Cruising in Luxury in
the Black Sea
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"Have your passports ready," our cruise director told us as we stepped down the gangway onto the dock our way way to the customs and immigration office in Yalta, a small resort city on the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea.
Entering what once was the exclusive playground of the Soviet elite as well as the czars they replaced brought to mind all those traveler's tales about the strict, often arbitrary and illogical customs and immigration rules in what was the Soviet Union. Now, only a year after the failed coup and the breakdown of the U.S.S.R. into the Commonwealth of Independent States, we were entering uncharted waters. "We don't know what to expect," our cruise director, Else Ellies, told us the night before we docked at Yalta in the Ukraine. "They don't have that much experience with tourists. We are among the first western ships ever to come here."
Within that uncertaintiy in mind, the passengers of the Seabourne Spirit walked along the waterfront, passing by a small fleet of drydocked sightseeing ships and a man in civilian dress who appeared to be some sort of security guard, and approached the dour, low warehouse-like building that was the customs office in Yalta.
We entered the doorway, passed by a policeman in military uniform, followed giant arrows to the right and came to a doorway and an window looking much like the ticketbooth at at move theater. Behind the glass sat a young woman, a Meryl Strepp lookalike, dressed in olive drab and wearing small red bars on her shoulders.
"Visas please," she demanded of the couple in front of us.
"We don't have visas," the man replied. We and all the passengers in earshot immediately stopped talking, waiting to see what reaction this declaration provoked.
"No visas?" the woman official said. "No problem. Fifty dollars."
For the cash-starved former Soviet republics, hard currency could solve many problems that in the past could have been un insurmountable obstacle, a lesson we learned again and again during our cruise. What we found during our odyssey was a society unaccustomed to western tourists and very unlike other those we encountered on other port calls during a journey that began in Istanbul and visited the Black Sea and the Aegean before ending in Athens. The Aegean island stops - Mykonos, Skopelos, Rhodes and Crete - were familiar to us, and their sunny beaches, bustling shops and fine historical sites are always enticing, but it was the prospect of visiting the Ukraine that really lured us to this particular cruise.
Our ship was the Seabourn Spirit, a 439-foot-long ship with 100 suites and a passenger capacity of 204. On this cruise, 176 passengers were aboard, almost all Americans.
The four-year-old Spirit is a very attractive ship, offering far more comfort and amenities than are usually found on most cruise vessels. The Spirit (as well as its twin sister ship, the Seabourn Pride) has six passenger decks, three with cabins, two all or partially open to the sky, and one devoted to the dining room.
Our 277-square-foot cabin was attractively furnished and had a double bed and a sitting area with small sofa next to a five-foot window, a television, VCR, mini-fridge, a tub bath and a closet billed as a "walk-in," a term which it barely qualified for.
Life aboard was pleasant and unregimented, again a distinct change from the line-up routine aboard larger ships. We could eat whenever we wanted, with whom we wanted or even in our suites, should we desire.
Among the facilities on board were two nightclubs with shows each evening, a small casino, a book and video library, a meeting/card room, a small swimming pool and hot tubs, spa, exercise room, lounges and a small shop. During some stops, a mechanical marina was lowered into the sea from the stern of the ship. From this marina, passengers could swim, take out a small sailboat or windsurfer, go waterskiing of just enjoy a ride on a powerboat.
Amid all this relative opulence shipboard, it seemed appropriate that our first stop was a small resort city favored by the czars and the Soviet leaders who replaced them.
Yalta, a city of about 80,000, is nestled at the base of the Crimean Mountains, which shelter the city from the harsh northern winds, creating a Mediterranean-style climate that nurtures the city's lush vegetation. Yalta and the Crimean coast have been a popular resort area since the 1860s, when members of the Czarist court built palaces along the coast.
After the Communists overthrew Czar Nicholas II in 1917, Yalta remained a popular destination and a busy seaport, though one whose visitors were members of the workers' elite. When we arrived in the summer of 1992, though, the seaport was comatose. The passenger ships were nonexistent, the sightseeing boats in drydock - all an apparent result of the new economic realities in this part of the world.
We divided our stay in Yalta into a morning walk around and an afternoon bus tour to the two historic palaces. After breakfast, we left the Spirit, walking past those drydocked sightseeing ships and entered the customs building. Two passengers in front of us stepped up to the window, where a young woman dressed in an olive-drab military uniform demanded their visas.
"We don't have them," the man replied.
"No visas?" the customs officer asked. All four of us tensed, expecting a problem. "No problem. Fifty dollars."
Hard currency works wonders, a valuable lesson we would see repeated again and again during this Black Sea journey.
We exited the customs house, casting a wary eye at the threatening clouds atop the mountains and bypassing a few vendor listlessly selling books and dolls.
The city was attractive, with streets broken frequently by parks filled with palm trees. A statute of a fierce Lenin still towered over one seafront park, ignored, it seemed, by everyone passing by save us.
The seafront promenade is named the Lenin Embankment and attracted hundreds of strollers, some drawn by a moon bounce and children's ride and others by park benches shaded by trees, street vendors selling ice cream, horoscopes cast by a computer, stalls offering scores of books, and a two street musicians. One group was made up of three old men playing string instruments with energy if not ability. The other musician was a middle-aged woman who was wearing what appeared to be a lace wedding dress while she sang and played an accordion.
Few paid attention to this entertainment, preferring instead to browse through the few open shops and street vendors. We ducked into an antique shop for a look, but were barely able to see what was for sale because lighting was provided by a single three-foot-long fluorescent tube.
The street vendors operated from flat tables or portable carriages that looked like the wagons one might see at a carnival. The goods offered were a motley lot: cheap plastic toys hung in windows next to men's jockey shorts, pop music cassettes nestled next to hairbrushes.
