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Well, friends, let’s open the discussion.
I was going to write an essay about my trip to Crimea. I planned to make a structured text, logically break it into parts, check the spelling and only then present it to your attention.
Unfortunately, this is currently impossible, because fortunately I’m a quite successful entrepreneur and am receiving a stream of orders for the third week in a row. Because of this, I don’t have time to write good texts.
So I apologize in advance.
I’ll post it as a series of pieces, and ask you to please forgive me for the inevitable mistakes.
Feel free to correct me, or ask me to clarify the thought, or to add details. I cannot promise to answer quickly, but I will definitely answer honestly and frankly
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I invite everyone to comment and share your own thoughts.
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I’d like to maybe illustrate my story with photos taken during the trip. I have accounts on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Google Photos – what is more convenient? Or, I can just post them on Pikabu, it seems there is unhindered access for all users there.I usually prefer to travel by car, and since the construction of the Crimean bridge, I have wanted to drive across this miracle of engineering. Just imagine driving with one sea on the right and another sea on the left. What an adventure!
But since I’m the only driver in the family, this wouldn’t allow me to admire the views. So for this trip, my husband and I joined a tour group.
It was the right decision. I had the opportunity to turn my head in all directions, discuss what I see with my companions, ask questions to locals, get historical and cultural information from professional guides in museums and excursion routes. On the tour bus, my husband joked that my posture reminded him of our youngest cat in the moments when she sits on the windowsill and watches the pigeons through the glass 🙂
If you are interested, a travel company in my city organizes weekend tours. We traveled with a group of about 15 people (all women except for the driver and my husband) in a very comfortable Mercedes minibus, with tinted windows and air conditioning, which is important for our hot southern regions; and with USB ports for charging devices, which has become almost a standard in public transport.
The pick up location was a nearby street and the group meeting time was in the afternoon, and these two factors were decisive for us to book our places on the tour. And so, with our backpacks and great mood, we got on this bus and went through my Krasnodar region to the place where the two seas meet – to the Kerch Strait.
Our tour guide warned us that there might be interruptions in the mobile signal – Ukrainian drones daily attack Russian regions close to the border, disputed regions, the Crimean peninsula – so the connection is jammed.
The Crimean bridge itself has become something of a sacred target for the Ukrainian regime, and ordinary civilians in Ukraine also rejoice and celebrate the attacks and deaths of Russians. In 2022, Ukraine blew up a truck with explosives on the bridge. The driver, who was used as a pawn, a suicide bomber, died and several people who were nearby were killed.
The Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs congratulated the Ukrainian special services on that attack.
The Kiev City Hall printed a banner with a picture of the explosion on the bridge, installed it near its building, and many ordinary peaceful Ukrainians took pictures against this background and posted photos on social networks accompanied by comments that they considered witty.
Actually, I’ve heard about this attitude.
– They don’t consider us people, – she said. A girl working in a neighboring workshop. She left Ukraine for Russia before the war began, and her mother stayed there in Donetsk region. She got news from there from her relatives and I don’t know where to start retelling that.Okay, the bridge is up and running, but the security measures at the entrance and exit remind us of the ever-present threat. It takes about 15-20 minutes to cross the bridge, but although the journey is short, it is very impressive. I cannot convey the mixture of emotions. If your governments ever allow you to visit, try it yourself.
After the exit control of the Crimean Bridge, we found ourselves on the peninsula. The highway looked like federal highways on mainland Russia. I noted unfamiliar brands of gas stations. These are entire complexes with canteens, playgrounds, truck parking, a car wash, all on a large area as if the land is cheap there. At one of these stations, I saw a car with young guys who looked almost school age. The car had Crimean Tatar flags attached to the fenders of the car and one hanging from the rearview mirror in the cabin.
Our path lay in the city of Bakhchisarai, which in ancient times was the capital of the Crimean Khanate. There, a hotel was booked for our group, business owned by a Crimean Tatar family. On the way to Bakhchisarai, I looked at the landscapes. Compared to my region, this was strikingly different.
