To the Crimea and beyond

Kiev - Simferopol

By now, I have grown used to it. The train leaves right on time. The passengers move about the carriage, trying to find their place, like tossing around under the sheets before finding the right position to settle in for sleep. Kiev – Simferopol will take 14 hours. In summer, this is a holiday train. Simferopol is the gateway to the Crimea Peninsula, with its sunny beaches and sanatoria. On this Monday in March however, there are not many passengers, and I am alone in my compartment.

After the train has left the vast Kiev agglomeration, and wide open fields have replaced factories and scruffy yards, I head for the dining car, for a beer and a chat. The dining car is empty too. The staff hangs around one of the tables, doing crosswords together. They serve me a beer without much interest, and go back to their crosswords. It is a remarkable lot. The cook is a swarthy, heavy set young man. For some reason he has rolled up the legs of his trousers, exposing huge round and very hairy calves. There are two waitresses. One is young and very thin, the other a hefty, woman in her forties, with her hair dyed a very unnatural red. She has stashed herself in much too tight clothes. So much so, that everywhere her abundant flesh struggles to escape. Everybody smokes. Outside, the fields of southern Ukraine are like an ocean. Loess, fertile soil. I remember that some 50 years ago, the teacher talked to us about this mixture of sand and clay, and I still see the yellow color on the map indicating its spread over Europe; a very thin line trough the South of Limburg, widening to a huge splatch in Ukraine. Untold riches in capacity to feed millions of people. But, as all wealth, inviting plunder. Hitler, viewing these vast reaches as Lebensraum for his Arians, launched his tank armies to conquer it. For Stalin, the words lands, farmers, food, set off the short-circuits in his evil brain, that resulted in genocide for millions of Ukrainians, in the worst famine of modern times, with people dying on the land of plenty. Dark thoughts in the falling evening. …. Fortunately a young man comes in for a beer, and soon we are talking together. His name is Misha, and he is traveling to Simferopol for his business, selling and servicing equipment for blood-testing in hospitals. Misha is 28 and speaks some English. Soon the discussion is about money, and politics. Like most young people I talked to, Misha is proud to be Ukrainian, but worried about the future. Jobs are hard to get, salaries are low. He is married, but says that he and his wife, who also works, cannot afford to have children. According to him, birth figures in Ukraine are low, and the population is declining. But, although very realistic, he is a cheerful young man, and we spend a few good moments drinking beer, while the staff continues to toil away on their crosswords.
We munch some potato chips. The salt and the grease upset my stomach, and part of my dinner and a few bottles worth of Ukrainian beer end between the rails, about halfway to Djnepropetrovsk…..

The train roughly follows the Dnjeper River. By now it is pitch dark outside and I after I have recovered from my misadventure with the potato chips, I have settled comfortably in the cushions, with books and a tea in a dainty glass within reach. The sound of the wheels on the rails, the cozy atmosphere of the compartment, cause my mind to wander. A strong feeling of being here and now, the very reason for me to travel, zooms me “out” from here, like Google Earth. The great waterway we follow, witness to the flow of centuries and peoples comes into mind, clear as a recent photograph. The Vikings, in those days known as the Varangians, or Rus, used this river to reach the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. They rowed up the rivers of the Baltic, crossed a stretch of land near present day Minsk or Vitebsk and found the upper reaches of Berezina and Djneper. Fighting the early Slavs and Finns along the way, they founded Kiev and thereby what was later to become Russia. Late in the evening, the train passes Zaporishje. Alone and at ease in my coupe I am reading Neal Asherson’s “Black Sea”. It was here that the Cossacks he writes about built their first strongholds on a rocky island of Sechs in the Dnjeper, just below the rapids, and I promise myself to stop here on my way back. It was also along this river, that Catherina the Great’s lover general Potemkin built the ill famous “Potemkin Villages”. Painted on wooden theatre décors on the banks of the river, the villages were meant to give Catherina, who sailed down the Dnjeper to inspect the recent additions to her Russian empire, the idea of a populated, rich country, although it was mainly empty. Images float in my mind, and I did not realize when sleep came and changed thoughts to dreams.

When the train arrived in Simferopol, at 4 o’clock in the morning, it was cold and windy. Dark men in leather coats approached the few passengers, offering taxi service to Sevastopol and Yalta, and I decide not to wait for the local bus station to open but to take a taxi to Bachysarai, the former capital of the Krim Tatars, because that is where I am heading. After some negotiation, I am in a taxi, rattling though the empty and dark streets of Simferopol. It takes some time before we leave the city, on a good road to Bachysarai, a ride of some 30 km.

BACHYSARAY

Bachysaray turns out to be a small and very dark town where everybody is sound asleep. The hotels the provodnika, the conductress in the train had talked about, do not exist, and it takes some driving around to find, hidden among sparse trees along the main road, a building that professes to be a hotel. Knocking on a door finally produces an old lady who reluctantly lets me in and shows me the worst hotel room I have seen in my life. The room is vast, and contains a sofa, a shaky table and a few chairs. The bathroom is equally big, with a toilet in a corner and a washstand but no water. A folded bed sheet and a thin blanket on the sofa explain to me that this is my bed for the rest of the night. As is it really cold, instead of undressing I add a pullover or two, wrap myself in the bed sheet and doze off, my mind still full of the impressions of the day.

The next morning the sun shines brightly. As there is still no water, and no breakfast in the hotel, it does not take long before I am in the street looking for something to eat. The railway station is nearby, and the people, who were so sound asleep when I arrived in the night, are out in the street. The place has a distinct Asian look, with people hawking food and vegetables, shoes and clothes. Although I am hungry, I decide not to risk the Kebabs wrapped in a sort of pancake, but buy a few bananas for just a few cents. I wonder where these bananas come from, at that price. Marshrutkas and taxis compete for passengers. Most people are dark and small, and a few wear the small white caps of the Hadj. After all, this is the former capital of the Muslim Krim Tatars. Finally I discover a small café where, sitting in the sun, and watching the busy square, I enjoy hot tea and bread.

It is again history that brought me to this small town. Bachysarai was the capital of the Khanate of the Krim Tatars, a remnant of the vast empire established by Djengis Khan, which controlled these regions from about 1430 to their final defeat by the Russians in 1735.
Bachysarai was thoroughly destroyed by the Russians, but on specific order of Catherina the Great, the royal palace was spared. And this palace is what I had come to see…

Some negotiation with taxi drivers waiting in front of the station resulted in a reasonable taxi, with a jolly, round faced driver of course named Sergey, who would drive me around for the day. A few moments later, after a short drive along Lenin Boulevard, I arrived at my first destination.

The palace, confidently built in a valley clearly shows the self consciousness of people who did not feel threatened. All around the Crimea, settlement on distant hill tops tell the story of war, self defense or hiding from enemies. This palace is built by people who felt secure, and who loved refinement and had a clear sense of proportions. Through a large entrance, one comes to a central yard, around which the palace buildings and a fine mosque are situated. Whitewashed walls alternate with wooden roofs and stairs, giving the place lightness and balance, chasing thoughts about the fate of the Russian and Ukrainian slaves, who built the palace in the 16th century.

