Crimea River

A few days prior, a new friend in my travels, Pete, suggested a little trip.

Pete, not to be confused with Why Not? Kiev Hostel owner Peter, is a Columbia grad student spending two months in Kiev to brush up on and improve his Russian. He needs to be fluent by the time he graduates for his masters in something Russia-related. Part of his program is to do a home stay, and Vika, my counterpart at the hostel, is in his home stay family. Therego I met Pete.

Peter, hostel owner Peter, announced out of the blue recently that due to the abnormally low levels of bookings at Why Not during the semifinals that weren’t in Kiev, Vika and I would have three days off for the 26th, 27th and 28th of June.

Pete and I decided to use the time to our advantage. So we booked a train ticket for the night of the 25th, and at 23:01 on June 25, 2012, we were on a train to Crimea.

Pete prepared well for the train ride. He bought bananas, bread, these chips called Топ Снек (aka Top Snack) that tasted as if the Cheetos cheetah had vomited, and some decent sour cream and onion chips. He also bought two bottles of Nemiroff vodka (rubbing alcohol) and some juice mixers. I brought some cards and some useless/worthless Ukrainian coinage for a poker game.

It was a 17-hour train ride. It was also 95 degrees the whole way and the windows (of course) didn’t open. We were sweating like pigs, as were our bunkmates. One of them, Alexander, a 60-something Ukrainian with the gentlest of demeanors, had the ugliest, gangliest, and smelliest feet I’ve ever encountered, which didn’t help either.

After polishing off the first bottle of vodka and a couple dozen games of Casino, Pete and I passed out. We were only assigned one of the two top bunks, but the other two guys in the car were much older than us, so we both took the top bunks. Which, of course, was hotter than the bottom bunks as well.

***

Sufficiently sticky from a night of scorching heat, we woke up around 11 on the 26th of June. Neither of us felt hungover, a testament to the main difference I’ve found between vodka of the Russian and American traditions. Russian vodka goes down like hell, but you feel great the next day. American vodka feels wonderful coming, but kills going.

Our train wasn’t to arrive until 4. Around 2pm, Alexander departed the train at Simferopol, leaving us alone in the cabin (our other bunkmate had left in the night). We broke out the cards and vodka and played poker for a whopping 20UAH ($2.5) buyin apiece. I won.

Arriving on time, we disembarked in Севастополе (Sevastopol), near the tip of the Crimean peninsula. Forgetting our original plan of buying our return ticket upon arrival (so as not to get caught without a ticket and have to spend an exorbitant amount on a first class cabin going back), we headed straight to the hostel.

A cab driver brought us there for 40UAH (4 euro). His name was Dmitri, or Dima, and he was very kind. He gave us his number to call him if we needed to go anywhere. We did call him, two days later, and he wasn’t free. So that was a bust.

The hostel was located at 38 Большая Морская. It wasn’t too hard to find. Near a beautiful old Russian Orthodox church and in a little courtyard off the street. The place itself was tiny, offering one 8-person dorm and one double private room. There was a small common area and a kitchen. Basically, it was someone’s apartment. The woman who was running it, a Brazilian girl, was looking after it for a friend while he was dealing with his other hostel in Kiev.

We immediately changed into bathing suits and attempted to find a beach. Our street is one of the main drags in Sevastopol, and led almost directly to the water.

A short wandering along the shore led us to two observations and one conclusion. 1) All the beaches were concrete, and 2) the water was packed with night clubs. This led us to believe that this vacation destination is for young Russian oligarchs looking to party, not tan. This was fine by us.

We stopped for food at a pizza place called the Potato House, because they were serving gigantic pies of pizza for 45UAH. Pete went off to order, with the express instructions from me of, “I’ll eat anything that isn’t olives, mushrooms or peppers.” He comes back with a receipt for 150UAH, and no idea what he ordered. Apparently they kept asking him things and he kept saying yes. So the pizza arrived with peppers, mushrooms, some sort of chicken thing that was their excuse for pepperoni, and extra cheese. I picked through it accordingly. Some things I still try very hard to avoid eating, especially on pizza.

At 6:45 we found ourselves at a bar called Супергерü, aka Superhero. It was all themed accordingly, with capes and masks and American flags, but the best part was the price. Vika had mentioned this bar offhand from her trip down to Crimea in the winter. She said it was cheap, but I wasn’t prepared for how cheap.

