I return to Crimea and to my blog

It has been almost six months since I last wrote a blog post. I’ve been to America and back—for six weeks in July and August-- where I sold my house and all my belongings save for one box of outdoor gear, one kayak paddle, my  cross county skis. Now I have more stuff here in Crimea, though that isn’t much—clothes and a few books. So far, that feels very good—when I think of something of mine that I had grown to love, or so I thought—certain clothes or books or souvenirs from my travels—I feel no sense of loss but only a kind of fond memory of something I once appreciated. Perhaps when, or if, I try to reestablish a home for myself in America, I will miss all those things, but I think not. When I envision a future home, it is a small place—a single room with a kitchen and a bathroom—with few possessions.  I have learned to live with very little here—I am hoping the comfortableness with that way of life will carry forward into whatever my future brings.

I feel now that my time here is starting to wind down. I know I have talked of possibly staying on in Crimea after the end of my Peace Corps stint, but now I am feeling that is less of a probability. I think that more than anything, for as long as I am mentally and physically able, I want to continue to do productive work in my life, but I feel the opportunities for that here in Crimea are dwindling. The major part of my work at the library is drawing to a close. Most of the grant work I have done at the library has been through the Peace Corps, and now I am no longer eligible for any of those grants. I will continue to search for other grant possibilities for the library but I know those are limited.

But I feel the major reason for my sense that my work here has little future is the language barrier. Though I feel competent in getting around and having conversations on a surface level, the language fluency necessary to have deeper conversations—to discuss project ideas, to process successes and failures, to just be creative—continues to allude me.  I do feel there is much I could continue to do here if I could work with English-speaking people, but at least in the Crimean Tatar world, they are few and far between. It feels like I have come up against a wall—this is as far as I can go—or maybe as far as I am willing to go—without the language to thoroughly understand and partake of the conversations around me. Recently I learned a Russian verb that in the negative means to “not take part,” and in the example, referred to someone who could not take part in a conversation because he didn’t know English well enough. And I thought to myself, “Yes, that is me exactly.” 

In my home life, too, I have come up against this wall. Lately, Lenura has asked me several times “Am I sad? Is something wrong?” obviously picking up on the current turbulence of my feelings about my life here, despite my belief that on the surface, at least, I am carrying on as usual—I guess “body language” doesn’t have that lost-in-translation problem. But despite my desire to talk with Lenura—to try and find the words for what I am feeling—I shy away from doing that, the memory so fresh of the last time I tried to talk about my feelings and her ending being up hurt because of something I inadvertently said, and I not even realizing how hurt she was until she told Serdar about it and then he told me. 

So I am beginning to think more about what my future will bring and trying to trust that the path of my life will open up before me and that I will recognize the steps I need to take. And to not feel discouraged or depressed by my changing circumstances here and continue to be present to the abundant joy in my life. 

And towards that goal, I have made an effort to get out hiking practically every weekend since I have been back from America. It is getting harder to do that now as the weather turns colder and the daylight hours have shriveled, but what a glorious autumn it was. In the next few blog posts, I will try to post some photos and highlights of those tramps around Crimea.
Once again, with love from Crimea.

A second trip to cave city Eski Kermin

Olga and I on the road to Eski Kermen

A friendly donkey along the way

The road to Eski Kermen

Lilya and I share lunch in one of the caves out of the rain

Elmaz and Zarema pose in one of the caves

Summer has descended here in Crimea. Hot, hot, hot. Time for trying to stay in the shade, visiting the sea, getting out my trusty fan—the best 5 griven (50 cents) purchase I ever made in Crimea—for those oh-so-hot bus rides home from work. And probably also time for suspending our weekly hikes. But we are hoping for at least one more and that the mountains will be cooler. Sunday a small group of us will head up to the beautiful Demerdji plateau, once again in search of the allusive Djur Djur waterfall which Cheryl and I failed to find on our last hike there. This time we will have some Russian native speakers with us, so that might help; however, none of them have experience with this trail. Though if our luck continues to hold, we will find someone on the way to the trail that will want to join us and show us the route! It’s Wednesday right now, we plan on hiking Sunday, and anything can happen between now and then.