Alexander Pushkin visited this place, and it is not hard to imagine how the sensitive poet was impressed by the atmosphere and timeless beauty of the place. His famous poem “The Bachysaray Fountain” which has become a classic of Russian literauture, expresses the beauty of emotions but leaves unsaid the horrible facts of history that caused them. When reading about the systematic destruction of the Krim Tatars, after the conquest of their nation by the Russians, continuing until present times, I felt outrage. Beginning 1944 Stalin deported the remaining 250.000 Tatars in cattle trains to distant regions of Kasachstan, Uzbekistan and Siberia, and dumped them in the wastelands, to fend for themselves. But reading and learning further, I understood that for centuries the Krim Tatars had been raiding the Russian and Ukrainian countryside, for slaves. The Tatars also appeared several times before Moscow, once destroying it utterly, so it is not surprising that the Tatars still figure in Russian proverbs as the ultimate and ever present threat, so that getting even with, and finally destroying a terrible enemy, takes on another meaning.

The fountain Pushkin talks about so eloquently, was commissioned by Giri, the last of the Khans, who had it built to express the grief the Khan felt, when his favorite wife, a Polish beauty ravished from her home by the Khan’s slavers, let herself die of sorrow. The fountain was to weep tears for eternity. The romantic sees the tears of the Khan, the realist sees the fate of a girl, captured by slavers, to disappear for life in the harem of the khan.
Pushkin, well aware of this contradiction, placed two roses on the white marble fountain. A red rose for love, a yellow for misery. This custom is continued until today, and looking at the roses, fresh and with flecks of light from the fountain, I felt the touch of history.

After spending some time in this enchanting place, I climbed aboard the taxi again, and Sergey drove me through a narrowing valley, between sheer limestone cliffs, to the Uspensky monastery. A steep path leads to what could well be the oldest church of Ukraine. Small, and partly hewn into the cliff, this church is supposedly built in the 8th century by monks from Byzantium. The building itself, the proportions and decorations make it a real jewel. The place is tiny, and a few busloads of schoolchildren make it difficult to maintain a devout atmosphere. Again, and like everywhere, we are confronted with the conflict between spirit (the monastery) and money (the tourists).

The third, and possible most impressive sight in this valley, the cave city of Chufut Kale, just a few kilometers farther up the valley, remained out of reach for me. As if to rub it in to me, that people pass and mountains stay, it is here, on these steep paths, that my legs refuse service and walking becomes painful and finally, impossible. So, further discussions with the taxi driver impose themselves. I agree with Sergey on a lump sum for the “Krim Tour” at what I think to be a reasonable price, and a soon I am on my way to Sevastopol, thought the dry country side of the Crimea Peninsula.

Leaving Bachysaray, the town appears bigger than I had thought the evening before. The office buildings and apartment buildings that line the street leading out of the city have the customary derelict look of a Russian province town. Still, there is activity in the streets, and I wonder what it is to live in place like this, to see this street as your own, and that building as home. What drives me to run away from the place I call home? Why the realization that even this place is “home” to somebody, makes me want to drive away from it? And, at the same time, to be jealous of that man, who just enters that dreary building that is his home, and secretly longing for MY home again, each and every day?

The dry country around me, once out of the town, is densely planted with fruit trees. Apricots and peaches, says Sergey. For the first time I notice that the sky has a distinct southern look, like when passing Valence on the way south from Lyon. Bluer, brighter. We drive through broad valleys, surrounded by flat topped mesas. On one of them, visible above a small lake with some resort like buildings, and high up sheer cliffs, are the ruins of Manhup Kale, a place I wanted to visit but now out of reach because of my bad legs. Another story of remote places. Ruins of civilizations. Hiding, fighting for life and final defeat. Manhup Kale was the capital of Feodor, a nation of Crimean Greeks, and descendants of Goths and Samatians that thrived in the 6th century. The sheer cliffs made this stronghold easily defensible, but somehow, also this culture ran out of steam, and was simply abandoned in the 15th century.
Now, along with the birds, some groups of youngsters camp there in summer enjoying the beautiful sights from the high mesa, and the stars above, and the joints they get from God knows where.

We are on our way to Sevastopol, but will take the long way round, to see the historic battlegrounds of Balaklava, and the valley of death. From the earliest days of settlement by Greek colonists, 6000 years B.C., the rocky coast near Sevastopol has been of strategic interest. As such, it drew the attention of settlers and conquerors, be they Greek, Scythe, Goth, Samatian, Alane, Roman, Venetian and Genoese, Tatar, Turk, and finally Russian and German. So it happened that in 1854, during the war that opposed Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Turks, helped for their own reasons by the English and French, landed near Balaklava, with the idea to seize the all important town and naval base of Sevastopol, 25 km to the north.


THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE


A trench war resulted, with bad hygienic conditions and a fierce winter taking as many lives as the fighting itself. Florence Nightingale – the Woman with the Lamp – got everlasting fame with her help for the sick and the wounded, and the balaklava, a tight knitted garment covering the whole head and neck with holes for the eyes and mouth also takes its name from this battle where soldiers first wore them. On October 25th, during the battle of Balaclava, a Russian attempt to relieve the seige of Sevastopol, a badly worded instruction resulted in the “Charge of the Light Brigade”, a disastrous attack by the English Light Cavalry, up the wrong valley, straight into the fire of the Russians defending it from three sides. The attack comprised all the elements that make war so terrible and fascinating. Heroism and death, sense of duty and outight stupidity combined to create an event that in history rank wits Thermopilae and Calderone and the Alamo. It prompted Alfred, Lord Tennyson, to write the famous lines "Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die"
The Charge of the Light Brigade has been mentioned and commented upon in countless writings since, to point out to the consequences of bad reconnaissance and unclear instructions.

The road follows the crest of the hill, and gives a clear view of the Valley of Death, now a vast wineyard. When I get out of the car, at one of the many memorials that line this road, I can see to the left the small town of Balaklava and the sea, and, past a crossroads, the road climbing to the right, over a ridge that hides Sevastopol from view. Closer to Sevastopol, the momorails tend to become mixed up. There are those of the war of 1854, and those of the war of 1942, when the German Army took Sevastopol after a 250 days siege. The Russians do not need much to grab the occasion to plant rows of obsolete tanks and guns at such memorials. And so history repeats itself, every time again men dying, and being honoured as heroes for defending a homeland which their ancestors took from somebody else. The place saddens my mind, and on these heights a cold wind is blowing from the East, chilling my bones too. The road follows a high ridge, then goes over the top, and there before my yes is the white city of Sevastopol looking like a remnant of snow on the shores of the blue sea. Nearby, a small plot of land has been filled by strange and complicated looking villas obviously destined for the rich and powerful. Strange buildings, high and narrow with seemingly no logic in the structure. The road slopes down to the city, and before long we are entering the city via a busy road, rounding capes, and hugging coves and bays, full of warships. The city has a distinct Mediterraenan air. Until 1996 it was off limits to foreigners because of the naval base.


