A Ukrainian Bus Ride or How I Traveled from Kiev to Sevastopol Crimea in June 1994

In June 1995 I had the opportunity to travel from Kiev to Crimea on a locally-owned tour bus. The experience gave me ample opportunity to view the Ukrainian countryside and test my endurance. The following narrative presents some of my experiences. Be forewarned: I have received input that some of my descriptions seem unduly harsh given the impoverished nature of the country at the time of my trip. I need to clear the air on this matter. Having spent several months in the country I came away from the place with a respect for the people. They are for the most part hard working, honest, friendly, open-minded, and well educated. I found their respect for intellectuality especially rewarding; how often have I been questioned by anyone about my country's foreign policy while sipping a beer at a rural market? The country is beautiful and I loved all of my experiences, even an uncomfortable bus ride. Ukrainians are a proud and industrious people and they very much dislike the impoverished nature of their homeland yet I was unable to find a single man or women that did not accept their reduced circumstances with dignity and a firm belief that they could improve their world with time and hard work. They do not hide behind excuses, whitewash the obvious, throw away history in the name of political correctness, or turn their backs from a difficult task. I would add that the few complaints I did hear were made by Americans in my group (lack of potable city water, lack of hot water, lack of running water).

The people whom I knew who lived in Sevastopol found my account hilarious, which is precisely what it is meant to be. At the time, the trip was rather uncomfortable but with the benefit of hindsight, I would make the trip again without a moment's hesitation…the next time I would bring a little more water and some food. The place is much changed since 1994 and the south coast of Crimea has embraced western tourism. It remains to be seen if they will regret the loss of a unique cultural milieu for the sake of progress but I wouldn't blame them if they do so to make day-to-day living easier. On the drive from Kiev to Sevastopol, we encountered one roadside kiosk selling food and bottled water and no service or gasoline stations. One of the most remarkable aspects of Ukraine's countryside is its nigh time darkness and its daylight sky. It very much reminded me of the American western sky and why when I first saw it 45 years ago I never returned to the East Coast. Thankfully, there are still many places in the American west where one can find seriously dark environments. In 1994, in Ukraine, one could find it nearly everywhere outside of the few cities.

The Trip

I had never been to Eastern Europe let alone the former Soviet Union. Thus, I had not formed an image of the region in my mind's eye beyond that it was once part of a country a US president called an 'Evil Empire.' Although since I had little respect for politicians I tried not to let that influence my thinking. However, it was impossible not to think about the air raid drills and the threat of nuclear annihilation so evident during my formative years growing up in the 1950s.

As I boarded the jet in Copenhagen all of my usual fears and dread of flying flooded into my mind—the inevitable plane crash with a long, slow fall into the abyss…..In addition, I felt a tad anxious about my destination owing to lack of familiarity. This was an odd feeling for me. By 1994, I had traveled quite often without ever having felt anxious about a destination--flying yes! No doubt something about the Soviet Union concerned me. Having grown up in Cold War-era America, with the air raid drills and the near-constant threat of nuclear annihilation I was taught to view the USSR as 'the enemy.' Here I was traveling to what was until very recently an enemy country.

Security at the Copenhagen airport was a breeze; Heathrow it was not. As much as I respect tight security, I was glad that in this particular case it was somewhat laid back. I was with a large group of boisterous and somewhat disorganized students, and it took quite some time for all of us to get through ticketing and the baggage check. At the suggestion of a helpful ticket agent, we spread our luggage and gear among the various people in the group. We discovered that passengers on flights originating from within the European Community are allowed a maximum of 60 kilograms of luggage per person. Extra baggage is subject to an expensive surcharge. Fortunately, the baggage people were sympathetic and more than willing to assist in distributing our baggage to avoid extra charges, which in my case involved nearly 500 kg of personal gear and electronic equipment including computers, printers, software, infrared total station and related gear.

At Heathrow, the boarding process would have taken far longer due to their very tight security; while everyone visits the walk-through-scanner, most folks are also examined with a hand scanner, and many are hand searched (my colleague was a red-headed fellow of Irish descent and he, a possible member of the IRA was searched!) Since most of the members of our group had been awake for more than 20 hours, I was thankful that our business in the airport didn't take very long.

I had ingested a few tranquilizers along with a beer, so by the time I sat down on the plane a drug-induced calm had set in. The plane was small; a Folke Wolfe of some type. I thought it fascinating that a company involved in the manufacture of high-performance fighter planes during World War II, not to mention the first combat jet fighters--the Me-262, for the Luftwaffe some 50 years ago was still active in the aircraft business. In fact, the same company had manufactured triplanes for Germany planes during World War I; Baron von Richthofen had flown a Folke-Wolfe triplane.

I found my plane seat without a problem--only a single aisle in this Folke-Wolfe--and I stowed my carry-on bag. I sat down to wait for the inevitable liftoff (and crash). The flight attendants gave us the usual talk about safety. Like a good passenger, I listened and promised myself I wouldn't panic when the plane burst into flames. I leaned back and tried to relax as the jet flew off towards the east.

My seating companion was a distinguished-looking Austrian gentleman perhaps in his early 60s. His ability to speak seven languages fluently made me feel slightly inadequate, especially when he asked me how many did I speak. I told him, almost apologetically, that I only spoke English well, a little broken German and some equally broken Spanish. He looked at me ruefully and shook his head. I had heard that Austrian were snobs and I wondered if this fellow was one of them; I found out in 1995 that Austrians are not at all snobs! We didn't speak again for the next two and half hours. Fortunately, the flight was over rather quickly. SAS served us a light meal consisting of beverages, pastries, and excellent Danish cheese. After the meal, the pilot announced our approach into Kiev airspace. Since I had never taken my seat belt off it didn't require much effort on my part to prepare for a landing. I leaned back and sort of tensed waiting for the loss of power to occur and the inevitable nose dive into the ground. As always, the plane landed without incident. We taxied to the terminal and deplaned.

