Crimea

You do not know what a luxurious live you have until you go on an adventure… Just picture yourself (if you are a woman because I do not know if men also have this problem) in front of your closet. You stand there and sometimes you just go : “oh, I don’t know what to wear…” Well next time, consider it a big luxury because now I don’t have this choice anymore, I just have one trouser and 2 t-shirts with me!!! It’s moments like these, when you are at the seaside and just want to stroll around like a true woman in a skirt or dress and you can’t, then it hits you that you should consider yourself lucky when you can!

Enough girly problems, back to the real stuff… Ukrainean vehicles. I don’t know what they do here to normal minibusses, but the suspension they put under it just keeps you bouncing from left to right and back again. Man, just try to drink a bottle of water when you are sitting in such a minibus. Well talking about sitting, we were lucky to sit the whole ride to Yalta because on the way back we had to stand up the whole 1 hour trip and it felt like being in a can of sardines without any airco or ventilation whatsoever…

So we went to Yalta, to go and see the Vorontsov Palace which is built in an English Castle style. It is the place where in february 1945 Churchill stayed while attending the Yalta Conference with Roosevelt and Stalin (where they divided Europe and Germany postwar era). We first had to take a bus in Alushta to the center of Yalta, so when we came to the bus stop, we saw some guys just sitting in their minibus looking bored. Seb went up to them and asked if the bus went to Yalta. “Ah, finally, a chance to make some money” they must have thought because we could get in as they started shouting to all the other tourists (well: Russians or Ukrainians are there are no others) that the bus would go to Yalta. They apparently do not have a fixed route, they just wait for the first people to ask them if they go someplace and then they try to get as many people as they can on the same bus. I always knew that Seb was a trendsetter!

The Palace and its surroundings was very beautiful and we did a whole walk downhill to the sea. We were looking at the sea and talking for a while when I just wanted to ask Seb if we could get our toes wet when I saw at least 200 jellyfish floating in the sea!!! It was a whole colony and they were all comming towards the shore. Most of them were aparantly already dead, but still it was horryfying to see, especially because none of the locals seemed to mind. But in the end I managed to overcome my fear and put my feet in the freezing cold water!

When we were sitting next to the water, a young girl came up to me and started talking to me. Me, not understanding a word of it, but not wanting to come over like an alien, I told the girl in my most fluent Russian that I did not speak any Russian. Try to picture this through the eyes of a 7 year old…. She looked at me for a while and then just said one word (as though she knew): Meduse. Thinking it was the same as in Frech : Meduse (jellyfish), I said : “Da” and pointed to one that was stranded on the shore. The girl smiled and continued on her merry way! There is no language barrier when you are a 7 year old apparently.

In the evening we went for a walk in the center of Yalta and had a way too expensive meal, but we had a stunning view that made up for the price!

Today we went to the local market where I bought some cherries for 0,20 euro and they were wonderfully amazing!

We did a long walk around Alushta and ended up at the beach for a lazy day in the sun… well not quite because we forgot our suncream at the motorcycle and we did not want to look like two lobsters, so we ended up in the shade to lay back and relax for a while. I noticed that there were a lot of pigeons on the borders of the roof, right next to our heads. I was hoping that they wouldn’t poop on my head and they didn’t, so I couldn’t complain when I saw that they pooped on my shoe instead…

On our way back we grabbed some Ukrainean Dürum from a real Arab guy who spoke English, really 😉

The Ukraineans sell all sorts of stuff on the street, going from loose sigarets, to coke bottles filled with milk, to cheese from the back of a car. Do not know what the health inspection would say, but it smelled nice! They even sell freshly made cake with way too many callories in them, but they look delicious!

Just found out that the parts from the motorcycle are already in Kiev and that the mechanics have put them into place and that there are no more leaks, so we will cut our vacation short and head back on the night train to Kiev tomorrow. So no more ‘holiday’ pictures from now on, only hardcore adventure pics! Hopefully this will be the new start of our adventure to Mongolia and beyond…