SEVASTOPOL


Sergey is visibly proud of this city. He points out to me the different uniforms of the many navy personnel in the streets. Black for the Russians, olive green for the Ukrainians. As part of the complicated discussions separating the two countries, in the 1990’s, it was decided that both countries would use the naval base, for the Russians as a lease that is due to expire in 2019. Some of the streets are lined with palm trees. White buildings with wide stairs and opulent balconies remind of Monte Carlo, the pavements are wide and full of people. The town seems to welcome the traveler, the air is soft and a faint smell of sea mixes with the various smells of a busy city.

Before long, after I have found a place to stay – the soviet-style Hotel Sevastopol, with cavernous hall, marble staircase leading to grubby floors and old fashioned rooms – I stroll the busy streets of the town. There is a lightness in the air and I feel relaxed as if I came back to a place I had known before. Broad avenues are crowded with lightly dressed people, although it is only March. The town is protected from the cold East winds by the ridge I crossed before entering the city and although it is early evening by now, the temperature is pleasant. The wide Prospekt Nashimova leads to a big open space at the waterfront. Admiral Nakhimov, the defender of the city during the Crimean War, stands proudly on the wide square named after him, looking out over the South Bay, and warships moored at the other side. Tourists visit the nearby Aquarium, and take each other’s photographs with the Eagle Column, on a rock in the bay, commemorating the deliberate scuppering of the Russian fleet in the mouth of the harbour, denying the use of it to the English and French navies during the Crimean war.

The next morning, I come back to this pleasant place, to sit in the sun, and to feel happy and at peace with the world. I visit the Aquarium, where classes of schoolchildren are shown around by stern teachers, who do not seem to have much trouble to refrain the kids from breaking up the place. I talk to a few of them, they come from Odessa. Some of them are wearing the same soccer shirts one can see in Amsterdam, with names like Ronaldo or Beckham. They don’t look like rich kids; it is good to see that apparently schools have the initiative and funds to make such trips possible. Later in the day, I see similar classes when I visit the vast Panorama of the siege of Sevastopol, housed in an imposing building on a hill in the centre of the town. Again the war, again heroism, this time on a painted canvas the size of a soccer field. This preoccupation with heroism and martyrdom is a very specific trait of Russia. Is it a compensation of peacetime life that offers so little to this population? Is it a policy, to replace the promise of eternal life in heaven – so despised by the communists – to the promise of eternal fame in some concrete mausoleum or heroic painting? A few years back I happened to be in Moscow on May 8th, hero’s day. I was impressed to see literally hundreds of buses discharge their loads of very old veterans, rows of ribbons and decorations on shabby costumes, brought in from the provinces to share in the glorious moments of the victory celebrations.

In the glaring sunshine of the early afternoon, Sergey then drops me off at the vast seaside ruins of the ancient Greek city of Chersonesus. I had read about this place in Neal Acherson’s excellent book about the Black Sea. The ruins embody the fluidity of history, the realizations that nothing is stable and civilizations come and go. And at the same time, force us to ask ourselves how to react to this. Is the knowledge that everything we build will eventually be destroyed a reason NOT to build? Or is it an encouragement to take our place in history, to be come part of history by building, and by living and occupying OUR time and space in the endless tides of history?

Obviously, the people who built this city had chosen the second option, probably not after philosophic considerations, but out of sheer necessity. The city was founded some 600 years BC by Greeks from what is now the Turkish coast of Black Sea. The Greek city states had begun to run out of arable land, and when they started to visit and colonize the shores of the Black Sea it was for one reason only: Food! Although Jason went to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece, an abundant supply of fish and the possibility to grow wheat were a more prosaic reason to brave the hazards of the Scylla and Charybdis.

In these times, the Scythes dominated large areas in what is now Ukraine and Russia, and the Greeks colonies existed only because the Scythes allowed them to be there. Although the Scythes originally were nomadic people, they understood rapidly where the money was, and before long became suppliers of wheat to the Greek. The interaction between the more sophisticated Greek and their hosts, did not fail to produce some of the stunning gold pieces of art we still can admire in the museums of St. Petersburg and Kiev.

Chersonesus (meaning peninsula in Greek) became a thriving city that very early at times knew democracy. Walking between the ruins very near the shore, one can easily imagine the straight streets with people, Greek and Scythes, later Romans from Byzantium, not much different from those, living in present day along the shores of the Black Sea and Mediterranean. The city knew good times as well as times of war and destruction. It was destroyed and rebuilt several times. Finally, the Mongols definitely destroyed it at the end of the 13th century. But the events that made it famous were the arrival of the monk Cyril who started to convert the pagan tribes to Christianity, culminating in the baptism of king Volodymyr the Great in 990 AD, a first step to what was to become the Russian Orthodox Church. A shiny new cathedral with a golden dome is supposed to mark the place where the baptism took place. A simple black statue of St. Cyril faces north, towards the endless lands of Russia he set out to convert. The Black Sea, here blue and green and transparent, has taken big chunks of the ancient city. Just a few metres separate the beautiful white marble remains of a Greek temple from the same fate as more than a third of the ancient city: to disappear into the waves.

The day is sunny and hot, when I leave Sevastopol. The road slowly climbs over the ridge, then passes the Valley of Death I had visited earlier, and after leaving Balaklava with the Genoese fortress of Chembalo to the right, slowly climbs through a dense forest of pine trees. After the dry landscape we just crossed, the subdued light is reposing the eyes.
The gradual ascent sort of slowly sets me up for the stunning surprise of Baydarksky Vorota Pass. After another turn of the road among the trees, I arrive at a small place, where the road passes through a narrow arched gap under what seems to be a bridge. A few ramshackle souvenir shops signal the presence of something to see. Dutifully I ascent the stairs leading to what seems to be a simple roadside restaurant, but nothing prepared me for the stunning sight that awaits me. The horizon opens in an explosion of light and height and distance. I am on a balcony, above the sea which is so near it seems to be right under my feet. 800 meters beneath me lies the small town of Foros on the shore of the Black Sea. The brilliant blue of the sea is accentuated by the white breakers against the rocky coast. Halfway down the steep slope a domed church, straight from a fairy tale, perfect in shape and proportions, sits atop a promontory, giving even more depth to the tri-dimensional wonder before my eyes. To the East, the coast stretches as far as the eye can see, grey mountains with clouds closely hugging them. To the West, the view is blocked by a massive mountain, dropping from far above us straight into the sea.
Every journey reserves such experiences to the traveller. Miles of uninteresting roads and boring hours in a train are like the tons of rocks that have to be shifted to find the few grains of gold. The light and the brightness are like food and drink for a mind that is sensitive to them.

