Trip to Crimea

Crimea is the southern peninsula of Ukraine where all Ukrainians and Russians go on holiday. When we had a long weekend I went there with my colleagues Roman and Pavel and some of their friends. Roman had arranged everything for us so even though we saw a lot of stuff it was very relaxing for me.



We caught the train Friday after work and drove the whole night. The train was very long and packed with people. Once I would have considered this a nightmare but now I thought it was quite cosy.




This is Alexander and Victoria, aka Sasha and Vika. Sasha works at Roman's former company which is a big American software company. In September Sasha and Vika will get married.




This is the balcony of the hotel where we arrived Saturday morning. The hotel is situated in a sneaky little town called Semeiz, some kilometers from Yalta which is the biggest city in Crimea.




I was sleeping in this humid room with a very small window.




Some of the other guys were staying in this room which had air condition and also quite a better view against mountains and the sea. However, they had no door to the bathroom. The owner of the hotel had a very big Toyota jeep and I was thinking that if he had bought a not so big car instead he might have been able to provide his costumers all the basic necessities.




Between Semeiz and Yalta there was the 'Skt. Peter's mountain' and we went to the top by a rope way.




From the top of the mountain I found it quite amazing how the sky and sea completely blended together, it was not possible to see the horizon line.




There was some commercial stuff on top of the mountain, like camel riding, places to eat and a show where they demonstrated how to kill a person in many inventive ways. At one place we had an Arabian rice dish along with some home brew wine.




There we are, still on top of the mountain. To the right of me is another Vika who is working as a QA engineer at that American company. The guy is my new colleague Pavel and to the right of him is Roman's girlfriend Marina who is also working as a kind of developer.




After the mountain we went chilling in this park which had a lot of nice big trees.




In the park there was also a strange castle which was built completely from one type of stones. Again this is sort of Arabian I think. I guess the culture in Crimea must be somehow very related to Arabian culture. In Crimea I also saw a lot of the kind of people who have dark hair and skin and bright bluish eyes at the same time.




After some night swimming we had beer along with some dried fish. Roman taught me how to make the whole smelly operation. At that point I was tired because in the train I had only had about 2 hours of sleep.