I feel myself starting to fade away from doing blog posts—maybe it’s a sign of Crimea becoming more and more my real home—or at least one of them--and not a place where I am visiting and writing blog posts about.  After all, I never wrote blog posts about my life in Minneapolis. But I also continue to feel that tug to record what I am doing, that desire to tell people about this world in Crimea. I know that by now probably few people read my blog, that my telling most likely does not have much of an audience.  Still, I feel the desire to keep on with it--I think mostly in the hope that maybe someday it will give me something to grab hold of when I think of my Crimean life.

So, what have I been doing since that 11-hour trek on Chatyr Dag? Lots, it seems. Gearing up for my departure to the States on July 6^th—taking care of house selling business there, making appointments, contacting friends and family, making travel arrangements—plus trying to get a lot of work done at the library—finishing writing a grant that is due June 30^th, hassling with bank transfers for two of our open grants, trying to finish up one of the smaller grants. As usual, wheels turn frustratingly slow here, but I do have faith that it all will happen by the time I leave. And if not, well, I will be back.

And though it seems the weekends should be a time of relaxation and catching up on sleep, I have continued to pursue my current plan of trying to get out hiking one day every weekend. When I was going through the doldrums in the winter, I realized even more strongly how important it is for my sense of well-being to find myself at least once a week out happily tramping the trails of Crimea.

So in keeping with that policy, the following Sunday after Chatyr Dag, a group of us set off to hike to the cave city of Eski Kermen. I had been there once before—on my first birthday here—but we were rained out on that day and only got to explore part of the ruins. I had always wanted to go back, so was glad for the chance. And I was especially glad that Anton, even though he wasn’t able to go with us, came up with an alternative route to get there which was a lovely hike along an old dirt road that wound through forests and valleys bordered by high rock walls that contorted into unusual rock formations.So much better than the asphalt road through old collective farms that we hiked before.

A view out a cave window

Olga

Some of the many caves

The intrepid explorer

The cave city of Eski Kermen is a vast network of over 400 caves carved out of the cliff walls on a high plateau. Established in the 8^th century BC, it was the home for the ancient civilizations of Crimea and later the early Christians, as evidenced by the altars and icons carved into the walls of the caves. Nothing is left of the above ground structures, but the multi level caves are fascinating to explore. At one place, there is an ancient stairway carved out of the earth that goes down into the darkness to a well that provided water for the town when it was under siege. We didn’t venture down—it looked way too scary and you really couldn’t see where it ended up. In the US, it would have been blocked offas “too dangerous,” as maybe many of the caves would have been, but here there was just a warning sign to be careful. And even that is a rarity in Ukraine. Safety concern as we know in America is not a common practice in Ukraine.

Because Cheryl couldn’t go at the last minute (she is now in the throes of her own visa registration hell), I was the only native English speaker in the group. And though everyone spoke a little English—the group consisting of the three young women at the library who are in my English class (Lilya, Elmaz, and Zarema) plus Anton’s mother Olga—I knew it would be a different experience to not have anyone I could really talk to.  However, it didn’t much bother me. I have become so accustomed to communicating though the language barrier, to be on the outside of conversations among Russian speakers, that much of the time I am okay with it, that I don’t feel I need to know everything that is being said. Indeed, sometimes I think it is one of the reasons my life seems so peaceful here--the other side of the immense frustration I often feel and frequently write about.  I enjoyed being with everyone on the hike and it was fine to sometimes feel alone amidst the group. It did not change the underlying feeling of friendship and warmth, and, as always, I was so grateful to just be here.

Love from Crimea.