It takes some time before the eyes and the mind are satiated of all the beauty, and it is almost with regret that I get back into Sergey’s taxi, and start the winding descent to the sea. Halfway down, at the church, that loses much of its magic seen from close range, we stop for a while. It may be the dominating presence of the sea that sets Sergey off to talk about his life and family. As a young man, he has been a sailor, in the time the Russian cargo ships were a dominating presence on the oceans. He has been to Pointe-Noire, in the then People’s Republic of Congo many times, perhaps delivering the Russian equipment I saw in that port when I lived there in the 1960’s. As happens to sailors, the adventures of the early years become long periods away from home, and marriage and children brought his seafaring days to and end. Now his son has taken over, and Sergey is proud to tell me that his son had phoned from Jakarta just a few days before.

We drive through the town of Foros, which became world news for a few days, when former president Gorbatsjov was kept there under house arrest during the aborted coup of the hardliners in 1991, and soon we are on our way along the coast, in the direction of Yalta. Sergey tells me that during summer this coastal road is frequently jammed with vehicles and buses, carrying the vacationing Russians and Ukrainians to their seaside resorts. And even now, with little traffic on the road, from time to time we are overtaken with breakneck speed by powerful cars of those who don’t have to count their rubles.

The scenery is beautiful. To our right, the blue sea, to the left, steep mountains in various shades of grey, near the tops closely hugged by white clouds. The sharp light and contrasting colours lend an air of lightness to these surroundings. It is easily understood that the rich and powerful of all ages liked to come here, to use the place as their play ground, or in a bid recover their health. Before the revolution the sanatoria filled with the rich who came to cure their tuberculosis. After the Bolshevik victory, although the communist regime was not tender with its workers, for many of them a stay in a seaside resort became a reality, thanks to Lenin, whose 1920 decree on the health of the workers is still remembered in marble, near the waterfront in Yalta, where we are heading now.


YALTA


It is early evening when around a bend in the road, that now has climbed well above the coastline, a splendid view on the bay and town of Yalta opens up. The sunlight has lost the sharpness it had during the day, softening the contours and the colours. The town is built as an amphitheatre around a vast bay. The setting sun in our backs bathes the far end of the bay in a soft light. Yalta is like an old lady, who wants to be seen in forgiving light only. The harsh truth will inevitably come out anyhow, but why spoil these first moments? The white buildings seem to blend in the green of the hills, the clouds cover the far mountains with the softness and grace of a woollen scarf, with a few patches of snow as confetti to complete the festive scene.

Driving down into the city, the fairy tale soon dissolves into the reality of streets and ugly buildings, factories, petrol stations and traffic. Each time I come to a place I have set out to see, a kind of elation overwhelms me, makes my eyes see sharper than normal, and fills my head with the images that assail me from all sides. “You are in Yalta now” a voice seems to repeat to me. The same voice that needlessly told me before that I was in Hawaii, or Sydney, or flying a plane all alone for the first time….. Some reward for realizing dreams? Still, the comparing never leads to disappointments as the expectations did not concern beauty or grandeur or precise details, but rather the being there, as an end in it self. The images before my eyes do not replace earlier constructions of my mind. They start to built my contact with the place from the ground up, and in doing so, already start to prepare the moment I want to leave, to pursue new names that invite my mind to travel.

Sergey knows the town, and soon I have found a place to stay. This time that place is Bristol Hotel, an English looking place that can easily withstand comparison with many seaside hotels in the cities of the Mediterranean. After making arrangements to meet again the next morning, Sergey has disappeared. The hotel is very near to Naberezhna (Quay) Lenina, a wide pedestrian promenade where, in the season, one comes to see and to be seen. The sun has disappeared behind the promontory to the West, and it has become chilly. The promenade, easily to be imagined full of people, is almost deserted. The palm trees look a bit dejected, and many of the bars and restaurants and attractions are closed. Some older people calmly stroll along, the same old couples I have seen on the promenades of Ostende or Cannes except for the small dog on a leash, which is missing. There are no white yachts to admire. The rich are still in Moscow and Kiev, getting richer. Only a few rusted boats of all sorts have been taken out of the water and line a jetty looking like a ship grave-yard.

I look around for a place to eat something. I skip the MacDonald, quite full of people, and opt for a stolovaya in a side street. Simple food, pork meat in many disguises, side dishes of potatoes and as always, various salads with mayonnaise and the ever present carrots and cucumbers. The beer is never a problem, and prices are adapted to the local economy. It has been a day full of impressions, and before long I am back in the hotel for a good night’s sleep.

The next morning, when I look out of the window of my room, which is at the rear of the hotel, I look into a vast construction site. The “new” money has of course found its way into this town, and although still the surroundings do not give that impression of utter and hopeless asphyxiation of the Cote d’Azur, there is great building activity.

Sergey is already waiting in front of the hotel. His old Mercedes looks considerably less shiny than his smile, full of gold teeth. He is a pleasant, open person, not cutting corners on HIS part of the deal, to drive me from Bachysarai, via Sevastopol and Yalta back to Simferopol, including the well known tourist attractions. The program of the day includes Chechov’s house, and the palace where the wartime meeting between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill took place.

It is a few minutes before 10 o’clock when Sergey drops me off at Chekhov’s house. Although a large parking lot has been arranged for the coaches of the many visitors to this national shrine, there is nobody yet, except me. Small stairs descend from the road to a building housing the inevitable cashier’s deck and a small museum, with photographs and various objects used by the writer. As I am early, I can at leisure see how the premises wake up. An old man is slowly and in a very thoughtful way sweeping up some fallen leaves, contemplated by a security guard with an impressive army cap who seems to be settling in for the day at his occupation of doing nothing at all. The surroundings are lush, almost subtropical. A white marble buste of Chekhov faces the entrance of the building. Even the motionless stone cannot take away the impression of gentleness and calm charm in the face of the writer. We are on the “wrong” side of the amphitheatre that is Yalta, and the sun only now starts to reach the garden and the building. Just before 10 o’clock, a middle aged lady arrives, carrying a bunch of keys, who decorously starts to open up the doors and the shutters of the building.

After paying an entrance fee, I look at the exhibits, mostly photographs, that summarize a lifetime. From a harsh youth in Taganrog, at the Sea of Azov, alone in the world at the age of 15, Anton Chekhov beats all the odds by becoming a medical doctor. But his destiny is to become a writer of stories, books and above all a playwright. In his early years, he wrote as a means to earn a living, selling stories to magazines. But gradually, writing becomes his main occupation. His medical profession serves him, when he embarks on an inspection tour of the Tsar’s prisons on Sakhalin, and during a cholera epidemic, when he volunteers to help out his countrymen. The little boy from Taganrog becomes a famous man, acclaimed as a foremost playwright, but all the photographs show a gentle man, with a natural modesty. Finally, he settles in Yalta, in the hope to cure a tuberculosis, that eventually kills him at the age of 44.