5 shots, picked from an epic list, cost 55UAH. That’s 11UAH per shot, or a little under $1.50 each. We took 5 shots (3 for Pete, 2 for me), and had a mojito apiece (which was made with such delicate love I just couldn’t believe it.. One of the best mojitos I’ve ever had). Then back to the hostel to shower and change to go out for the night.

Around 8pm we found ourselves back at the Superhero Bar. 

[The following 2.5 hours have been redacted due to the sensitive nature of the information]

Our favorite shots (indeed, the only ones we tried) were the Супер Пупер (Super Pooper), Медуса (Medusa), and the 45 Калибер (.45 Caliber). The Super Pooper was a layering of Sambuca, Becherovka, and Absinth. The 45 Caliberwas a layering of whiskey and absinth. The winner, though, was the Medusa. This was made by layering Rum, Coconut juice, and triple sec in a shot glass, then dripping bits of Blue Curaçao and bailey’s into the top triple sec layer, which formed an incredible dripping formation within the top layer. It was really, really cool and really, really tasty.

[The following 4 or 5 hours have been redacted due to the sensitive nature of the information]

***

We woke up around 11 the next day. Both of us felt fine, hangover-wise, another fine example of the strong recovery rate of those who drink vodka of the Russian tradition. However our egos, stomachs, and faces were pretty bruised.

A brief walk to the water, and another attempt at the pizza place Potato House (successful this time), led us feeling generally crappy. So by 2 we were back in the hostel. Pete and I promptly played monopoly over Bluetooth on our respective i-devices for hours. And hours. And that’s all we did. Recover and relax.

Bed around 1am.

***

When we bought our train tickets to Crimea, we hadn’t intended them to be so expensive (17 hour train and ab ed in a 4-person compartment for about $50). I, at least, wanted to get the 3rd class carriage like what I had from Odessa to Kiev a few weeks earlier. That overnight train cost me $10. So we agreed to buy our return ticket upon arrival. But we didn’t, and so here we were, on our last day, attempting to buy a ticket to Kiev.

There were no tickets. And the only train available was for 1pm (we arrived to the train station to buy tickets at noon), first class, for $100 each.

I refused. For one, we had yet to do anything touristy in Crimea. The peninsula has been a vital and important part of the Genoese era, the Ottoman Empire, Jewish history, the Russian Empire, the USSR, and modern Ukraine. It was the sight of the infamous Crimean War which, among other things, taught General McLellan a few ways to fight (or fail to fight) the Civil War, and gave us the Balaklava hat. I couldn’t leave without seeing some stuff. So we booked a ticket from Simferopol, the Crimean capital, which had a few more choices for trains, for the next day.

In the meantime, we would head to Balaklava for some sightseeing. Or that was the plan. A simple, easy day in Balaklava. But the rest of the day, whilst generally successful in the end, would be an exercise in folly.

I had borrowed a Lonely Planet on Ukraine from the hostel before heading on this excursion. That said the best way to Balaklava was via the terminus station of 5KM. Pete and I found a bus to 5KM alright (with a little confusion), but finding the right marshrutka to Balaklava was a problem.

We got on the first one that had the word “Balaklava” on the side. This bus, however, was not going to Balaklava.

From Sevastopol, Balaklava is to the southeast. This bus headed, quite immediately, northeast. Before long we were on the highway. And before long after that, Pete and I had to get off to turn around. In Inkerman.  A place that’s barely even mentioned on a detailed map of the region in a guide book. They make white wine there, apparently - something I didn’t learn until I was in the airport on the way to Budapest days later and found Inkerman wine at duty free. Pete and I stood on the side of the road there while I attempted to hitchhike.

Hitchhiking was unnecessary, as another of the same line of marshrutkas was making its way back to Sevastopol. So we hopped on, rode back to 5KM and got a cab to Balaklava, a relatively inexpensive ride (though getting the right bus would have been cheaper).

It was a short trip to Balaklava, a small town with a Turkish name (meaning Fish’s Nest). This was once the sight of a thriving Genoese fortress, and has been used by every great empire since. The reason for this is the beautiful natural alcove that the Black Sea has carved in this spot. Settlers along this alcove get all the access to the Black Sea they could want, but would be simultaneously totally shielded from sight if they wanted to avoid the attention of passersby. The Genoese had their fortress (only a few towers of which still survive), the Turkish once ruled it, the British captured it during the Crimean war (and spent a horrific winter there, whilst worried wives and mothers back home knitted their sons and husbands Balaklava helmets, i.e. knitted hats, or just balaklavas), and, most recently, the Soviet Union used it to house one of the most top secret bases in the world.