Shevchenko Airport, named after a man who many Ukrainians consider to be the father of Ukrainian nationalism, Taras Shevchenko (1814 - 1861), was not what I expected. Then, I really didn't know what to expect, so that statement is really non-sequitur. Kiev is the capital of Ukraine. I figured Shevchenko Airport would be commensurate with the city's importance to the country. In spite of the dilapidated condition of the main and only terminal, this statement proved to be quite accurate relative to other Ukrainian airports. Ukraine was and, to some extent, it remains an economically backward country. In 1994, Shevchenko Airport was the best airport they had. Compared to western European standards I judged it rather shabby. In some ways, it reminded me of Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv or perhaps the airport in Athens, except that Shevchenko was even more run down. There were no umbilicals enabling passengers to enter the terminal without walking on the tarmac. We walked down a set of movable stairs and waited on the runway for a tram to take us to the terminal. There were a lot of people in our group and it took two trips for the tram to carry us off the tarmac. At least it wasn't hot or raining.

Once in the terminal, the situation rapidly deteriorated into what can best be described as a melee. People were everywhere and chaos reigned supreme. I made sure I positioned myself very close to the location where our baggage would be brought into the terminal. There were no conveyor belts or luggage carousels, and a tram carried our luggage from the jet and dumped it all unceremoniously onto the floor of a large cargo bay attached to the terminal. Passengers were responsible for sorting through the luggage pile and collecting what was theirs. Although the group's baggage represented quite a large pile almost everyone in our group found their items in due time. At least one student, however, a woman from North Dakota, 'lost' her luggage. She dutifully completed a lost SAS luggage claim and that was all that could be done. Unexpectedly, her luggage did find its way to Sevastopol some four weeks later!

Security seemed non-existent. In fact, security was non-existent. On our return flight to Copenhagen, airport security did not have a scanner large enough to X-ray my freight boxes, and they were not opened, so neither crate was inspected. From the look of things, this seemed typical.

I pulled my gear from the main pile and walked to the customs queue. While we were waiting for what I expected to be an unpleasant confrontation with the customs people, I had an opportunity to look around and take in the scene. The terminal small and very run down. The tile floor hadn't been cleaned or polished in quite some time; some of the tiles were broken or missing. The walls were a drab light brown or perhaps a faded beige and numerous water stains were present. The ceiling was composed of acoustic squares that were sagging and water stained. Obviously, the roof leaked and no one had fixed the problem or replace the damaged squares. The furniture was Spartan, with too few seats to accommodate a full terminal of people. In spite of its run-down condition, the terminal was very clean.

While we were waiting at customs, an attractive young lady who was to become a friend, told me that she had had some recent experiences in Russia and Ukraine. I was cautioned to guard with my life ANY piece of paper, however small and insignificant it might seem, given to me by ANY government official. We were met in the terminal by a representative of the bus line that was to provide our ground transportation. This fellow was well dressed and apparently knew his way around officialdom. He herded groups of students to separate customs queues. In that I had a large amount of gear and would probably have the most difficulty clearing customs, I was to go first.

I tried my best to act humble and polite. The customs area was undoubtedly designed to be both intimidating and dehumanizing. It consisted of a series of six small, faded green plywood compartments, each inhabited by one male unsmiling, uniformed customs agent. The agents were separated from the passengers by a small window on which metal bars had been installed. There was an opening at the bottom of the bars through which the agent and passenger might exchange documents. The bars looked ridiculous: Plywood walls and metal bars? What was the point? Each agent was dressed in what I thought was a dark green almost military-like uniform. On his shoulders were red ribbons and each man wore a green hat. These men were efficient but completely humorless. None of them spoke a word of English. Fortunately, we did have a few interpreters and our local representative.

I gave the agent my passport. He looked it over and decided the document was acceptable. Then he asked about luggage. The representative explained my "situation" and showed him the immense pile of gear. The agent looked at the gear and then at me; he was not smiling. I pulled out my Carne', thinking that it might help. The agent looked at the Carne' and asked me to wait. He disappeared for perhaps ten minutes and that seemed like an eternity. He returned with a supervisor in support. The supervisor acted as if he knew all about Carne's; like he'd seen them many times. He gave me a small form to complete--a list of all of my equipment and belongings not shown on the Carne'. He ordered the agent to copy the Carne' and attach it to the small form I had just completed. He then stamped both the carne' and the little form and gave them back to me. Remembering what my new friend had said about official documents, I placed the small paper with my most precious valuables. The agent never inspected any of the boxes. He stamped my passport and told me to move along. The entire process took perhaps a half hour. I later learned that just about everyone had a similar experience.

Once through customs, I located what appeared to be an ad hoc money exchange. I obtained $10.00 in Ukrainian coupons. The exchange rate was 262,000 coupons per dollar. To say the least, $10.00 American got me a lot of coupons--about 2,262,000! I bought a lukewarm beer that turned out to be quite nice and a candy bar. I then sat down to wait for the rest of the group.

I was through customs and officially in Ukraine. How about the rest of the group? To clear forty Americans though Ukrainian customs took approximately two hours. By the time we were all ready to say goodbye to this somewhat dreary place, it was after 6:00 PM. We walked out into the parking lot and, frankly, I was glad to get into the fresh air. The terminal was not only poorly maintained but it smelled of mildew; altogether a dreadful place I thought but I continued to smile and forget the experience as just part of what makes traveling so fascinating. We gathered our group in the parking lot. It was warm and extremely humid but then it started to rain slightly. I confess feeling wretched. Unfortunately, the worse was yet to come but I didn't know it!

We looked around for our bus. With some forty people and several tons of gear for the expedition, I expected to see a large bus or two on the order of a Greyhound type and perhaps a small truck. Instead, I saw a rather dilapidated red and silver bus about half the size of a typical tour bus. We had an interesting and insurmountable problem or so I thought: How to squeeze a group of forty people, plus a bus driver and his family of four, and all of our gear, into a bus designed for 36 people and very little luggage. One thing I learned about Ukrainians: ~They are up to almost any challenge! I was, however, very dubious that this vehicle would hold all of us and our gear let alone get us to our destination in Crimea some 1500 miles away.