Unfortunately, his house, a big and for those days no doubt very modern Mediterranean style villa, is closed for maintenance, and I can only walk around it through a romantic garden, full of pathways and benches where I imagine him sitting, breathing the clean air and dreaming up the characters of his play. Later, reading his short stories “Russian Love” and the account of his travel to Sakhalin, these images are in my mind. The more one knows of the writer, the more the pages seem to come to life. His descriptions of the hardships of his travel in Siberia, and the terrible conditions in Sakhalin contrast strangely with his rich and comfortable condition in Yalta. Still, Yalta “happened” to him, like “Sakhalin” happened to others. Had he been an exile, he would have made the best of that condition, as some of those he writes about.

From Chekhov’s house, to the palace where the leaders of the Allies met in 1945 to discuss the approaching end of WW2, is just a few miles, but it is a journey into another dimension. From the quiet, unassuming and contemplating mind of Chekhov, to the power politics between the three most powerful men of the world at that moment, the difference cannot be greater. Where Chekhov directed his mild, ironic attention to the behaviour and dreams of individual humans, the big three re-arranged the map of post war Europe with bold strokes of the pen, thus disposing without much consideration of the lives of millions of people, all the while putting their own interests first, haggling, distrusting, cajoling and arm twisting in an orgy of power, playing God.

THE YALTA CONFERENCE

It is not by accident that the meetings were held in the last palace Tsar Nicolas II had built before he was swept aside in the maelstrom of the Revolution. The setting of the Livadia Palace is stunning. The long, Italian Renaissance facade faces a well kept park, with a wide, unencumbered view Eastwards on the bay and the city. Cypress trees give a stark vertical contrast to the flowing lines of mountains and the coast and the sea. The Tsar had this palace built in 1911 as a summer residence. The man who already could not see his people because he stood too far above them, here also literally turned his back to them. In the well preserved private apartments of the royal family, at the first floor facing the sea, are full of the memories of this doomed family, with the Tsarevitsj Alexey often the centre of the action. The sunny photographs on the beach speak of carefree days, the personal objects on writing desks and in the bedrooms are witnesses of a seemingly normal family life, that was to be ended dramatically in the Ekaterinaburg shootings, 4 years hence.

Perhaps it was intentionally, perhaps just one of those quirks of fate, that made the allies choose this palace as meeting place for their conference on the pursuit of the war, and its aftermath. The corridors that had seen the absolute power in the person of Tsar Nicolas II now filled with the representatives of the greatest powers the world had known, armed to the teeth, slugging it out with Nazi Germany. The great White Hall, where the old noblesse had woven their intricate plays of court intrigues, had become the battleground where the big Three and their staffs redesigned the map of Europe. The place is pregnant with history. In a big room, right after the majestic entrance, stands the very table around which the leaders sat, with name cards indicating the exact location. НИНСТОН ЧЕРЧИЛЛЬ no doubt had to be shown to his place. A big photograph on the wall shows the same table and the same chairs. Only the Russian and English military men standing guard – dummies in uniform – will not feel the authenticity of this place. Immediately to the right two arches lead to the former ballroom, where the main conferences were held. Several groups of schoolchildren are being shown around. I regret not to understand enough Russian to follow the explanations of the teachers.
Thoughtfully, I follow the route though the palace. This is the study of Roosevelt, there Churchill met with his staff. Much dark wood and red carpets, nice places to hide microphones I can’t help thinking.
AY-PETRI

During the summer season, a cable car brings tourists up to the Ay-Petri at a dizzying height above the bay of Yalta. But it is March, and we have to reach that place with Sergey’s old Mercedes. For the next hour or so, we follow a winding road though a dense pine forest. Fortunately there is hardly any traffic. Sergey is a good driver, but the road is narrow and the trees hide cars from the opposite direction until the very last moment. Several times I think we have reached the top, but I am disappointed each time. Patches of snow, growing bigger as we ascend, become visible among the trees, and finally the car passes between two walls of dirty snow, the melt water streaming down in the middle of the road. Strangely enough we encounter a number of cyclists. Not one of them climbing – all tearing down the slope with breakneck speed. Finally we emerge from the trees, and the road flattens out to cross a wide plain, grey rock protruding from the snow. After the ascent, one would expect to reach a pass and to start going down the other side, but no, the top is flat country, with smaller hills in the distance. We pass a big radar- and telecommunications station, then turn back again in the direction of the sea, and arrive at the cable car station. And again, a wonderful reward for risking my life in Sergey’s car! A wonderful panorama opens before my eyes. The mountain ridge is so steep, that the sea seems to be right beneath my feet. To the right, Mount Ay-Petri looms with its 1233 m. To the left, Yalta smiles at us with its white buildings around the blue bay. I take my time to enjoy the beauty of the place, because from now, the journey will go north, away from the Black Sea, to the vast interior of central and eastern Ukraine.

We leave the coast with its beauty, and take the road to Simferopol. It takes some time to leave the snowy heights. We see ski-trails in the snow, and cross a few groups of young people, in skis and with backpacks, obviously tracking these deserted places. The mountains rise steeply out of the sea, but to the north, they gradually change and become flat plateaus, a “mesa” landscape. We drive north through what seem to be canyons. However with flat valleys with villages and many cultured fields. In the cliffs around us, erosion has created what seem to be vast cities of troglodytes, and with some imagination I see houses big and small and even churches and cathedrals. With the 3000 years of history of the Crimea in mind, I see these “cities’ inhabited and then abandoned by tribe after tribe and generation after generation. Sergey does not seem to know anything about this history. He seems to be happy to return to his home in Simferopol and chats with a strong voice to be heard over the constant noise of the radio.

Bachysaray reappears and after an uneventful trip, we arrive in Simferopol. Sergey drops me off at the railway station, and waves goodbye with a big smile of golden teeth. I have appreciated the company of this simple and cheerful man.

The station is crowded. Simferopol is the central arrival or departing point for the Crimea. Many destinations are shown on the departure board, like Kiev, Moscow, Kharkov, Odessa, Djnepropetrovsk and even St. Petersburg, which is 35 hours away by train. In the central hall, a crowd of travellers occupy rows of seats, surrounded by their luggage. Long queues wait in front of the may ticket counters. The counters are usually for only a few destinations, and it takes some asking to find myself at the right one. My destination is Zaporisje, the old Cossack capital on the Djnepro. I’m lucky, there will be a train in about an hour time. I buy my ticket, and decide to find something to eat. Outside of the station, under a covered area, several small café’s offer cater for the hasty traveller. It is pleasant to note that I can just disappear into the crowd. Nobody takes notice of a lonely traveller who in bad Russian manages to order a few things to eat and to drink. The people around me, predominantly dark in appearance – Simferopol is also a centre for the Tatars returning from their forced relocation in Central Asia – sit and smoke quietly. It is not clear whether they are arriving or leaving, or just whiling away the time. Nobody seems rich, nobody poor. Outside, a very modest looking old woman sits on a ledge near a window. She reads in thick book, and tin the 30 minutes I saw her, she just turned the pages, and did not look up a single time. I wondered what she was reading, and later regretted that I did not ask. Then it is time to find my train. Usualy, the platforms in the Russian stations are low. One walks way below the level of the trains, and here you really climb into a train. Again I find a polite lady conductor standing patiently at the carriage, who after a perfunctionary check of ticket and passport, shows me to my seat. As it is low season, the train is virtually empty, and I can take my time settling in. The trip to Zaporizhzhya will take 5 hours, so a few books and a dictionary find their place on the small table, soon there is a steaming glass of tea too, brought by the conductress, who also knows that hers will be a quiet trip today. When the train leaves, right on time, I think back to a pleasant stay in the Crimea. It offered me all I had come for. History and beautiful nature and rather pleasant and helpful people.