Due to the fact that Balaklava itself is invisible from the Black Sea, the Soviets wiped it off the map. Literally. It was removed from every map, its name was deleted from every record, and the town disappeared. In 7 years, whilst the townspeople were put on lockdown (no one in or out without a damn good reason), the Soviets built a massive nuclear submarine facility in an adjacent mountain. This Bond-worthy fortress could withstand a nuclear attack, hold several thousand people inside and keep them fed for at least a month in case of siege, dock and launch submarines without ever breaching the water outside, and retaliate against any attack on the base without compromising the integrity of the base itself. Submarines would be able to navigate into the alcove underwater, enter the base through an underwater cave, and surface in the mountain, where it would be brought to dry dock.

Today, it’s a barely-discovered tourist attraction. After the Cold War ended, the newly formed Russian Federation and Ukraine began dismantling it. Today, it’s a chilling reminder of how dangerous those times were, and how seriously the Soviets had prepared for all-out nuclear war.

The entrance to the bunker is across the alcove from the town of Balaklava, which takes about 20 minutes to circumnavigate on foot. Pete and I found our way there, and took a boat tour for 40UAH each through the base. It was given in Russian, but they gave us some sheets of paper with the story on it, which I feel the need to reproduce here, word for word, typo for typo, for both informational and entertainment purposes:

“A TOP-SECRET BLACK SEA FLEET UNDERGROUND COMPLEX, NUCLEAR SUBMARINE BASE “BALAKLAVA”

“The all period after the Second World War is usually characterized as a history of East and West confrontation. The world, divided into two feuding camps, was waiting for the end of ungovernable armament race. All civilized humanity was chocked by an unjustified destruction of two Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th of August 1945. The cities were razed to the ground because of the atomic bombing, hundred people died. And it was the sign of oncoming “cold war” rather than the last military act.

“June 11, 1952 - the Soviet Government made a decision to create a secrete naval complex on western side of Balaklava bay. The second half of 20 century - Balaklava, with its suitable bay, became the Black sea fleet base. This town was one of the most secret residential areas in the Soviet Union. The name Balaklava disappeared from all the geographical maps and the entrance into the town turned out to be forbidden. Every entrance and exit was closed and protected by KGB officers. Only those who had a special sanction could arrive here, passing the special military checkpoints. Even family members could not visit the town without a good reason and proper identification.

“The underground compound was forged directly in the rock. The plan expected the building of 15 thousand square meters underground complex in Tavros rocky ground. Gradually, man-made caves began to take shape amid the granite, housing underground shops, offices, arsenals and roads. Through a deep-water channel, a submarine could easily come into a dry dock. According to the designer’s intention, 3,000 people could find shelter in labyrinths of this underground dungeon in case of a nuclear threat. The object could live independently for 30 days. Having waited through a danger, nine submarines could put to sea and strike back on the adversary. The complex was meant for submarines (the project A 615, 613, 613 V, 633, 633 RV) dock repair and shelter. The complex construction bean in 1953 and finished in 1961.

“Let’s watching the water channel. Here is the place from where a submarine was putting into sea. The entrance into the water channel is blocked by a pontoon bridge set on pontoons (or the steel tanks). Before a submarine entered the water channel (only at night) the water was pumped out, the bridge was hoisted for half a meter and taken away with the help of mechanism (a capstan windlass). A submarine entered the channel above the water, using an electromotor. After that, the pontoon bridge went back. Besides, there was a camouflage over the entrance. It had the same color as the mountain and was fixed on edges of the shed and came up to water.

“The special shipyard department, the arsenal and the fuel storehouse are independent underground objects connected with each other by transport corridors. The walls of water channel and all corridors are arc-shaped with the angle of 30 degrees; it helps to absorb the blast wave.

“A water channel, passing through the mountain, divides the special shipyard department and the arsenal.

“Caisson gates

“ “Northern” and “Southern” caissons could protect the entrance and exit safely, in the case of nuclear attack (big caisson gates).

“The “Northern” caisson gate, closing the exit from the water channel, consists of four massive reinforced concrete plates that were pulled out of the hole in the mountain. The total caisson weight is 120 tons.

“The “Southern” caisson gate you can see at the end of your voyage.