Firstly, there’s little cultivated land.
In my region, literally every piece is cultivated. My region is a steppe, that is, a flat place without mountains or hills, without many trees, mainly grass plants and low sparse bushes. The entire grass mass dies every autumn, and in the spring it sprouts and repeats the cycle, thereby forming a large layer of fertile black soil.
In Crimea, I saw flat and hilly places, but covered with wild vegetation, not cultivated.Secondly, I saw several road signs with the names of rivers, but I did not see the rivers themselves.
In my region, when you meet such a sign, you expect all the signs of a river – smell, freshness, possibly fog. There in Crimea, these are dry ditches. I thought that perhaps the lack of irrigation is the reason for such a large amount of uncultivated land. Later I googled and found out that the rivers of Crimea have a seasonality with periods of flooding and shallowing, and in addition, periodic droughts every 4 years, so there is a problem of fresh water.In 2014, after the Maidan and Crimea’s withdrawal from Ukraine, Kiev cut off the supply of fresh water to the peninsula. That water came from the Dnieper River through a canal built by the USSR. It provided Crimea with 85% of its water needs. Russia later seized the canal and restored the water supply. However, in 2023, “nobody knows who” blew up the Kakhovka Dam. Not only Crimea’s water supply depended on this dam, but also the cooling of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
*I use “nobody knows who” in inverted commas, Western media know. They blame the Russians.More please Tatyana, the more knowledge, the better understanding.
I wonder now the new bridge is working, that drinking water could be moved by pipeline along this Crimean Bridge?
thanks for your interest, friends. I continue:
You may have noticed that I pay attention to what resources are available in this or that place, and how people use them. So, if you ever happen to visit Bakhchisarai, you will definitely pay attention to the White Cliffs
of Dovereh, there they call it the stone of Inkerman, a nearby location. It’s relatively soft stone, which is widely used in construction. The hotel we stayed in is built from it. Also, there are caves in the cliffs and people live there! Ok, not exactly live, there are monasteries, nut monks do live there, in caves. You can look it up on Tripadvisor
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g1771235-Bakhchisaray-Vacations.htmlWhite stone walls don’t hold paint, so there is one Orthodox church completely decorated with beads. I’ll show you a photo of a man looking at it in amazement 🙂
https://photos.app.goo.gl/2asACJrqhdKPGor58
Do you know why he is so surprised? This man thought he saw a lot of beads, a f*cking LOT of beads, in my stock 🙂 He even sponsored the purchase of some and constantly complained that these women’s hobbies are quite ruinous for the family budget.
Now he knows what A LOT of beads really looks like.However the Bakhchisarai palace of the Crimean Khanate was built using other materials.
My Krasnodar region was populated by immigrants from the Zaporozhian Cossacks, so the technology is widespread here too. These are quickly erected buildings made of clay mixed with straw. From such material, building blocks can be formed and dried in the sun, then walls can be laid out of them using the same mixture as glue. The technology is called ‘saman’.
Or, the formwork is built from wooden slats, and saman is used as a filler, this technology is called ‘turluk’. Clay is used as plaster, the Russian word ‘мазать, обмазывать’ (*to coat with) gave the name to all buildings of this type – ‘мазанка’ mah-zan-ka.
Lime was used as a decorative (and importantly, sun-reflective) coating. So our ancestors knew a lot about eco-construction. The old houses of my grandparents in the Voronezh region and in the Krasnodar region were built exactly like this. Such buildings are cool in the summer, they are cheap and aree built quickly. The summer palace of the Crimean Khanate was made like this too.There are old buildings made from clay in the UK, too. Here it is called “cob” and can be made either from clay and straw or chalk. I was wondering if the “white stone” you mention is also chalk. Where the chalk is hard enough to use for building, it is called “clunch”.
Hi, Bayard.