As the train heads north, it passes right along the marshlands of the Sea of Azov. It crosses what seems to be causeway, just for the railway and a highway. To the left and the right there is only water. To the west, the setting sun sets the distant horizon on fire. To the east, the coming darkness gives a leaden colour to the flat surface of water. The flatness of it all accentuates the vastness of the regions I cross, and even after the rain has left the causeway, and endless fields stretch in all directions, hardly a village or house is to be seen. The ground is dull brown. Spring has not yet come, and nature is still passive, like after a long night sleep one can prefer not to jump out of bed, but to let the reality of the coming day slowly reach you through half open eyes.

Then a singular sight accentuates the vastness of this land. The fields are bare, with only here and there a small fence or signpost, or a small tree or shrub. And each and every one of these obstacles is covered with plastic bags, looking from far like Christmas trees. I imagine that these bags have been blown with the south west wind over considerable distances, not meeting any obstacle for miles and miles, until finally being stopped in their journey by a tree or fence. Pity I can’t get down to have a better look. I imagine there must be bags with prints of shops from cities like Simferopol or Cherson, to the south and the west. What fun it will be, to perform an autopsy on a small tree on the steppe, that does not move anywhere, but receives plastic gifts from everywhere around it. It is an eerie sight, these Christmas trees in the darkening fields.

Finally, darkness falls. The vast expanse outside is shut out and the world shrinks to a comfortable train compartment, books, and the regular beat of the wheels on the rails, gobbling up the distance. A few times we cross small towns, and some lights appear in the darkness. But the train does not stop until it reaches the small town of Melitopil. I am on my way to Zaporizhzhya, and did not include Melitopil in my program. The town is a middle sized industrial town, with nothing much to see, were it not for the site of one of Ukraine’s most remarkable historical sites at that nearby, at the village of Myrne, nearby. Prehistoric humans came here to pray to their gods, and sacrificial rituals were carried out by pagan holy men. Carvings in the rocks speak of a civilization of more than 9,000 years ago. The place is enveloped in mysticism, and even today’s political elite is reported to visit this “shrine” to try to obtain favours from the Gods. A man named Mykhailov runs the site, together with his wife, and has devoted more than 30 years of his life to safeguarding and studying the wonderful rock-drawings it contains. Time is a relative entity, because now I don’t have the time to visit this place, although it has waited 9000 years for me.

At nine in the evening, the train arrives Zaporizhje. A number of passengers disembark, on one of the low outer platforms. At the same moment an endlessly long freight train passes slowly at the other side of the platform. Two heavy locomotives, tank wagons and open freight cars lumber past. When finally the last wagon is gone, with red lights disappearing into the night, something happens that I had never seen. The passengers, who just disembarked from my train, step off the platform and cross the rails where the freight train just passed, to reach the station building. It all happens very matter of fact. It is surprising to me, proving again that we all develop our habits depending on where we live. The last thing one would do in Holland, is step off the platform of a railway station! The station building itself is clean. Again I have to choose between many counters, where ladies in uniform again are not very patient with my halting Russian. I want to book a train to Donetsk which turns out to be not an easy thing to do. Buying an “open” ticket, and just waiting for the next train like we do in Holland is not an option here. It took the help of a friendly young man – who later turned out to be a missionary for some American based Bible Club - to point out to me what I knew but did not realize: the countryside is deserved by buses, not by trains! Cities like Zaporizhzhya have substantial bus terminals and small and big buses connect destinations near and far. My friend the Bible salesman tells me that there is a bus to Donetsk the next afternoon at 2 o’clock, so I will have the time for a short visit to Khortytsya Island, the former stronghold of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks.

A few moments later, I am in a taxi driving along the 10 km long main street, another Prospekt Lenina. Arriving at the hotel, I arrange a visit to the Island for the next morning. After a good meal of river fish and a few beers, I beef up on the history of the Cossacks.

In the late Middle Ages, people who for all kinds of reasons had fled the regions controlled by Muskovy, Poland and Lithuania, started to form small groups which could survive in the “empty” reaches of what is now Southern Russia and Ukraine. They formed loose tribes, under an elected “hetman”. Two centres of power emerge; the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, along the Djnepro, right where I am at this moment, and the Don Cossacks, centred in the region of Rostov, on the river Don, to the east. This was a virile environment, where a man was first and foremost a soldier, and fiercely independent. The Cossack’s pride was his horse and his gun, and although agriculture was a necessary occupation, little encouragement was needed to get them going on adventurous campaigns, of which many ended in painful failure. Political acumen was not their strongest skill, and in fact they have been used throughout the centuries by the real powers around them. The Russians and Lithuanians did not mind to have some strong presence between them and the restless tribes from the central Asian plains, and stood at the sidelines cheering the Cossacks on when their hosts went on another “holy war” against the heathens from the plains. There was a tacit agreement that fugitives from the established estates who reached the Cossacks were not extradited, but in exchange, the estates could call for help in case they were attacked by Tatars or – more often – their neighbours. The Cossacks recognized the Tsar as their suzerain, and considered themselves the fierce defenders of the Orthodox religion, but that did not refrain them from revolting time and again against the Tsars if they felt strong enough. Several great revolts during the 17th and 18th centuries were led by Cossack leaders, such as Bogdan Chmelnitski and the great Stefan Razin, who is still revered in Russia as a genuine liberator of the poor and oppressed. The independent attitude of present day Ukraine is a reminder of that never resolved question: Did the Cossacks accept to be PART of Russia, or did their allegiance to the Tsar express a voluntary gesture between equals?

The rapid expansion of the Russian empire was more often than not spearheaded by Cossacks. From their origins in the South Russian plains, the centuries and the attraction of gold and furs brought Cossacks to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and had them fighting the Manchus along the Amour River. Still, they never managed to acquire real political power and independence, and when finally, under Catherina the Great, Russian power reached the Black Sea, their “homeland” was no longer a frontier, and the Cossacks lose their strategic function. In 1775 the sich at Khortytsya Island was destroyed on order of Catherina The Great, and most of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks finally migrated to the Kuban region. And now I am going to visit the site of the Cossack fortress on Khortytsya Island.