The people associated with the tour bus company were not at all phased by the situation. The bus driver opened up the baggage compartments, which were, as usual, located below the seating area and accessed through large doors on the outside of the vehicle. We loaded up my gear first and proceeded to pack in whatever else would fit, which was not much because the compartment was not large. All of my gear nearly filled up one compartment. The situation was comical. There we were…. In an airport parking lot, in the rain, with nightfall approaching; 44 people, 36 seats, a huge pile of luggage, and no more storage space. As I learned, human reality is fairly well unregulated in Ukraine. We began loading luggage. First we stacked it on to the floor of the bus. We put down one row of large bags front to back. Then we laid down a second row of smaller bags. We continued stacking bags until the top row was level with the tops of the seat armrests. We still had a lot more gear to load. We piled luggage on the back seat to within a few feet of the ceiling of the bus. We filled up the rear door stairwell. We stored small bags in a narrow overhead space above our seats. Bags were stuffed under seats. Much to my astonishment, we managed to fit all of our gear onto the bus. We had a row of people sitting on top of the luggage in the rear of the bus. Individuals took their seats by crawling over luggage in the aisle. Two people sat on a small jump seat that pulled down from the wall of the front stairwell. The drivers family simply sat on the floor in front of the stick shift. My God I thought, what if the bus didn't have enough power to move? I didn't even want to think what would happen if we had to get off the bus in an emergency.

We were all seated--sort of. The driver climbed in behind the wheel and fired up the engine. The bus actually started up on the first key turn. The driver engaged the clutch and we were off. I took three tranquilizers, drank a warm beer, turned on my walkman, and tried not to think about what might be a very uncomfortable next 15 hours! It was still light out and since there were no reading lights I thought I'd read while I could. I took out English translations of Russian archaeological reports and tried to focus but found myself far more interested in Ukraine's countryside. We were just a few minutes from the airport and already in the middle of farmland with no city in sight. I wondered where Kiev was located. I never saw it on this trip. As long as it was light I was perfectly content to watch the countryside. Unfortunately, it grew dark all too soon. I stowed my book and leaned back in my seat. The seat itself was not uncomfortable. It did recline slightly. It had a headrest that was soft. I found myself dozing.

I thought the scenery we had just passed through didn't look much different than the American Midwest. Central Ukraine is known as the Black Soil Zone. Except for a somewhat colder climate, this zone looked an awful lot like Iowa, Kansas, and the Dakotas. It was flat and full of grain fields. It didn't take a doctorate in soil scientist to conclude that this is wonderful agricultural land. Those fields not full of crops exhibited very black soil; a Chernozem and this Black Dirt Zone was once the breadbasket of the entire Soviet Union.

Ukrainian History--Black Dirt Zone

Beginning with the so-called Emancipation Act of 1861, the peasant farmers of the northern and central Ukraine developed a reasonably successful agrarian program based largely on private ownership of land and its resources. The people who lived in this region a hundred years ago were prosperous, independent farmers. With the 1917 revolution and subsequent civil war, the economic situation changed. At first, the central government merely requisitioned agricultural surpluses. In 1920, the government nationalized major industries including certain agricultural industries such as sugar.

The immediate result of these policies was a drastic decline in productivity. In 1924, Lenin instituted what has become known as the New Economic Policy (or NEP). NEP was an attempt to combine market economics and socialism and in Ukraine, this period marked a period of Ukrainization of culture. Many industries were denationalized and Soviet agricultural output increased under NEP. The economic well being of many central Ukrainian residents improved greatly during this period. Lenin died in 1926 and was replaced by Stalin. Originally a supporter of NEP, Stalin came to view it as an unwelcome compromise with socialism's enemies--the middle class.

In response to the peasantry's refusal to sell their surplus goods to the state as a rate set by the state, Stalin, in 1929, instituted forced collectivization. In many areas, especially Ukraine, collectivization was resisted with force of arms. The forced collectivization process resulted in the destruction of an entire class of people: The upper-middle-class peasantry called the Kulaks. Millions of people died during collectivization.

The Seemingly Endless Drive

As time passed I became aware of the dark. There were very few cars on the road and no street lamps. Houses were few and far between, and stores and roadside facilities were non-existent as far as I could see. I was sitting next to an attractive and friendly middle-aged woman who was obviously not a student. She was a public relations professional who had been retained by the university to make a video of the trip. She was from Minneapolis and I had a lovely time talking with her. She had been to Russia recently and was an experienced traveler. She talked about a train trip she had taken two years previous between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Across the aisle was a female graduate student in religious studies (specializing in biblical archaeology) from an Ivy League university. She spoke with an obviously contrived refined speech pattern that was familiar to me since I attended a New England school. She was raised in Fairfield County, Connecticut and her father was a surgeon. I spoke with her for perhaps ten minutes and decided that she was a little snobbish, a description that I later revised. Her general lack of knowledge on the subject of her Harvard graduate studies was, to say the least, a surprise.

I was having a hard time staying awake. Not that one could really sleep in the bus--it was hot, damp, crowded, and noisy. Several of the project directors lounging on the baggage heap in the back of the bus had broken out a couple of bottles of Arak, a Middle Eastern alcoholic beverage that tastes something like Ouzo. Arak is very potent as I discovered. They were singing and generally carrying on with great gusto. I pushed my seat back as far as it would go, which was not very far, put in my earplugs, pulled my hat down over my eyes and dozed off. My sleep lasted perhaps an hour.