Trail Food on Chatyr Dag

Recently after a truly glorious--though exhausitng--11-hour hike on Chatyr Dag mountain, I wrote this blog post for The Pickle Project. Here it is in its entirety because at the moment I am too lazy to edit it!

One of the things that has amazed me about food in Ukraine—and continues to amaze me after three years of living here—is how Ukrainians never hesitate to turn an ordinary meal into a banquet.  Weddings, holiday gatherings at work, birthday dinners at home, relatives visiting, breaking of religious fasts, guests from a different country—the list is endless of the opportunities to turn a typically “good” meal into a true feast.

But nowhere do I see this phenomenon so dramatically as out on the hiking trail. More than once I have been travelling with a group of Ukrainians, carrying all of our food and water on our backs, only to sit down for lunch and watch them pull out a vast array of differentdishes to share with everyone—a true trailside banquet. This past weekend was a case in point. My hiking partner, fellow Crimean Peace Corps Volunteer Cheryl Pratt, and I joined with our newest Ukrainian fellow hikers for a day trip into the Crimean mountains. Our group was composed of: Lilya, a young woman who works at my library; Anton, a young man we met on our last hiking trip (where he helpfully guided us back to the right trail as we had gotten a bit lost); his mother Olga, an attractive, very fit looking woman in her forties who works as a psychologist in two local schools; and two individuals we met on the trolleybus on the way to our starting point—Pavel, a 60-something TV technician, and his 13-year old son, Boris. Pavel had heard Cheryl and I speaking English on the trolleybus while looking at a trail map. He gave us lots of friendly advice on future trail possibilities, and then askedif he and his son could join us that day. But, in truth, we ended up joining them. Pavel turned out to be a very experienced hiker and had been on the mountain many times and knew the correct route (which I was a little hazy about). We also realized he was an excellent English speaker, a rarity in a Ukrainian of that age. He told us that in his earlier life he had been a professor of English at a local university.

As we began the long trek up to the high plateau of Chatyr Dag (“tent mountain” in Crimean Tatar), Pavel pointed out the vegetation along the way, frequentlygiving us the Russian, Latin, and Crimean Tatar names, and told us some of the history of the area --how the plateau was at one time used as a pasture for Crimean Tatar shepherds and later Soviet collective farms--and also how to find some of the fifty caves located on the vast plateau. What a wealth of information he had, and oh so wonderful, he spoke English and I could understand him!

After struggling up some very steep inclines, we finally reached the plateau and made our way to the lowest of the two peaks on Chatyr Dag, marveling at the views all around us as we were on the second highest mountain in Crimea. To the south was the Black Sea, to the east and west the peaks and plateaus of the Crimean mountain range, and far to the north, the city of Simferopol.Somewhere in those distant northern ridges wasmy village of Ak Mechet, where I so frequently gazed at this very place we were standing on.

The fog from the sea rolled in and out, temporarily obscuring our views and the warmth of the sun. This sea fog is the reason that the Crimean mountains, though not high, are considered dangerous, as the frequent and sudden fogs result in several deaths every season when inexperienced hikers become lost and stumble over the steep precipices on the edges of the mountain plateaus.

Deciding to take a break after our steep climb, we all settled down on the soft carpet of alpine grass and got out lunch. As usual, Cheryl and Ipulled out our standard lunch fare—cheese, bread, hard boiled eggs, cucumbers (in season now), apples, and cookies. Pavel and Olga, however, had other things in mind. First, Olga got out a flower print plastic tablecloth and spread it on the ground. Then she started hauling out food from her and Anton’s backpacks: a plastic container of cheese pancakes (made from the local cottage cheese called tovorg which is frequently sweetened with sugar); another container of cutlets (ground meat mixed with onions and herbs and fried in the ubiquitous sunflower oil);a large bag of cucumbers; bread (“baton” in Russian, what Americans call French bread);  pre-made sandwiches (egg salad I think) on two types of bread, white and dark; and apples and juice. Pavel added salo (cured slabs of fatback, an Ukrainian national food)that he cut into small pieces with his hunting knife, fried pieces of fish, and “blinchikis” (thin crepe-like pancakes wrapped around some kind of filling) filled with a meat/spice mixture that was quite tasty.

