of a month.  About 4 days into our visit, she became an entirely different person than previously.  We still mostly had a very good time together, but I knew from day 4 that there would be no future beyond this vacation time together.

[Michelangelo]

Hmmm... I sense a happy ending around the corner Let's wait and see

[Bruno]

You guys who debate the issue of whether women are essentially the same everywhere can talk all you want, and perhaps V is a statistical aberration, but I can't think of a single American woman who would have acted the same.

Woman are all the same when we see it about general term... be russian, ukrainian, of American lead to light cultural and educational difference...

V is not a statistical aberration, she is V, a individual... each people have difference, we are each unique... Now, that you have find V in Ukraine don't mean that all Ukrainian woman are like her... nobody is like her...

Everybody try to make generalisation, this help to understand a little the thing... but the woman of your dream can be everywhere... she can be you neightbour of be from the other side of planet... she can don't exist too...

Statistic is only a tool, real life and relation are too much complex to reduce it to stastitic... V is unique like each of us... find the same woman at other place is impossible... twin's, with the same genetic code, with the same education have some difference... since the life is not long enough for test every woman and find the right one, we use stastistic for make choice, for the more high probability to find wath we wish... the magic recept don't exist.

 

[corp]

Well Groov, sorry to hear you did not hit a home run on this trip.
Even so it sounds like you had an interesting time.

Couple questions;

-Did you learn anything or come to any new conclusions about how to proceed in the future?

- What are the plans for the future in this respect?

[Roger]

Great report Groov.