After three days in Yalta I'd had my fill of walking along the prom, watching the boys with their pet monkeys trying to get people to pose so they could take photos. They don't have a camera, they charge people to hold the monkey - or owl, eagle or sellotaped-mouth mini-crocodile - and they use the person's camera to take the pic. I made sure to avoid them. One thing that was quite tempting where the boards which are painted with Blackpool-esque risque paintings and you put your head through a hole to be transformed into a buxom lass in a bikini, or a Sumo wrestler wearing a nappy. How I laughed.
I didn't laugh, however, the day I took the cable car up to Darsan, the pseudo-Greek temple at the top of one of the surrounding hills. From start to finish this was a Health and Safety Executive nightmare, a classic example of danger at work. To begin with, there was no fence around the turnround for the cars. Several workmen were sitting around in the shade, probably waiting for someone to sit on the wall, lean back slightly, and then - clunk! One bruised head. To get to the ticket office, you had to wait for a gap in the cars, then jump across the track. Twice. A lively, fat, sunglasses-wearing bloke rattled on happily as I bought a ticket from a sour-faced woman in a booth. A car approached and, as I had previously stood and watched four or five other people do this, calmly jumped aboard. The car dipped alarmingly and the sound of metal on concrete announced that I was in. I quickly closed the two doors and sat down before it started rocking any more and, to the happy sounds of the fat bloke, chattering away at me, we lifted into the sunshine and away up the hill. This novelty lasted almost eight seconds before I began to notice that the fresh paint on my particular car was holding the bits of rust together, and that those slight gaps in the floor were actually cracks. It was too late to bail out though, we were crossing one of the main roads. As we did so, a trolleybus went past underneath, the arms catching the connectors - which sparked - and I clung on even tighter.
Blind panic aside, this was quite a nice ride. We passed over some rooftops, then a couple of houses being newly-built, their rooves only inches below the bottom of the car. Further to the top I could smell cypress spruce and pine needles and started to relax slightly. Only slightly, as a truck passed underneath and I just had to look at it, and then I realised how far down it was. Not that far, but far enough that if the cable snapped, I'd bounce and roll all the way down to the Black Sea. I would, the car would disintegrate on impact I think. At the top I jumped out, managing not to fall over, and noted that there was a toilet very handily placed - as there was at the bottom of the 'ride' - for people who may have arrived with slightly queasy stomachs and found the need for relief paramount. I followed the signs, hoping to get some good photos of the view but within seconds my enthusiasm was curbed.
Darsan, Pseudo-Greek temple. Right. So when did the Greeks stop making things out of stone and use concrete instead? And then paint the pillars pink? No matter, it was all surrounded by a rickety-looking fence anyway and a red on white sign said 'Beware! This thing is dangerous!' Behind the pillars sat Zeus, a twenty foot high painted statue of the God, his beard flaking, his nose peeling. One of his hands had fallen off. I walked round to the back to see if there was a way in but it was all fenced off. It was also surrounded by trees. This meant that, from the top, all you could see was either the way up in the car, or trees. There was, I nervously noted, also no way down apart from the cable car. So, after having a wee in the bushes, I clambered aboard and made my way back down to the bottom, where I managed to get out without falling over. The workmen were still sitting there, smoking and drinking beer, and the fat bloke was still yapping away. I left, and went to calm my nerves by sitting on the front for a while.
From Yalta I took a mini-bus to Sevastopol, the secret city where the Russians hid their naval secrets, only opening up the city - to Russian as well as foreign visitors - in 1996. A huge white arch marks the outskirts, a stern-faced Lenin keeping an eye on the buses and cars passing underneath. As the only people allowed here for most of the last century were naval bigwigs, the city is a pretty place, clean and tidy, with plenty of architecture to stop and gaze at. As I sat by the front, sipping a warm beer, I could see two tugs towing in a naval gunboat, and then I wondered if that's why it was closed for so long: embarrassment at their broken-down ships. My hotel here is a Stalin-built block, but looks like Catherine the Great might have had a hand in its construction. It's the first hotel I have stayed in with a website - www.hotel-sevastopol.com - and also the first where they turn the water off promptly at 10am. Still, it has a grand staircase with the most perfect bannister for sliding down - very useful because there's no lift - and a prime position in the centre of town, just a stone's throw from Artillery Bay and the bars and cafes on the front.
Yesterday, after getting trolleybus 12 to a faceless suburb, I then crossed the road and boarded another trolley to somewhere I knew and wanted to be. A short walk later and I was at the bus station, having taken some sneaky pictures of submarines moored in the inlet. I took a bus to Bakchysarai, to visit the Khan's Palace, as I had read it was one of the most fantastic sights to be seen in the known world. An hour's bus ride and an hour's walk later, I found what I can only describe as a crumbling, mass of buildings in need of repair. Where were the 'minarets that grace the skyline'? There were only two and they were so short the trees dwarfed them. The Turkish chimneys? Just one row of five. Hardly a village full of them. Bakchisarai is the capital of the Crimean Tartars, forcibly removed by Stalin from Crimea to Uzbekistan in the 1940s for allegedly conspiring with the Germans, the Tartars have gradually been allowed - since 1992 - to return and are re-building the town for themselves. The Bradt guide suggested that Friday, prayer day, would be a good day to visit, and there would be a bustle around the mosque. The only bustle around the mosque was a couple who had dressed up in medieval costume to have their picture taken and where arguing the toss with the photographer about how medieval it was to have a red tractor in the background. To solve this dispute, one of the workmen came out of the shadows and started the tractor. Its plumes of black smoke sent the couple scurrying to the other side of the yard. I had a quick look at some faded postcards, taken in 1967 if the picture is anything to go by, and then wandered out. As on the way in, the old ladies selling crispy deep-fried dubios-looking snacks started to announce their wares just as I passed. It was like I created a ripple that set them off and it made me feel useful. I still didn't buy any of their dusty food though, I just jumped in a mini-bus and got the hell out of there.
Finally, after several weeks of travelling I met my first real European in the form of Bernard. A manic Frenchman who spent all the time he could in Russia and the former Soviet states. He had visited them all, he said, at least twenty, twenty-five times. 'New Year is best,' he went on, 'the French? They just eat, but the Russians... ha haa!' I never did find out exactly what the 'ha haa' meant, but after long tales of his love for Russian women and how Russian music was 'the best in the world' I kind of got the idea. He ordered a glass of champagne in his French-accented Russian and when it arrived, took one mouthful before pulling a face and calling over the girl. 'Devushka, what the hell is this? When I ask for champanska I want the real thing, not this Ubek horse urine!' (Here, I paraphrase). They brought him another glass and he seemed happier. Unfortunately, he was someone who wanted just to talk and the more he talked the stronger his accent and the less I listened. I didn't want to know about discotheques in Tashkent, or hotels in Kazakhstan. When he pulled out a cloth captain's cap and stuck it on his head like a beret, grinning at waitresses and passers-by alike, I made my excuses and left.
Next stop, Odessa...
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