Both Olga and Pavel assured us that all the food was “domashne”—made at home from scratch, as it always is in Ukraine. Pavel even made sure that we knew his mother (whom I’m thinking must be at least 80) made those blinchikis. And also, as always, food was brought to share and in large quantities and was laid out in the middle of the tablecloth where we all gathered around and chose from the many offerings.

 I think about our typical American hiking lunches—each individual having their own sandwich and maybe an apple and a couple of cookies (something I have learned NOT to do here in Ukraine)--and think, “yep, these Ukrainians really have this food thing figured out.” What a wonderful meal in the middle of what turned out to be a long and arduous hike. It provided nourishment for our bodies and also a chance to share with other people, who before that day were mostly strangers, the fruits of our labor.

Rested, satiated, filled with the pleasure of eating delicious food surrounded by the beautiful scenery of Crimea, we were ready to trek on to the highest peak on Chatyr Dag, a few kilometers away, and then down and across the lower plateau to our final destination of the village of Perevalnoe and the trolleybus back to Simferopol. Daylight had faded by the time we arrived in the village after our 11-hour hike, but despite our tired and sore bodies, I think we were all filled with wondrous memories of the day and the gladness of finding new friends to share it with. And of having eaten some really good food.

My friend Robin comes to Crimea

At Hrdilez, the Crimean Tatar spring festival

The caverns along the coast in Novy Svit

Robin at Swallow's Nest with the Black Sea behind her

At Serdar's university

Signing autographs at the Victory Day parade in Simferopol

At the library with Nadjie

Looking out a "window" from one of the caves in Chufat Kale

Last night with the family

My last couple of weeks was taken up with my pal Robin coming to visit me in Ukraine!  What a great time we had. I had been planning her visit for weeks, trying to narrow down all the choices to the best possible places. We kind of ran out of steam at the end, but we managed to see some beautiful sights in both Kyiv and Crimea.

I took the train up to Kyiv to meet Robin’s plane and got us a nice apartment to stay in the center (apartment rental instead of hotels is a common practice here and other European countries—cheaper and usually a lot nicer). Robin’s visit happened to fall on two major holidays in Ukraine—Labor Day and Victory Day. Labor Day is a big communist holiday and sure enough, as we tried to get to the subway station on the main street in Kyiv, we were greeted by large groups of people carrying the communist party flag marching down the middle of the boulevard. I’m sort of used to seeing communist party signs and paraphernalia, but I think it was pretty interesting for Robin—a true ex-Soviet country experience.

Besides our encounter with the communist party, we also saw many of the famous historic sites in Kyiv, did some souvenir shopping (for the nephew a Green Bay Packers Russian matrushka stacking doll!) had a great meal at a Georgian restaurant, and made our way out to Babbi Yar, the site of the worst single massacre of Jews in the Holocaust. There are three memorials there, including a large beautifully decorated menorah which marks the actual ravines where people were shot. The whole area is a large suburban park now, and the ravines are mostly hidden by dense woods. But here and there you come out into a clearing and peer over into a ravine, and stop a minute and think what it must have been like for those thousands of people who thought they were going to a different community and instead were taken to their deaths. It was a peaceful place, those woods once filled with such horror. Nature is so indifferent to the cruelties of humans.

Robin wanted the experience of an overnight train trip in Ukraine, so I had booked a “kupe” for our trip to Simferopol. We lucked out and got one of the new kupes, which means the bathrooms are self-contained and not locked during the station stops (because the rest of the time they use the tracks for their disposal), and we shared our 4-person compartment with two delightful young people who spoke some English. One of them was going to be married in five days, so it was pretty fun to be in on his excitement. They both got off a few hours before Simferopol, so we had the luxury of the compartment to ourselves for the always somewhat hectic last few hours (imagine sharing a tiny bedroom with three strangers and trying to negotiate getting up, getting dressed, putting away the bed things, having some tea, packing and being ready to hop off the train the instant it stops, as some trains only remain at a station for a few minutes).