The white stone is a sort of chalk, limestone, I think. The same chalk, calcium carbonate, but denser, compressed over millions of years.Btw, the word saman means straw in Turkish. It is солома /soloma/ in Russian. Both words must originate from Proto-Indo-European *kalhmo. It made kalamos in Greek, salms in Latvian, Halm in German. which in principle is consistent with Centum/Satem geography Our world is really small 🙂
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I see I printed ‘nut monks’ 🙂 My laptop’s keys in the center of the keyboard lost the paint, so I more and more often hit the wrong letter.These are such beautiful white mountains of Crimea
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Xcwp1DUNrPvjcwN7AThe caves in these mountains have long been inhabited. There’s a place near Bakhchisarai where archaeological excavations are underway, a human settlement about 30 thousand years ago is researched.
We also visited a cave city from the Middle Ages, it had Christian symbols cut i the stone.
Actually, Crimea is the place from where Christianity spread to all of Rus’. This religion was adopted as a state religion by Vladimir, the prince of Kievan Rus (this is the period of history of ancient Russia, from the unification of disparate tribes into one state with the capital in Kiev to the invasion of the Mongols and Tatars).Now in Sevastopol a large complex dedicated to the history of Christianity in Russia has been built. The name is New Chersonesos, it refers to the old name of Sevastopol and is of Greek origin.
The Greeks, by the way, are very widely represented in Crimea. As the tour guide explained to us – I’m selling this for what I bought it for – Greek democracy implied that the “party” that lost the elections could leave, establish its settlement in a new place to live as they wished. This is how Greek cities appeared in Crimea.Prince Vladimir’s mother Olga was a Christian and is also revered in the Russian Orthodox Church. In the New Chersonesus complex there is a temple dedicated to Vladimir and his mother Olga.
Honestly, it left a depressing impression on me, since one of the walls depicts the crucifixion of Christ, and exactly opposite to this is the family of the last Russian tsar, whom the church promoted to the number of saints. The tsar, who was cruel to the people, shot at rallies of workers and peasants, adhered to the egalitarian principles of power, lost the First World War and was eventually overthrown by the bourgeoisie, and they in turn lost power due to Lenin’s October Revolution.In another place of the complex there is an open-air temple, that is, all the attributes of a temple, but without a roof and walls. It was interesting to see how it is arranged. You might also be interested
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DL-rv3sIVF0In the bays of Sevastopol and Balaklava we went on a boat ride, looked at the ruins of medieval fortresses by the Genoese, who also managed to mark their presence in Crimea.
The guide’s stories were mostly about battles. We were told that it was there that the Russians fought with the English and Scots.
That the British elite sent their offspring here confident of an easy and quick victory, but many offspring of noble families met their death here. That the phrases ‘thin red line’ and ‘meat grinder’ appeared in those battles. Maybe this is one of the reasons for such a special hatred of the English aristocracy towards the Russians?However, I did not listen very carefully. It’s not that I was not interested in it, it’s just that the walks along the bays were on boats, and some ladies had bathing suits on the outside of them and champagne inside them. And my husband (the only man in our tour group) is interested in military history and willingly supplemented the guide’s story, which caused compliments and other delights from those ladies, which they expressed in such a way that sometimes I wanted to push one particularly obnoxious lady into the water so that she would cool off a little.
I’m not religious at all, but honestly, I liked visiting monasteries and churches more, because there people have to cover all sorts of their private parts and behave decently. In general, I now think that wearing a hijab or better yet a niqab for women in public is maybe a good idea 🙂
aha, the battle is known as The Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War. It would be interesting to see the names of the British aristocrats who died there and to find their living descendants. I think many of the names should be in the House of Lords now.
I noticed that you there and we here have different versions of history.
In 2022, your minister Ben Wallace said something like “the Scots kicked the Russians’ ass in Crimea and we can do it again.” You can probably imagine how much laughter this caused in Russia and what a clown your minister looked like in our eyes.In general, this is a global trend in the world now, to make some strange conclusions from some fragmentary superficial knowledge. For example, this is what is spread in Ukrainian social networks: the fronts that fought the Nazis in Ukraine were called Ukrainian. From this, the conclusion is made that the troops consisted of Ukrainians, and the Russians did not fight.