I woke up around 9:30 P.M. just as the bus began to slow down. I open my eyes in time to see our vehicle pull off of the road into what appeared to be a sort of roadside rest. No Golden Arches or gasoline stations here, however. There were the remains of a small building, some trees, and what appeared to be a small portable convenience store housed in what I learned was called a kiosk. Not at all like a US minimarket. It was more like a large ad hoc lemonade stand. People began to crawl out of the bus. I was the last one off. I inquired what it is we were doing. One of the directors told me we were going to eat dinner. I was astonished. I looked around and asked where we were going to do that? The bus driver proceeded to unload bags of food, including vegetables, what appeared to be sausage, cheese, and bread. None of it looked especially appetizing to me in my present state.

I wandered over to the kiosk, operated by two women and a man. They spoke no English and I spoke no Russian or Ukrainian. Nevertheless, we had no problems communicating. I bought a chocolate bar and two bottles of what appeared to be locally brewed beer. The chocolate cost maybe $0.25 and the beer was perhaps $0.12 per 20 oz. bottle. I opened the beer and walked back over to where people were eating. The beer was potent and in spite of the fact that it was warm, it was pleasant to taste; sweet and full-bodied. The food distributed by the bus driver still looked unappealing. Many of the people wondered where I found the beer. Most folks hadn't seen the kiosk. Some of our group walked over and bought beer or soda, candy, and whatever else was for sale.

Little did any of us know that this kiosk would be the last place we would be able to buy anything for more than twenty hours. I climbed back into the bus and found my bag with its large food stash. I grabbed some dried fruit, beef jerky, peanuts, and almonds. I took some bread and fresh vegetables from the bus driver as well as some fruit and settled down to eat dinner. It was a simple meal yet satisfying and very filling. Our stop lasted an hour. We left as abruptly as we had stopped.

The next leg of our journey proved to be akin to a drive from hell. In, 1980, I traveled from San Francisco to Miami on a Greyhound Bus. The trip took four days and was one of the most tiring experiences of my life with the best part spent with a couple of very cool African-Americans in a Lake Chahes blues club. I was so exhausted by the time I arrived in Miami that I slept for nearly twenty-four hours and I still was not fully recovered from the long sleep. I thought of the poor students in my group. I had three restful days in Copenhagen before I met them. These students had flown directly from the United States to Denmark (with a change of jets in London); they immediately boarded a jet for Kiev. Their total flight time was nearly 25 hours. They had two more hours spent in the Kiev airport and another three hours on the bus. These people had been awake for almost thirty hours. In reality, I had little to complain about. I took a few more of my pills and settled down for what I hoped would be long sleep. I slept for several hours. Around 2:00 AM I woke up to several jarring bumps. It felt like we were driving on a dirt road.

I sat up and looked outside and sure enough we were on a dirt road in the middle of a field. There wasn't a paved road in sight but I did see a darkened farmhouse. Obviously, the people therein were asleep. I wondered what they might have thought if they had woken up and looked outside? I never did figure out why we were driving on a dirt road. Amazing I thought. We bounced around for about an hour and made a U-turn in a farmers yard. I was thankful that we didn't break an axle with the load we were carrying. After a few more nasty bounces and one very large hole that nearly swallowed the bus up to its axles, we made it back to what appeared to be the main road--in the Ukraine of 1994, it was always difficult to tell main from back roads. There are no freeways, except, as I was to learn later, around the major cities like Kiev and Kharkov. All roads were two-lane; the main ones had vehicular traffic the back roads, some dirt some paved, did not. Once back on pavement, the excitement subsided and I dozed off. Again, I was struck by the apparent openness of the countryside. There was no traffic and for the most part, no lights to be seen anywhere; just millions of stars in what I thought was the biggest sky I'd ever seen.

I awoke once more, this time with the rising sun. We were still heading south. The driver found a wide spot on the side of the road and pulled off. The directors suggested that folks stretch their legs and go to the toilet. There was no toilet but the bushes served the purpose. I washed my face with some precious drinking water and brushed my teeth. I found a clean shirt and put it on. Then I went for a short walk to more fully wake up. The countryside was very much like many parts of rural middle America in the late spring. The air was slightly cool, fragrant, and very pleasant. The road was bordered by a row of trees that were undoubtedly planted as a windbreak. Beyond the trees on either side of the road were recently plowed fields with the ubiquitous dark soil. I saw no farmhouses or people and it was both quiet and still. I tried to imagine where I could travel in the United States to achieve this kind of solitude in so domestic a setting. Here I was surrounded by fields on a paved road and except for birds chirping and the low murmur of the people in my group, there was wonderful, complete silence. I have to say at this point I was completely hooked on the place but I didn't quite understand that yet. It was probably like this in the Great Plains in the 1930s or maybe the San Joaquin Valley in the 1950s or 1960s (before Los Angeles and the Bay Area spilled over the mountains).

The people in our group lined up haphazardly along the sides of the road and did whatever it was they needed to do; there wasn't much privacy but then no one complained; everyone was too exhausted. I had a bite to eat, drank some water, and enjoyed being outdoors. By now, word had filtered through the group that I had food and soon several requests for sustenance reached me. Nor was there a great quantity of potable water available. I had three letter liter bottles. I shared everything I had but unfortunately, what I possessed wasn't much. I was very happy that I purchased those two liters of water in Copenhagen and a third at the Kiev airport.

After a quick mental reconnoiter, I figured we hadn't reached the Black Sea; in fact, we had a ways to go yet just to reach Mykolaiv or Nikolayev, with almost 500,000 people, is the administrative center of Mykolaiv Oblast and arguably the main shipbuilding center on the Black Sea with three shipyards and several shipbuilding research centers. The city is also an important transportation hub.

It was time for a few more pills. The drive continued….I wondered if the bus would ever run out of gas. We had traveled more than 15 hours nearly non-stop. I estimated we had traveled maybe 600 miles. We never stopped for gas. I later learned that the bus driver carried five-gallon gas cans mounted on the front and back of the bus. Great, I thought, we were a rolling fuel bomb.