The Djnepro in the region of Zaporizhzhya forms a series of cataracts – Zaporizhzhya means “beyond the rapids” - and finally passes through a narrow and rocky valley. The rapids nowadays have disappeared under a huge lake behind a hydroelectric dam, built in the 1930’s.
Right opposite the dam, Khortytsya Island sits as a cork on a bottle, and the strategic importance of this site is still evident. It was here that in the mid 1500’s Cossacks built a sich (fortress) and became united under a strong leadership.

The next morning, I am early, and as the taxi to take me to Khortytsya Island is not due for another 40 minutes, I walk towards the main artery of the city, Prospekt Lenina. There, I see a mass of red flags, and a crowd of young people in something that looks like a demonstration. A few policemen hang around, but the scene is peaceful, and they have nothing to do. I approach the demonstration, and see that the red flags show a portrait of Jezus, and some of the demonstrators carry peace signs. On the pavement they have placed coffins, painted black, with in white lettering “Clean Air” and “Healthy Children”. I try to talk to some of the young people, and they direct me to Anton, who speaks French fluently. He explains to me that they demonstrate against the uncontrolled pollution caused by the heavy industries in the region.
It is heartening to see that even here some people care. The political reality of the country, and the prevailing economic conditions make their task a very long uphill battle indeed. But it is good to see in the earnest faces around me a calm determination. They know that a result of their action is not for today, or even tomorrow, but just do what they think is right to do. A bleak sun has appeared, giving the scene a festive air. I walk back to the hotel, with some sunshine in my heart that was not there before.

My taxi arrives on time, and we start in the direction of the island. To get there, we have to cross the dam, and get stuck in a gigantic traffic jam. There is only one road to get to the other side of the river, and it is built against the top of the massive dam. We advance very slowly, and from time to time there is no movement at all. At times, I can see through the open structure of the top of the dam, the lake it has brought into existence. What would it have been convenient for the Vikings, on the way to the Black Sea and beyond, who had to carry their boats the lengths of the rapids! To my left, when my view is not blocked by a truck advancing in the next lane, I can see Khortytsya Island. It has a steep bank, but seems flat, covered with a low forest. As often happens, when I have reached a place I have set out to see, my thoughts take me away from myself, like a camera zooming out to give a bird’s eye view of the dam, the lake and the taxi in which I sit. At the same time, the sounds around me change into those of other times. The traffic noise becomes the sound made by people discharging vessels on the banks of a much older Djnepro. De thin white light of the morning now illuminates Cossacks building their fortress, shouting at their horses dragging trees from the forest for the construction of their fortress. I see them working and building, but knowing that what they are building will be destroyed and I feel sadness and pity for these people. They build their fortress to last forever and in their drive and enthusiasm there is no doubt. For them, things will always be as they are now. It makes me wonder: is my travel an unconscious wish to stop time? My wanting to be somewhere else, my sometimes painful leaving and “not belonging” a way to avoid belonging to what must disappear too? I let these thoughts come and go, without trying to formulate the answers, because answers can produce certitudes that are a form of belonging too.

But eventually everything comes to and end, even this monstrous traffic jam, and a few minutes later we drive over a bridge that connects the west bank of the river with the island.
The site of the old “sich” on the northern tip of the island, facing the huge hydroelectric dam, consists merely of a few hillocks, which can be seen as having been a defence wall. For good mesure a few old canon have been put on these walls, but they don’t even begin to look authentic. In the area enclosed by these walls, a small museum contains artefacts and weapons. A big panorama like painting, of which I have by now seen quite a few in Russia, shows a scene with a big crowd of warlike Cossacks, humiliating some prisoners. It demonstrates the vigour of these people. Studying the history of the Cossacks, however, shows that this vigour was rather an end in itself, instead of being applied to a long term policy or common goal. It is not surprising that romantics have seen in this people the ultimate free warriors. They have earned gratitude and glory fighting for Russia, against Tatars and Napoleon and in the wars of imperialism to the East. They have robbed and raped and shown a lot of enthusiasm in many of the pogroms against the stetls of the Jews of Poland and Ukraine and Russia. They have joined the whites in the Civil war, but also joined the Red Cavalry under General Budjonny in the Soviet’s war with Poland in 1920 – as related in the books of Isaac Babel. The final defeat of the whites saw them leaving Russia, often forever, from the port of Novorossisk, to become taxi drivers in Paris. In the Ukraine, many have sided with the Germans in 1941, in the vain hope for an independent Cossack state. Again they betted on the wrong horse. Stalin’s revenge has been total. But whether doing small jobs in France, or being an apparatchik under the Soviets, a Cossack will remain first foremost a Cossack, even if he has never seen a horse form nearby.

After the visit to the museum, the taxi takes me to a site a few kilometres away, where a few small hills are disguised as Kurgans, with a collection of big stones, evoking the monoliths of old civilisations. The taxi driver takes a photo of me with the Cossack guard of the premises, a shabby looking man, in army fatigues, with a dirty woollen Cossack hat. So far for the tourism and the island. The whole site disappoints, but for me that does not matter. I have “seen” the place, and I don’t need an artificial Kurgan and a disguised watchman, to bring this place to life in my mind.

Half an hour later, the taxi drops me off at the central bus station, and obviously I am not the only one wanting to travel today. Around a large building in the middle of a vast expanse of concrete, a big crowd is milling about. Taxis come and go, people drag luggage about, and whole families are on the move, including their small kids and old folks. Inside, a number of counters sell tickets, in front of each of them, people form long lines. After some asking, where invariably people are helpful and polite, I find the right queue, and after a while have a ticket to Donetsk. Although the distance to Donetsk is about 250 km, I pay around 10 Euro for the ticket. I have to wait for about half and hour for the bus to leave, so I try to get something to eat. Outside, several food stalls offer cheap and bad sandwiches and a sort of pizza. Soft drinks and elementary snacks like Mars and Snickers are for sale everywhere. It is fun to see the crowd, and note the big variety in people. Families, businessmen, and many young adults, boys and girls, very self conscious in what at that moment and that place is the fashion. Jeans, leather jackets, T-shirts with prints and invariably, fashionable sun-glasses. Most people smoke. The weather has turned beautiful, and it becomes hot in the sun. In front of me, big and small busses park in numbered slots, and when a bus arrives, a whole crowd starts moving forward, luggage and all, and tries to be the first inside.

When my bus arrives, I go with the flow, and with some pushing and shoving I find myself seated, with my luggage on my knees. The problem is that when you wait with your luggage besides the bus, to have it stored underneath, the seats are taken, so everybody pushes inside with their luggage, and once sure of a seat, go outside again to place the luggage in the storage space under the bus. This involves quite some movement, but I do not see any aggression. As I have a printed ticket with a bus number, I would guess that no more tickets are sold than seats available, but it looks like that the passengers are not so sure of that.
I am seated beside a sturdy middle aged man, and either he does not want to talk, or my Russian is not understood, but during the whole trip, he does not utter a word. When everybody is more of less seated, a hefty middle aged woman with coloured hair passes to check the tickets again, and finally, the bus leaves. I am surprised to see that a number of people are standing between the seats, and I wonder if they will keep standing the full 5 hours
the trip to Donetsk will take. But, they get off at the outskirts of the city. Probably a small side business of the driver.