Serdar and a taxi were waiting for us at the train station in Simferopol, and we were whisked home to a wonderful, warm welcome from the family, a welcome that only grew the longer Robin was with us. There were many great meals, lots of laughter trying to communicate with me as a translator (I didn’t do TOO bad…), pictures of family and home to share, and on Robin’s final night, she took them out to dinner and we all ended up dancing! Well, not Safie and Serdar—Safie occupied herself taking videos of us and Serdar spent a lot of his time off somewhere talking on his phone.  But Neshet and Lenura and Robin and I all love to dance in our own worlds, so it was a lovely experience to share that passion across the barriers of language and culture. We did Crimean Tatar dances, folk dances Robin remembered (or tried to at Neshet’s urging) and plain own disco. What a joyful end to Robin’s visit to Crimea.

I won’t go into much detail about what all we did in Crimea, as we traveled mostly to places I had been before (and recorded in this blog) and that I knew she would love to see—the spectacular coastal trail in Novy Svit, the palace of the khans and the cave city of Chufat Kale in Bakchiseray, the trails around Ak Mechet that lead up to the top of rock cliffs with beautiful views of the surrounding pastureland and distant mountains, the annual Crimean Tatar spring festival of Hirdilez where she had a chance to experience Crimean Tatar culture in full display. We made the obligatory trip to Yalta, that being the one place in Crimea almost all foreigners have heard of. There we did something new (for me)—we took a boat tour down the coast to the “Swallow’s Nest”—a castle perched on top of a steep cliff that is the often photographed symbol of Crimea and even of Ukraine. I had been there before but had read that it was best viewed from the sea. And I would have to agree with that, but what interested me more was the whole view of Yalta and the surrounding coastline. I had often seen pictures of that view from the sea and also reproductions of old paintings. Out on the boat and gazing back at the original old waterfront buildings of Yalta, I had a glimpse of how Yalta must have looked two hundred years ago during Czarist times. If I could block out the ugly (to me) high rises that pop up everywhere, I could understand how this beautiful coastal city was a haven for writers like Chekov and a magnet for the Russian aristocracy. Yalta and the surrounding mountains were also an ancestral home for many Crimean Tatars in the centuries before Russia took over Crimea, and that too I could envision.  Those few hours on the sea gave me an appreciation of Yalta that I have been hard put to find amidst the glitz and commercialism of modern day Yalta, and for that I was grateful.

Love to all from Crimea, where it is lonely without my friend Robin.

Return to Paragilmen

Mt. Paragilmen

I think we might be jumping right to summer here. Sure warmed up fast, but these beautiful sunny days are such a treat after our long drawn out cold winter. Last weekend I made it out hiking once again with my PCV pal Cheryl and our “protégé,” as Cheryl calls her, Lilya from the library. This time we went to Mt. Paragilmen down on the coast where I had gone with Safie and her classmates last fall. Then we never made it to the top of the mountain, as fog descended and obscured the plateau in a thick wall of grey, and our guide wisely (as it turns out because later we encountered a pair of hikers who had come down from the top and said it was snowing up there) chose to keep his charges on a path at the base of the mountain. So I resolved to go back when the weather was better and there was a chance of hiking to the top.

Here we are at the top!

Anton, one of our new hiking companions.