“The entrance into the object and its territory was under close control by three control-posts. It included 40 military men in one shift. People worked here twenty-four-hour. To get to the complex one needed to produce a pass with a verification stamp at the first control-post indicating that a person could enter the object. When the worker went out the permit was given back. Every worker gave a security oath. From 150 to 300 people were working in the shipyard in 30 years period of the complex’s living. The crew took part in submarine repair as well. As a rule their task was to clean and paint the submarine hull, oil fuel and water tanks. Because of extreme conditions the workers could get social benefits.

“People went through the corridor, the length of which is about 300 meters, to their working areas and electro-cars carried special materials for a submarine repair.

“In wartime, there were receiver points, cleansing station and protection means issuing point for ordinary people and personnel in the transport corridor.

“It was a top-secret object. There were guardians, mines and a bar-block along the whole mountain.

“If the enemy had occupied the object, the bombs would have been put into special holes in the concrete wall along the water channel to destroy the complex. These bombs were kept in the storage in the arsenal courtyard.

“Here you can see the “Southern” caisson gate, that closes the entrance to the object from Balaklava bay, is a watertight steel structure, divided into two sections. Its length is 18 meters, width 6.5 meters, height - 14 meters. Its weight is 150 tons. It’s opened now and drawn into the mountain hole.

“The channel’s length is 608 meters, width from 9 to 22 meters, depth - 8 meters. The walls are covered with concrete. The concrete lining is from 1 to 5 meters width and the rocky-ground over the object is 126 meters. The water channel includes the dry dock, needed for a submarine repair in time of peace, and in case of nuclear war it could be used as a shelter for submarines, which would have come out into the open sea. It is a reinforced concrete structure, separated from the water channel by a small sea gate. Its length is 102 meters, width -10 m., depth -8 m. Once, ‘a tired submarine’ was sailing under these high vaults at late night. Powerful pumps dewatered, the dock was dried up, and the submarine was driven inside like a shell into a bore of the gun. In the vast spaces of the factory winding in the womb of the rock, the work was boiling - cars and trolleys were scurrying about, shipbuilders hurried, circuits of vertical conveyor clanked, drills of engineering tools whined. It took 3-4 weeks to repair a submarine. Nowadays there are no machine tools and pumps anymore, the dry dock is filled with water, and instead of warships there are crowds of jellyfishes which find shelter here when a Worm arrives.

“After the collapse of Soviet Union, the underground polis has turned out to be nobody’s and needless. It was removed from a secret list, guards were dismissed and hunters for color and black metals rushed into dark galleries. The factory was completely deprived of its “filling”. The giant fell under blows of crowbars and sledge hammers.

“Today the underground complex is converted into a museum of the Navies of Ukraine. Everyone can visit it as a participant of a conducted excursion. They show you everything what still remains, but even bare walls with pieces of iron sticking out impress.

“Long gray corridors of the dungeon are rather poorly lighted. It seems as if it was made intentionally to intimidate curious visitors. Of course, it is impossible to visit the entire construction during a short period of the excursion and one could not be able to tell everything about it. Usually visitors punch-drunk by the scene, still linger at the exit of the factory - the place from where a submarine was putting to sea.

“The base remained operational after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until 1993 when the decommissioning process started. This process saw the removal of the warheads and low-yield torpedoes. In 1996, the last Russian submarine left the base, and it is now open to the public.

“The underground object consists of the following autonomous parts:

-  An object 825 “the hydraulic engineering work” - it’s a special shipyard department, that could be used as the refuge for submarines and people

-  A mine-torpedo department was meant for torpedoed preparation and testing

-  An arsenal (an object 820) was a service-and- supply base for ammunition (including the nuclear warheads) storing, assembling and distributing

-  Fuel storehouse could contain 9.5 thousand tons of combustive-lubricating materials.

“As the time passed, this complex was getting old. New submarines were not able to get into the channel and the old ones had been developed no more.

“In 1991 -1994, all the Black Sea fleet submarines left Balaklava bay. Having divided  the Black Sea underwater fleet, the complex appeared to be unnecessary. Ukraine got a big “diesel-electric submarine (project 641), though it wasn’t able to enter the channel and to be repaired.

“Most part of equipment and mechanisms was taken away by military-men. A great silence settled in the rooms and storehouses until the day of museum creation.

“The underground anti-nuclear complex is a unique monument of military history, engineering and fortification. On the one hand, it is an amazing construction, from the point of view of engineering solution and speed of building, but on the other hand, it is a memory of very trying time for all people - the time of “Cold War”.”

Powerful stuff. I mean that both sincerely and sarcastically.