Actually, the fronts got their names according to the place of deployment.
For example, there was the Volkhov Front. If we followed the logic of Ukrainian social networks, then the Magi or Druides would be fighting there.
Of course? there’s simplier explanation, the front went along the river of Vokhov.It’s already become a stable phrase at the level of a proverb – ‘logic is a Muscovite pseudoscience’, or ‘history is a Muscovite pseudoscience’, pronounced with a Ukrainian accent.
Field Marshall Lord Lucan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bingham,_3rd_Earl_of_LucanIn to The Valley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QFuX-4Y8J4The Valley of Death
George, Lord Bingham ( later Earl of Lucan) known by The Irish as “The Exterminator”
During the Russo-Turkish War, which began in 1828, George Bingham acted as observer with the Imperial Russian Army.Another British aristocrat involved in the Crimean war was the Earl of Cardigan. Cardigan, in addition to serving as a name for a pullover with buttons up the front, is also a market town on the coast of Wales. The Earl commanded the Light Brigade (a cavalry unit) at the battle of Sevastopol, and it was he who issued the disastrous order to charge ‘into the valley of death’, as Tennyson described it.
See also Wikipedia under ‘James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan’ and https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade for the text of Tennyson’s poem.Lord Lucan was the immediate superior of Lord cardigan, they were brothers in law.
Well, apparently Ben Wallace doesn’t have any aristocratic ancestors
Tatyana, I hope you and your husband have a great holiday in Crimea.
I was told at school, that Crimea was the first place in Europe, that got Black Death, brought in from China, in the thirteen hundreds?Tatyana, I hope you and your husband have a great holiday in Crimea.
I was told at school, that Crimea was the first place in Europe, that got Black Death, brought in from China, in the thirteen hundreds?Hi, Michael.
I believe a couple of years ago we had a conversation about exactly Black Death and Crimea.
I’ll check through the bookmarks (when people ask me questions and I have no immediate answer, I use to make a research and bookmark the result. I’m sure I’ve written about it).Tatyana, very near me is an old drove, that is a dirt lane, where animals were “driven” this lane came up from the River Thames to the hill above. On top of this hill is an abandoned town.
That town, was abandoned about one hundred years after the Black Death had swept across England.
1/3 to 1/2 of the people became dead. Many hundreds of settlements got abandoned.
This pattern of abandonment must have happened in Europe and Russia, as well.
I think it was several hundred years, before England regained the same number of people.
Probably the most profound event, ever to hit Eurasia.In my town, is a three thousand year old Celtic Town.
These Celts, came from France /Belgium, they were known as Belgae.
No where in Europe is “pure” mostly, places have been over run and taken advantage, of.
There have never been any real borders, perhaps, until the end of The Second world War?Michael, here’s what the Russian version of Wikipedia says about the Black Death:
Near Issyk-Kul lake, Kyrgyzstan archaeologists found a grave dated 1338-1339. Inscriptions on this grave testify to the death of members of the community from “plague”. Yersinia Pestis is confirmed with genetic test.
By 1340, the plague reached Samarkand, Uzbekistan
By 1346, the plague reached the Don and Volga, the Caucasus Mountains and the Crimean Peninsula. Those territories were at that time under the control of the Golden Horde (Genghis Khan’s empire), who enslaved non-Asian local populations, i.e. Christians.
The Genoese bought slaves and thus carried the plague throughout the Mediterranean and into Europe.On the Crimean peninsula, 85 thousand people died from the Black Death, as evidenced by the Arab historian Ibn al-Wardi. There is also evidence from the Genoese notary Gabriel de Mussy that the Khan Janibek of the Golden Horde besieged the city of Caffa (now Feodosia, Crimea) and ordered the bodies of those who died from the plague to be catapulted into the besieged city.
test
OK I will try again to post.
The Golden Horde was not Genghis Khan’s empire. It came after him and was only a part of the Mongol empire. Another part was China under the Yuan dynasty.