Back on the bus. The trek continued without let up, hour after hour after hour…..At this point, the entire affair began to get surreal. Everyone was completely exhausted, hot, and dirty. The bus smelled like forty dirty, sweaty people. Around 12:00 PM, we intersected with a main road heading more or less east-west. I figured this to be the road to Odessa, which was located to the west. There were no road signs anywhere. We turned east and continued onward. We soon crossed over the Dneipr River and entered a fairly large city that I later learned was Kherson.

The bridge over the Dneipr was a simple two-lane causeway more than a mile long. A railroad bridge paralleled the vehicle bridge on the north. I don't remember much of Kherson and I guess I must have fallen asleep but I recalled not seeing a single pedestrian. After almost twenty hours on the road, we finally arrived at our second big city, and I fell asleep. I guess Nikolayev wasn't much to look at. Not long after leaving Kherson perhaps a half hour, we crossed the Dneipr River again. We were now very close to the Black Sea, near the mouth of the Dneipr; the river was over a mile and half wide here with cranes, herons, and other waterbirds visible on the marshy shoreline. It was impressive. The second Dneipr River bridge was a rather mundane but functional two-lane causeway. At this location, the Dneipr showed evidence of commercial use. While I saw no ships or boats, I did see factories, warehouses, and docking facilities upstream. Both bridges were over 100 feet above the river; sufficiently high to allow fairly large ships to pass underneath. The height of the bridges was due, in part, to the fact that the rivers had eroded into the alluvial plain. I noticed steep banks along both rivers. These banks decreased in height to the north (upstream).

Kherson, I knew from my maps, was close to the narrow isthmus of land that connects the Crimea with the mainland. We didn't stop at Kherson, driving right through the city without slowing down. After leaving the road curved south and came down close to the Black Sea. My first view of the Black Sea and all I can remember is that the inside of the bus was by now hot, humid, and smelling of something pretty awful.

The peninsula that connects the mainland of Europe to Crimea is narrow, bordered on the east by a wide expanse of marshland and a shallow body of water called the Sea of Azov. In antiquity, Azov was called Sea of Maeotis. On the west is the open expanse of the Euxine or the Black Sea. Euxine is a euphemistic term meaning "friendly to travelers." The Black Sea is a body of water that must be seen to be appreciated. Most people have heard about the beauty of the azure-colored Aegean Sea, the turquoise blue of the Caribbean Sea, or the deep azure blue of the Coral Sea. Few people in the west have heard of the Black Sea let alone seen it. The Black Sea is aptly named. From a distance, the water appears dark. It is a large body of water nearly a 1,000 miles long and 600 miles wide. It is also fairly deep in some areas nearly 4,000 feet. It is landlocked with a narrow opening to the Mediterranean Sea at the well known Bosporus Strait. Much of the time, the Black Sea is calm, but it can be treacherous just like any other large body of open water. At the time of my first observation, the water gave the appearance of a sheet of black glass. The clean and refreshing smell of salt was in the air and all of the buses windows were opened to the extent that they could be. The visible shoreline was undeveloped, and scattered saltwater mash lands were present. I saw no beaches; rather the shoreline was a wave-cut terrace. Smelling salt water so far from the open ocean was odd. The Black Sea, however, is really an extension of the world's oceans and it is salty.

Ukrainian History—Black Sea Regional Geography

The history of the Black Sea is ancient. It is accepted that the Argonauts traveled there in search of the Golden Fleece, which was hidden in a land located at the western end of the Caucasus Mountains and the eastern side of the Black Sea. This land, called Colchis may have been settled early by Egyptian as early Greek historians referred to them as such. The prehistory and early history of the area we know as Georgia is very poorly known and it may hold some very important clues for the understanding of the early settlement of the Near East. The westernmost shores of the Black Sea were well known to the Greeks as early as the late Bronze Age ca. 1100 to 1300 B.C.E. and probably earlier. This knowledge may have come from direct visual observations made during overland visits or by word-of-mouth information. Scholars are uncertain when the first Greeks actually penetrated the two narrow straits into the Black Sea. There is excellent archaeological evidence that Ionian Greeks from the city-state of Miletus, in western Asia Minor, pioneered settlement of the Black Sea's coastal regions in the 8th century B.C.E. The earliest surviving written account of the region, however, is by Herodotus. Some time at the end of the Late Bronze Age, Greeks had established a small city called Byzantium on a strategically located point at the western end of the Bosporus Strait near an even more ancient and famous city called Troy. From this tiny settlement arose the successor of Rome; Constantinople, today called Istanbul.

Until the late Bronze Age mariners of all nationalities were unable to easily access the Black Sea by water. The swift currents and steady prevailing winds blowing in a westerly direction thwarted early navigators who had sailing ships with one sail and oars. Ships with a single sail can only navigate against currents and winds if they have room to maneuver; something that the Bosporus and the nearby Dardanelles straits do not have. Further, the currents flowing out of the Black Sea were apparently sufficiently strong to prevent access by rowed galleys. No one knows if the Greeks invented the jib sail; they may have borrowed the concept from their neighbors. We do know that, for several thousand years neither the Minoans or Phonecians, master sailors by anyone's definition, did not penetrate into the Black Sea region. For the Greeks, the region was a terra incognita until the settlements of the 7th century. Subsequently, the western and northern coast and hinterlands from modern-day Bulgaria to Odessa, Crimea (in antiquity called Tauric Chersonese), and the Cimmerian Bosporus became a major grain and wine producing region. By the 6th and 5th centuries, Greek settlements were on the eastern coast with major trading stations at Sinope and Trapezus on the northern shoreline of Anatolia. Sinope too was founded by Greeks from the Ionian city of Miletus. Trapezus was an ancient city located astride a major east-west caravan route but it wasn't until the arrival of Greeks from Sinope that the city grew substantially in economic importance.

