North to south and north again

So here I am lounging in a comfy chair on board the MS Amsterdam - one of the Holland America line's lovely boats - somewhere between St. Petersburg and Helsinki, while Ron uses another hotspot somewhere on the boat. What on earth are we doing here?

We left Izmir for good (or not - who knows?) towards the middle of July. First stop was Warsaw, to catch the last two shows in the Warsaw Chamber Opera's annual Mozart festival: Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni. As far as I'm concerned there's no such thing as too many Magic Flutes, and this one was another completely different and wonderful experience. We sat in the second row of the 150-seat hall and felt like we were right in the middle of it all. DG the next night was less wonderful but still very good.

Then on to Kiev to catch the MS Dniepr Princess for a cruise down the Dniepr to the Black Sea and on to Romania. We'd booked this through the UBC alumni association and found it most pleasant to be among a bunch of alumni from various universities getting a somewhat deeper view of the life and history of the people we were sailing past. The boat was built in East Germany in the communist era and had some eccentricities (whole-bathroom shower, for example) but was seaworthy. The staff was definitely not Holland-America trained; you had to pysically grab a restaurant server to get some coffee in the morning, and the notion that one might want a second cup was not one that had occurred to any of them, but those were not significant problems. It was most interesting seeing Kiev and the site of its Orange Revolution, where the people hoped to have won their democracy back from the oligarchs - whether they have or not remains to be seen. The Ukraine makes Turkey look affluent, but they're trying as hard as they can to get on their feet again. Still, there's been a lot of psychic damage done by war and communism, and it may take another generation or two before people learn again how to really work and create. I wandered through a department store where everything was protected behind glass counters and the clerks didn't seem interested in getting things out for you to buy. (Tried on a sun hat that was too small. Told the clerk it was too small and she said, "Yes, it's too small." End of transaction. Why would she want to find a bigger one for me?) So it's a very different place from Turkey, and it's got a lot further to go to join the developed world I fear.

We cruised down the Dniepr through vast reservoirs behind huge dams, great wetlands for flocks and flocks of waterfowl. Once Kiev's wastes had been diluted the algae blooms disappeared and the water seemed clean and full of fish for most of the distance, except around Dniepropetrovsk. We passed that area in the late evening, sailing through clouds of coal smoke lit by the glow of steel mills and other factories - "dark satanic mills". The next day we visited a Stalin-era industrial town that also celebrated the Cossack heritage with a museum and a show of riding and dancing. The contrast nearly made my brain crack with the shock. The Dniepr delta was another peaceful green place where we visited dachas for traditional meals and admired handicrafts - another contrast with the dirty port city our ship was moored in.

Then across the Black Sea to Sevastopol, a place full of history where the guns of the Crimean war are still warm. We saw the valley of Balaclava ("into the valley of death rode the 500") on our way to the palace of the khan of the Crimean Tatars, where we felt for a moment that we were back home in Turkey. As we were leaving we heard someone saying "Hoş geldiniz" - "Welcome" in Turkish. We instinctively replied "Hoş bulduk" and ended up buying some local baklava in Turkish - the Tatar language is so close to Turkish we had no problem communicating with the lovely old woman selling the stuff. She was quite tickled to be dealing with a couple of Canadians in her own language.

From Sevastopol we also toured Yalta and the summer palace of the Romanovs, where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met towards the end of WW II. The building reeked with history - you could almost believe Nicholas and Alexandra and their kids had just left the upstairs room, and the rooms downstairs still seemed to smell of Churchill's cigars. Beautiful views of the sea, too, both from that place and from the road all along the coast.

Back across the black sea after that to the mouth of the Danube in Romania. If the Ukraine made Turkey look modern and developed, Romania makes it look as rich as Las Vegas. Another country with a long, long way to go - I can't believe the EU could accept Romania ahead of Turkey. There's still a feeling about the place that makes me want to check for bugs and spies and watch what I say in public. I guess there are still a few ghosts around. We had a boat trip through part of the Danube delta, another bird-filled place if you didn't mind the piles of garbage. And then off to Bucharest, which still feels a little like Paris east even after Ceauşescu demolished a large area of elegant old buildings for his horrendously huge People's Palace (the second-biggest building in the world after the Pentagon). We had a look at the place and left feeling the Romanians would go bankrupt trying to heat the place, let alone maintaining it.

Anyway, it was a worthwhile trip and I'm glad we took it. We'll probably try another alumni tour sometime.

Ooops - out of battery. More tommorow, with any luck