Once outside Zaporizhzhya the horizon opens up. We drive through a vast rolling country, practically without villages of farms. Miles and miles of fields, brown and bare at the end of the winter. The road is narrow, but good, and we do not cross much traffic. The bus does not drive very fast, and goes up and down with the long swells of the landscape, much like a small ship on the ocean. From time to time, the bus stops to drop off a passenger. More often than not “in the middle of nowhere”. Not in a village or even near some houses, but at a point where a sandy road starts off to the horizon. These roads are very large. Obviously, during thaw, these roads are just muddy tracks, and every passing car, looking for some firmer ground, moves farther away from the centre of the track. As a result the track is at least 100 m wide, but in the absence of any fence of ditch, and in the middle of this abundance of land, that does not matter. The passenger gets off the bus, picks up his belongings, and starts to walk, away from the road, to the horizon. I wonder how they cope with the harsh winters, when these plains are covered with snow.

Looking around, from horizon to horizon, I think of the armies these plains have swallowed all through history. Herodotus wrote about the campaign of the Persian king Darius, who crossed the Hellespont, around the year 500 BC, to teach the Scythians a lesson, pursued them all around the Black Sea to the river Don, without being able to make contact to defeat them. In a much more recent past, Karl 12th of Sweden, Napoleon, and the mechanized armies of Hitler suffered the same fate. The south Ukraine in WW2 was the site of great tank battles. But not the enemy tanks, but distance and the dust in the summer, and the snow in the winter proved to be the decisive factors.

After a few hours driving, we make a stop in a small town with the nice name of Prokovskaya Bolshemichailovka. At a neat little bus station, a small shop and restaurant and clean toilets, cater to the travellers’ needs. Time for a drink and a cigarette, and off we go again. The sun starts to set and the softening light lends depth and colour to the landscape. Along the road, I see some people selling potatoes. A big sign, topped by a hammer and sickle, looking as weather beaten as the communism it represents, indicates the access to what I take to be a former kolchose. We approach Donetsk, and we see more and more small villages, looking bucolic in the evening light. Factories start to appear along the road, and the bus stops a few times to drop off passengers. Ahead of us, some hills appear, and the wide open plain gives way to some fenced fields.

Then finally, even before we see the city, slagheaps appear, painted orange by rust and the light of the setting sun. We arrive in Donetsk, East Ukraine’s centre of coal mines and steel factories. We drive into the city through broad avenues. The streets are full of cars, and the wide pavements full of people in the early evening. At the bus terminal, taxi drivers crowd around me. I am a bit tired after the bus trip, and Donetsk is my last stop before flying home, so I let myself be taken to Central Hotel, a nice and clean place near the centre of the city. Behind the check-in counter, against a wall, I see scores of club emblems of soccer clubs, who have played in Donetsk and stayed in this hotel. Valencia, Werder Bremen, Zenith from St. Petersburg, Borussia Dortmund, many of the great clubs have been here. At present, some oligarchs with money looking for a hobby have adopted Shaktar (=miner) Donetsk, and invested heavily in foreign players. Must be a tough life for a Brazilian in Donetsk!

The hotel staff is friendly and efficient, the room impersonal but international class. When I go down for a drink and dinner, I meet yet another Sergey. A beer at the bar, and a remark about the many visiting soccer clubs make an introduction and friendly chat possible. Sergey is a technician, Russian, knows something about pumps and speaks English. After he finds out that I am NOT a technician, he is not much interested in what I have to tell, but confides to me that he thinks that Ukrainians are a sorry lot, who must be happy to have Russians to protect them and manage their mines and steel factories. Although he has the Ukrainian nationality, he is vehemently against independence, and blames the CIA (where have I heard this before?) of complotting with local opportunists. Not surprising, giving the fact that more than half the population here is of Russia origin. When I tell him with an innocent face that the town, and the industry was founded by an Englishman, he ignores my remark and mentions that Ukrainians were “wrong” during the war, and that it were Russians who won the war for them.

Behind us, in the restaurant, some Germans are having dinner with their local girl friends. I have seen these groups of men everywhere in the world. Technicians, installing factories, or oil-crews, stopping over between jobs. Girls and beer are invariably part of the scene. Loud talk and continuous references to distant places. “When I was in Luanda…” “Remember that job in Dubai?” Invariably one man is the leader. He talks loudly and laughs about his own remarks. The girls, who have every interest to keep the thing going, laugh when he laughs…
Sergey disappears, and I silently have my dinner, seriously irritated by the din of the Germans behind me.

The next morning I take a walk in the vicinity of the hotel. The name “Central Hotel” is well chosen. A few hundred yards away is the central square of the city. Soviet style buildings face a vast park like space. In spite of the early hour the place is already quite animated, with people strolling and sitting in the sun on the many benches that line the borders, some of which look quite well kept, with flowers giving a festive air. At one end of the square, a demonstration is in process. Soon there will be elections. In front of the statue of Lenin, red flags with the Soviet hammer and sickle remind me of a not too distant past. Students, wearing red jackets with the same Soviet symbol and the print “КОМПАРТИЯ УКРАИНЫ» distribute tracts. At the other end of the square a group of people carry blue flags. The public hardly seems to notice these utterances of democracy, and seem to be much more interested by a fancy-fair, that is under construction around the statue of Lenin, in the middle of the square. The old Bolshevik looks bewildered in his heroic pose, looking down on a roller coaster, surrounded by the usual and almost forgotten fancy fair attractions of yesteryear.

Not far away, I find a ticket office, where I buy my ticket for the flight back to Kiev the next day. As it often happens, after some time of travelling, when the return home changes from something that eventually will come into a flight number with a departure time, I lose my curiosity for the things around me. I walk around in the city, taking in the wide avenues, the crowds, the obligatory T-34 tank on a concrete base, and some surprisingly erotic billboards, advertising some western brand of perfume. This town is disconcerting. It seems to unite
everything that happened during the last century. The slagheaps remind of a past of heavy industry, the modern buildings, many of which are banks and the advertisements for Japanese computers bring the present to our attention. Expensive Mercedeses and Lexuses, and even a bright yellow Hummer wait at a traffic light, to let old pensioners with plastic bags slowly cross the street. I find a place to sit in the sun with a beer. I feel detached from what I see, but concerned too, thinking of the hardship of the generation that endured communism, fought the war, and now can hardly survive on devaluating state pensions. But old days are gone, old people do not count much, and the streets are for hip youngsters on motorbikes. Their life is here and now, and I look at them in a pensive mood, halfway between the past I see shuffling to cross the street, and the future, having the time of their lives. Literally…….


Leusden, April 2007