There were two main Greek settlements in the Tauric Chersonese. Chersonesus and Panticapeum. The former was located on the north side of a peninsula that lies closest to the Bosporus Strait. The city may have been founded before the 5th century B.C.E., but the earliest firm date for Greek occupation is 422/421 B.C.E. Ponticapium, or Kerch, is on the Strait of Kerch in the eastern Crimea at a point where the Sea of Azoz meets the Black Sea. Panticapeum was founded in ca. 600 B.C.E. by people from Miletus on a site of an earlier settlement. By the 5th century B.C.E. Panticapeum had grown in importance and a small hinterland kingdom was established to resist the Scythians. The Scythians were a people who inhabited the wide region between the Dneipr and Volga rivers. The Greeks considered them to be a barbarian people, but then the Greeks considered all non-Greeks to be barbarians. It is most certainly true that the Scythians lacked a written language, and certainly, by Greek standards, they were less intellectual in their worldview. The Scythians, however, have left behind a marvelous record of artistic accomplishment ranging from beautifully-formed gold jewelry to ornate pottery and elaborate burial sites. The Scythians were also superb horseman and superior warriors, and for a number of centuries, they caused the more settled groups of Eastern Europe, especially the Greeks, nothing but problems. For the Greek colonists living along the coast of the Black Sea, it was often expeditious to pay the Scythian king tribute rather than engage his troops in battle. A chief city of the Scythians in the Tauric Chersonesus was Neapolis Scythia once located near Simferopol.

Chersonesus was founded by Greeks from Boeotia in central Greece. It soon became the principal urban settlement in the Tauric Chersonese, deriving much of its wealth from its vineyards and its strategic location. From the time of its founding the city was under constant pressure from Scythians and by the late 2nd and early 1st centuries, the pressure became so acute that the people of the city appealed to the kingdom of Pontus in northern Asia Minor for military assistance. Pontus incorporated Chersonesus into the kingdom of Cimmerian Bosporus. The city fell into Roman hands in the last few decades of the 1st century B.C.E. Augustus declared Chersonesus a free city in 36 B.C.E., after which the economy of the region flourished. The city was laid out in a symmetrical grid plan and surrounded by two lines of massive fortifications. The city had been subject to numerous archaeological investigations, almost none published in English. Archaeological features uncovered included Roman baths, several large pottery kilns and workshop areas, megalithic fortifications, cisterns for salting fish, at least one theater, a mint, several necropolis', two marketplaces or agora, and a legion barracks. As I learned later, Chersonesus survived well into the 13th century and in the early middle ages was a very important tributary city of Byzantium, with its own Hellenistic culture, complete with elaborate basilicas with mosaic floors, Senate, and republican form of government. For many centuries, the city was used by the Emperor as a place of banishment for undesirable political figures, including a deposed Emperor and his family and at least two Popes. More information on this city will follow since it was our final destination.

I would add one more fascinating fact about the Black Sea. Below a depth of 300 meters, the water is dead! Nothing can live there because the water lacks oxygen. This fact fascinated underwater researcher Robert Ballard. He decided that searching for ancient wrecks in this water would be ideal since preservation would be perfect. He made one startling discovery when he began his research. Along one of the shallow shelves that border the land, he scooped up several different species of shellfish off the bottom. What he found began a debate that continues. Some of the shellfish species occur all over the eastern Mediterranean Sea region. The rest of the shells represented extinct species that only lived in the Black Sea. As a trained geologist, this suggested to Ballard that at one time the Black Sea was not connected to the Mediterranean Sea. Some have suggested that the flooding of the Black Sea region occurred when the sea level rose to create the straits that separate the Black and Mediterranean seas. This effect may be related to the stories of the Biblical Flood. Other's including myself find this explanation for the Biblical flood legend unlikely. Its major drawback is that flood legends are not just found in the Near East. Almost every region of the world has a flood legend and in many lands, the legend forms an important part of local religion. From my perspective, the recent suggestions of small cometary impacts during the last Ice Age that not only increased the air temperature causing melting ice but ended a long worldwide cold spell that probably caused worldwide flooding.

Of course, much of this is speculative but the evidence for one or perhaps two ice age impacts several thousand years apart exists. The effects on the planet are presently under debate with some suggesting they caused the crust of the earth to shift on the mantle, while others claim massive tsunamis, rapid increases in air temperature, and a mini nuclear winter type scenario. Whatever happened, if it affected the planet sufficiently to create regional flood legends. Such events must have been catastrophic. Cometary impacts have occurred in the past and they will no doubt occur again in the future.

Back to the story

We were still a long way from Sevastopol….and unfortunately, the bus remained hot and I was just about out of water Further, the air vent that had been providing me with a little fresh air had broken (hot engine exhaust was wafting in and the vent had to be shut off). Since the windows could be lowered but a few inches the heat was becoming stifling. At least we were on the Crimean Peninsula heading south to the city of Simferopol, which I estimated was about two hours away. I sat back and watched the countryside roll by; farmland steppe for the most part. The Crimean interior reminded me of Oklahoma or the Texas Panhandle. The region was flat and, for the most part, featureless. There were few trees and very few people. We passed a few building and occasionally an elderly women selling fruit and/or vegetables. Mercifully, the bus pulled off the road at a place where several people were selling food. The most common items were tomatoes, melons (similar to Crenshaw), and apples. I also saw cucumbers and squash. One person was selling candy and soda. Another had a few lukewarm locally brewed bottles of beer. Obviously, the people selling the goods were farmers. Everyone dressed in a similar fashion, in overalls or work dresses, loose-fitting shirts, or smocks. No one with whom I met spoke English and I rather think these folks were surprised to see such a large group of English speaking people so far off the tourist trail. Nevertheless, everyone was extremely friendly and helpful. After a 30 minute respite, we reboarded the bus and were on our way south.

The scenery hardly changed for the more than two hours it took for us to reach Simferopol. It was approximately 3:00 PM when we arrived in the administrative center of the Crimea. It seemed like a pleasant enough place, with wide, tree-lined boulevards and neat, well-maintained houses and buildings. It wasn't a large city and it had no large buildings that I could see. Further, although I had read that the Scythian capital of Neapolis Scythia was located in Simferopol, the city did not seem old.