After our 30-minute tour ended - a slow-moving boat ride through a long, eerie tunnel that represents to me the thankfully rotting remains of a frightening past - we emerged once again into the sun. After a short argument about how much time was left before we had to head back to Sevastopol to catch our train to Simferopol for the train back to Kiev the next day, we headed to the Genoese fortress.

The fortress, or what’s left of it, looms large over the town of Balaklava, and the Lonely Planet I had on hand insisted the top of that hill had some of the most breathtaking views one could imagine. I believed it, so we walked up the stairs at the end of the main street in Balaklava, which turned quickly into a path, which promptly became a rocky scramble.

Foolishly on the climb I turned around at the first tower, exposing myself to a taste of the breathtaking views to come. This took away a little bit of the grandeur of seeing Balaklava from the top of the hill, but the view from the top was even grander than that.

From the top tower, the most preserved of the three surviving towers, one finds themselves on the top of the hill. Well, it’s a hill on one side. On the other side is a sheer 1000+ foot cliff (we did some informal calculations with a rock, watching for the splash at the bottom, counting the time it took to drop, and using my high school gravity equations... We actually calculated 1,600 feet). 

The cliff itself drops into the Black Sea, which spreads out as far as the eye can see for 170 degrees, stretching to the horizon. It was absolutely mesmerizing. One could also see how the cove of Balaklava is so perfect, strategically, and why everyone from the Genoese to the Ottomans to the Soviets wanted their hands on this piece of land - the alcove really is invisible from the Black Sea.

We scrambled around the rocks at the top of the cliff, occasionally finding ourselves in positions in which my flip flops and Pete’s boat shoes were not ideal for traction (and thus, survival), taking some beautiful photographs, and marveling at the view. Then Pete started to head back.

I followed suit, but I noticed the door on the tower. The tower itself was under renovations and had scaffolding all over it, and I wanted a better view, so I climbed the scaffolding -- no easy feat in flip flops and without ladders. On the scaffolding I noticed a replica Genoese door. I opened it. Inside was a beautiful well and a quiet tower interior. I did eventually feel a little uncomfortable inside this relic, so I left, but it was great while it lasted.

Our walk back to the town was uneventful. We were slightly inconvenienced by a movie that was being filmed there, but not terribly so. We got dinner in town, which was borsch-tastic, and pretty cheap.

Time was starting to wear thin, so we headed to get a taxi but, discovering finally the marshrutka that we had tried to find at 5KM, took the the marshrutka instead. It got us to 5KM quickly, we took a cab from there to the train station, got the 8pm or so train to Simferopol, and arrived around 10 (passing the famous caves of Bakhchisaray, another Turkish-named town on the way at exactly 8:52pm).

We had booked a hostel hastily at some point before arriving here, and got a cab to bring us there. But we couldn’t find it, since there were no signs and the directions were abysmal. We actually found ourselves in a back-alley with the cab driver, a pimp and a couple of prostitutes before we found the place, which was only by chance because the owners and operators of the hostel were coming back to their place with another backpacker in tow. 

It was a girls apartment, whose largest room had been converted into a dorm. It was among the cleanest and most luxurious hostels I had stayed. Everything about it, except the inability to find the place, was perfect. Simferopol, however, not so much... It’s a pretty boring town, and we didn’t really explore it.

Italy beat Germany in the semi-finals that night, much to the excitement of one resident Italian.

***

The next morning, we got up relatively early, packed our stuff and headed for the station. Pete and I made it with plenty of time to spare, and around noon we boarded our train, a 12:05 train from Simferopol to Kiev.

On the train we met a man in our car who happened to be a Turkish-speaking Ukrainian, as he is a pilot for Turkish Airlines. It was interesting trying to converse with him in Turkish, while Pete spoke with him in Russian, and Pete and I conversed in English.

I also found some smoked fish at one of the stops, so I hopped off the train and grabbed  some, remembering how amazing it was in Russia on the Trans-Siberian. It was not as good, but still pretty tasty. Everyone, especially my bunkmates, Pete and the pilot, were very confused as to why I would ever get something like that, let alone eat it.

We got a few hours of shuteye on the train, but not much.

We pulled into Kiev at 5am the next morning, and I walked back to the hostel alone. I didn’t sleep any more that night. I found out, from Pete, about 30 minutes after getting home, that there was an Elton John and Queen concert that night, so I was freaking out a bit about that, as I had to switch shifts with Vika to go. She was happy to oblige, though, and I started my shift at 9am that morning, exhausted, to make it to the concert that night.