As usual, I only vaguely knew where we were going and the maps I had were of little use. But we got off at a trolleybus stop somewhat after our original destination along with a group of backpackers who also didn’t seem to know where they were going. But after rearranging gear from our long trolleybus ride, we all started trudging back up the highway to the turnoff that I remembered from my previous trip. We soon lost the backpackers as they appeared to be going somewhere other than Paragilmen, and Cheryl and Lilya and I started searching for a trail that I was sure must exist somewhere that would lead us to the top. On the map, Paragilmen is marked as a botanical reserve and I had read a brief description of it on the internet that talked about the rare plants found on the plateau.  So I assumed there would be many trails leading to the top, and we just had to find one. But apparently that isn’t the case, as we started off on several trails that looked promising but then just petered out in the forest. Eventually we just took to bush whacking our way up, something that Lilya wanted to do from the beginning but was held back by Cheryl and I’s cautiousness. Ah, the optimism of youth—“Get lost? What’s that? We can’t get lost…”

As it turned out, it wasn’t too hard going. I could tell from our map that the back side of the mountain gradually sloped upwards and the woods were not so leafed out that we couldn’t mostly continuously keep the peak in sight. Finally we arrived out on to the openness of the plateau and were greeted by magnificent views of the sea in front of us and Babugan plateau—the area of the highest peaks of Crimea—behind us.

There was only one other group of people up there—a woman and her two young sons—so it was not the popular hiking destination I thought it was, and thus the lack of trails. We asked the woman how they came up to the plateau, and she told us of a different approach which sounded a lot more promising, trail wise. We determined to try it on our way back. 

But first we took some time to roam the open plateau, amazing at the beauty of the surrounding area, taking many pictures, and eventually settling down to some lunch. This time Lilya did not bring a whole feast and just brought things to share, obviously with the idea of depending on food we would bring too. Maybe that first time with us she wasn’t sure us Americans would bring any food!

We searched some for the 1000-year-old yew tree that was supposed to be nestled in a crack in the rocks on top, and finally realized it was probably the sprawling tree in front of us. Most of it was clinging to the rocks over the vertical cliff face, so we really couldn’t see its thick and gnarly trunk without leaning over a very scary precipice. But it did remind me some of the very ancient trees you sometimes find in the high mountains of California. 

Dima with Lilya.

The weather started to turn windy and cold and it looked like rain might be rolling in with darkening clouds, so we decided to try and find the trail the woman told us about and make our way back down. They had long gone and we watched in what direction they left, but when we tried to head that way too, it seemed a mystery about where exactly this trail was that they were talking about. But while searching we came across a clearly well used trail that seemed to be going in the direction of the Babugan plateau behind Paralgimen, and we decided to take that, thinking it would eventually hook up with a trail that would take us down to the sea. As we went along, it continued to be a well used trail which was reassuring, but it continued to go in the direction of Babugan, which was not so reassuring. However, we didn’t want to turn back and end up bush whacking our way down, so on we went.

 And as fate would have it, we happened upon two young men—Anton and Dima—who were coming down from Babugan and knew the way out, and we ended up hiking with them the remainder of the afternoon. I mostly hiked with Anton who was eager to practice his English, and what a sweetheart he was. He grew up in Crimea and talked about his love for the land and how so many people did not understand that. When I told him how much I loved Crimea he seemed grateful that I recognized the beauty and specialness of this place. I didn’t get much of a sense of his companion, Dima, but Cheryl spent some time hiking with him and also said he was delightful. Much to everyone’s surprise, when I parted I asked Anton for his phone number with the possibility of arranging for all of us to go hiking again. He was excited about the idea—kind of an English language hiking club—so we made some tentative plans for a future hike. I’m not sure exactly how Lilya felt about them, but it turned out they all went to the same university and shared the profession of computer programmer, so had much in common. That and the fact they liked to hike! I’m thinking, “Here are some nice young men for Lilya to get to know (who doesn’t have a boyfriend).”  But they aren’t Crimean Tatar, and I know most Crimean Tatars (96% is the figure I remember reading somewhere) marry within their people. But hiking partners? Seems that could be anybody. Well, I am sure I will have some interesting stories to report from our future hikes.

Love to all from Crimea where it is finally spring and my circle of hiking companions is ever expanding.