Ukrainian History Section--Simpheropol Region

From the 3rd century B.C.E onward Neapolis Scythia was the capital of the Royal Scyths, a militaristic people who lived in the region until the early centuries of the common era. Originally invaders from the northern steppes, the Scythians appear to have undergone significant Hellenization after the 3rd-century B.C.E., probably owing to their frequent contact with the hostile neighboring state of Cimmerian Bosporus. There is archaeological evidence for a permanent Greek settlement within the Scythian city. Before 200 B.C.E., Neapolis Scythia was surrounded by a strong stone and mortar wall with two towers flanking the main gate. Both remains of the exterior walls and Hellenistic style structures within the city have been unearthed. The cemeteries of Neapolis Scythia are monumental and varied. Of note is a mausoleum that contains seventy-two richly furnished tombs, which are probably representative of the royal Scythian house. A smaller cemetery consisting of Hellenistic tombs and niches has yielded painted walls depicting Scythian houses and hunting scenes. The city ceased to exist about the same time the Scythians disappeared from history in the second century C.E.

The Seemingly Never-ending Bus Ride Comes to an End

We drove a few miles into Simferopol and then stopped at what appeared to be a hotel/resort. The parking lot was empty. All of us piled out of the bus and mobbed the lobby of the main building. It was difficult to imagine what the people working at this establishment thought of us. For all I knew, were we the first Americans they had ever seen. It was quite a scene! It seemed like we were a million miles from home, in a very strange and exotic land, surrounded by people who did not speak English and had, so we thought, little knowledge of our customs. Our group broke into three subgroups. One band headed for the bathrooms and drinking fountain. Another went to the desk to exchange money. A third group, including myself, headed for a glass counter containing various food items. Behind the counter was a glass door refrigeration unit with cold soda and beer. After obtaining some refreshment I sought out was a money exchange, which was the main desk. They were not equipped to deal with large-scale exchanges. I was only able to change a $10.00 bill and our group pretty much cleaned them out of Ukrainian coupons. I took my cash, food, and drink and then exited the building. I enjoyed being outside of the cramped hot bus. The air was sweet smelling and clean; not at all hot. The grounds of the hotel were covered with various types of trees. Some looked like palm trees while other possessed broad leaves. After a thirty-minute respite we reboarded the bus. I felt like a galley slave forced to return to his oars but having little choice, we climbed aboard. The seat I was in was wet from sweat and had a odious smell. We had perhaps two hours before we arrived in Sebastopol.

The road between Simferopol and Sebastopol is bumpy but the view was interesting and constantly changing. We left the flat steppes behind just north of Simferopol and immediately to the south, we entered a highly eroded, hilly country with many trees along the road and on the hillsides. Vehicular traffic had increased significantly. About an hour out of Simferopol we came to an inspection station. We were informed by one of the project directors that we were about to enter the Sevastopol Federal Area, a sort of federally-run enclave within the Crimean Autonomous Region of the Ukraine.

The inspection station was run by more poker-faced men in green uniforms, and there was a line of vehicles waiting to pass through into the restricted region. The bus pulled off to the right and we piled out. The immediate vicinity was barren; the soil was whitish with sparse vegetation, low and scrubby. It was hotter here than in Simferopol and there wasn't any shade in sight. Every passenger on the bus gave his/her passport to the project director in charge of administrative matters. With our passports were special visas: One to get us into the Crimea and the other into Sevastopol. These documents, we were informed, would be very carefully matched against a list of guests approved by the Ukrainian ambassador in New York. Before 1996, a person needed an official invitation to get into Sevastopol. The list of approved guests was on official letterhead. I figured that even with official documents, entry would be neither quick nor easy and I was correct in both assessments. Fortunately, we did have a number of people with us who spoke Russian; in fact, one of our party was a bona fide Ukrainian citizen from the city of Zaporozhye. She was apparently able to translate various requests and provide adequate responses because in about an hour we were piling back on the bus. It appeared that all of our documents checked out and we were all permitted to enter the restricted area.

Ukrainian History Section--Sevastopol/Crimean War

The Sevastopol Federal District was established around what was once the top secret Russian naval base by the same name. Known to the west as Sebastopol, the city/base was established by Catherine the Great in the late 1700s as the home for the Imperial Russian Black Sea Fleet. It was from this port that the Russian Tsars hoped to accomplish their dream of capturing the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits and Constantinople, thereby establishing unrestricted access to warm ocean waters. In the 19th century, the British and the French supported the Ottoman Empire in order to thwart Russia's attempts at this endeavor. In the early 1850s, the allies (English, French, and Turkish forces) declared war on Russia, fought several set battles in Bulgaria, notable around Varna, and interior Crimea at the Alma River, Inkerman Hills, and Traktir Bridge (Balaclava), and laid siege to the city of Sebastopol for nine months. Perhaps the most infamous, and least significant of the set engagements was the Battle of Balaclava. In his "The Charge of the Light Brigade", Tennyson colorfully tells the story of a brigade of British cavalry that attempted to dislodge a large force of Russians who held commanding positions on the hills surrounding what has come to be called the North Valley.

The Light Brigade consisted of five regiments of cavalry totaling roughly 700 led by the flamboyant but largely incompetent Lord Cardigan. Light Brigade regiments included the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons, the 8th and 11th Hussars, and the 17th Lancers. At the time, a rather significant number of British military strategists argued that no defensive position, however well defended, could withstand the full charge of swift light cavalry. The Light Brigade valiantly charged through the North Valley into intense artillery and musket fire. British losses were more than 50% and they failed to take their objective. They did, however, gain everlasting glory courtesy of British Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson. As history reveals, the battle was of no strategic or tactical significance. Interestingly, it is also a battle that Russians never talk about even though they won a victory. No Russian or Ukrainian I met could or would take me to the North Valley, the so-called "Valley of Death" and no one had ever heard of Traktir Bridge, the focus of the British charge that day long ago in 1853. I found the location myself using William Russell and Roger Fenton's 1954-1856 History of the Crimean War, a three-volume treatise that I brought with me.

A battle of far greater importance was that of the Inkerman Hills. This battle may have been Russia's last real chance to claim a victory in the Crimean War. In this battle, the bravery of Russian soldiers proved no match for modern allied weaponry. The British rifled muskets using the French Mine' ball decimated Russian regiments armed with smoothbore muskets of Napoleonic vintage. After Inkerman Hills, the Russians under Admiral Nakhimov fell back to the fortress city of Sevastopol, sank several large ships to block the harbor entrance from the British fleet, and settled in for a lengthy siege. After some nine months, the allied losses from disease and other illnesses was so great that they were forced to abandon the field and leave the region. The Russian victory, however, was Pyrrhic. The city was largely in ruins, thousands of soldiers and citizens had starved to death or died of diseases, and the magnificent harbor had been badly damaged by sunken wrecks and British naval bombardment. Both sides paid a heavy price for what amounted to a strategic stalemate.

Russia maintained a large fleet at Sevastopol throughout the 19th century and up to the time of the 1917 October Revolution, which brought the Communist Party into power. The Soviet Navy continued to use the naval base after the revolution. The city was besieged by the German Wehrmacht led by General von Manstein in 1942. After a siege of several months, the city fell with losses of over 150,000 soldiers and even more citizens. The city was almost demolished. In fact, evidence of this destruction was visible in 1994. After the war, the Russians re-established an even larger naval base in the city and a submarine base at Balaclava. Severe travel restrictions excluded virtually all foreigners and most Soviet nationals. Our group was the large foreign contingent in the region since the 1917 October revolution. During our visit, the first NATO ships (British) ever to port at Sevastopol spent two days in the City. I found it odd talking to British sailors inside of a Russian naval port. They felt the same way and said as much.

The End of the Trip

The bus passed through the inspection station. I did not have a map but with my eyes closed, I easily recreated a virtual map of the region in my mind. Off to the right and into the distance was a long channel that led to the harbor. At the narrow end of the channel and to the south were the Inkerman Hills. We were driving through the very hills where the Russian and British armies had fought a bloody battle some 150 years ago. The Inkerman Hills immediately reminded me of the California Coast Range mountains. Like the Coast Ranges, the Inkerman Hills were nearly devoid of vegetation except for grasses, burned brown by the sun, and low, scrubby bushes on the south-facing slopes. The hills were generally rounded with steep sides and deeply eroded, dry arroyos; the deeper ravines sometimes contained a few low trees. Unlike the California Coast Ranges, the Inkerman Hills were composed of limestone. The main road into the city consisted of two lanes and it followed the contours of the hills in order to avoid creating unnecessarily steep road grades. While the road grade was not steep, the road path was extremely winding. The steep hills ended abruptly at the edge of the developed part of the city. While Sevastopol was built on a series of hills, these were low rounded elevations. The terrain of the city was considerably less rolling then the terrain we had just left.

The city of Sevastopol was built on the edge of the Black Sea, at the head of a magnificent harbor. The city is penetrated to its extreme inland limits by a natural channel, wide at its mouth and tapering to nearly a point at its end in the Inkerman Hills. This channel effectively divides the city into two distinct parts. The central part of the city is located to the south of the channel. The Russian naval base is along the southern side of the harbor with a few ships docked on the north. Prior to the demise of the Soviet Union, the entire Black Sea fleet was based in Sevastopol Harbor. After the break up, the fleet was unevenly divided between Russia and the Ukraine. The Russians more or less booted the Ukrainians out of the harbor and they relocated to Balaclava Harbor about 20 miles to the southeast.

Balaclava was once the home of the Russian Black Sea submarine fleet. Over the years urban sprawl has extended the city outward in all directions. Originally, Sevastopol was built to the north of the ancient city of Chersonesus. After more than one hundred and fifty years city completely surrounds the ancient one. The Russian naval base is located immediately to the north of the Chersonesus Preserve, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The Preserve is surrounded by residential areas and resorts for common working folk as well as the naval base.

The route from the outskirts of the city to the Preserve--a trip of about an hour--was very convoluted, over bumpy, narrow, and winding roads, and I have never been able to figure out just how we drove through the city on that late afternoon in June. Most of the city visible along the route appeared new; certainly post-World War II. There were numerous unfinished buildings and many vacant lots with tall weeds. The large Orthodox basilica exhibited a hole in the central part caused by 1942 German artillery. A tall crane was parked next to the hole but I was subsequently told that it had been there for a couple of decades and hadn't moved.

Eventually, we came upon a large, open square lined on two sides with stores and kiosks and occupied by hundreds of people and small vendor carts. I noted one department store, a bakery, and a dry goods store. Just off the square was a small theater. We made a right turn in the middle of the square and drove down a very narrow, tree-lined road, past the telephone exchange and post office. This street terminated at the resort we would call home for the next six weeks. The bus pulled up to the entrance of the resort and with difficulty drove through the front gate barely clearing the gate arch.

Everyone piled out and began the task (some would later call it an ordeal) of unloading our and sorting gear. At the same time, one of the directors began assigning rooms. There were maybe three or four female attendants to receive us. There was also a uniformed security guard. The female workers were dressed in all white uniforms and looked a lot like nurses. None spoke English but our translators were able to arrange everything without delay. Since my gear was loaded on the bus first, it was last off. After just about everyone headed to their rooms, I finally collected my equipment and with the assistance of some of the group settled into my room on the second floor of the Sanitorium as our temporary home was called. It was about 9:00 P.M. We had been on the bus for 29 hours. I was dirty and sweaty but not tired and the showers were closed. Not much to do but read and a hope for a good night sleep. As I lay in bed thinking about the next few weeks I found myself thinking not so much about what the next few weeks would bring. My main concern was breakfast and a shower. I was to learn the next day that running water was available 3 days a week and hot water was available for a few hours Saturday afternoon. The running water was not potable. At the time, this seemed like a major inconvenience but it ultimately proved rather unimportant.