Two street vendors attracted long lines of customers: ice cream and a woman selling golf ball-sized red potatoes using a mechanical scale to weigh sales and a abacus to add up the price.
The lineup for what seemed ordinary goods to us was fascinating, but our desire to learn more was interrupted when a heavy rain began to fall. We walked briskly back to the customs house, stopping only once to listen to a pitch from an intense man who wanted to sell us an honored symbol of the old Soviet Union, a Red Star Medal. We rejected his appeal, unsettled somewhat by the fact he was selling a medal that once was a sure sign of power in the former Soviet Union.
After returning to the ship, we learned another facet of Yalta. It's dirty; our white walking shoes were stained black by an oily grime washed from the streets by the rains.
After changing clothes and a brief lunch, we again left the ship, clearing customs with only a wave from the officer and ignoring some men hawking cans of what they said were caviar. We had been warned not to buy the caviar, which we were told would be spoiled or counterfeit.
We boarded the modern tour bus and met John, our middle-aged tour guide who was dressed in Reeboks, blue jeans, a black t-shirt with the Harley-Davidson motorcycle name and logo on it.
John was our guide to the Livadia and Alupka palaces, and while the bus wound its way along the coast to these reminders of the Crimea's royal past, John delivered a commentary on the resort.
"Yalta was the home of many artists," he said. "Alexander Pushkin, Maxim Gorky, and most of all, Anton Chekhov."
"Chekhov lived in that white building," he paused to point to an attractive white home. "We call it 'Balaya Dacha'--White House, like your White House, huh?"
"Chekhov wrote some of his most famous plays there - 'Cherry Orchard,' 'The Three Sisters'. It is now a museum, the Chekhov Museum."
We passed by the museum, following a rode that left the city and passed by clusters of high-rise buildings. "Those are our spa resorts," John said. "In the old days," explaining that that meant while there was still a Soviet Union controlled by the Communists, "party officials, heroes of the Soviet Union, labor officials, they would all come here for vacation, for health treatments. It would all be paid for by the government. Most of these resorts are empty now; only a few Scandinavian tourists. It's too expensive. It costs $3,000 a week to stay here now."
From a distance of a 100 yards, the high-rises are not attractive. The exteriors are poorly maintained, the grounds around the buildings barren dirt and rock. Curiously, all the apartment have a single bed outside on their balconies. It is a way to expand the sleeping area or a place to sleep in the cool night breezes? John shrugged off a query, unable or unwilling to explain.
Our first stop is the Alupka Palace-Museum, built between 1829-1846 for Count Vorontsov, the governor general of Novorossia. The palace, located two miles west of Yalta, was designed by an English architect, which explains the English Tudor style with a dash of Oriental touches.
The bus parked on a narrow road on the palace grounds, and we disembark. It's a short distance to the palace, but one that is illuminating for what it tells about young Ukrainians and their quick grasp of capitalism. The road is lined with vendors selling books on the palace, dolls, photographs, oil paintings and Soviet Red Army hats, uniforms and medals. The hats are the hot items.
The atmosphere changed quickly to that of a fevered bazaar. Passengers who pause are quickly surrounded by the sellers.
"How much for the Red Army hat?" we asked. "Ten dollars," came the reply from a youth who could be 16. "How much in rubles?" one passenger asked.
"No rubles, dollars only," came the firm reply from a young man who gave a thumbs-down signal when he used the word "ruble".
"I'll sell you one for eight dollars," called a competitor. We offered five dollars, and a deal was made.
The purchase didn't stop the sales pitches. The young boys and men, who range in age from about 7 to early 20s, follow us as we walked to the palace, offering more military items, books, dolls and other collectibles.
We escaped the pitchmen only after entering the palace. There we encountered another facet in tourism. All visitors to the palace have to put only slippers over their shoes. The slippers come from a big box and look like they were made from cloth remnants. "It's to protect the floor," explains our guide, pointing to the beautiful parquet wood floor.
Shod in felt, cotton and other fabrics, we walked and slid through the palace. The palace is impressive - 150 rooms - but the tour is brief and hits only a few of them. Most of the rooms are furnished with magnificent wood panelling from floor to the ceiling, which are molded works of art in plaster. The main attractions are 19th Century paintings, most of them of some member of the Russian royalty family at the time, and some exceptional antique pieces of furniture collected by the count.
The one elegant room that captures the grandeur of the age of the czars is the dining room, dominated by a huge table that is flanked by gilded mirrors on three walls. The fourth wall is of glass and looks out at the sea.
On each side of the room are ornate tubs, looking much like a child's size bath. Curious, we asked what they are. "The held ice and champagne for the parties held here," the guide explained.
We left the museum through a door leading to a seaside terrace, the real entrance to the palace, and walked down a tier of marble steps, guarded by beautiful white marble lions. At the base of the steps we encountered our persistent military medal and uniform vendors again.
We run the gauntlet, but not without purchasing more medals. Back on the bus we marvelled with our fellow passengers on how the young Ukrainians seem to understand capitalism better than some of their government leaders. Not all those in this new country appreciated our visit, though.
As the bus pulled away, a young woman, her face set in anger, ran up to the bus and spit at the windows and then yelled some unheard oath. The incident is missed by most passengers, who were examining their new purchases of Red Army hats and Lenin medals.
The next stop was the Livadia Palace, built in 1913 for the last Russian czar, Nicholas II. One again, we are confronted with a beseeching mob of young vendors selling hats, medals and other items. The hot collectible at this top was a Black Sea fleet hat, a black beret with two ribbons hanging from the back.
"Aich!" shouts one young men holding up two of the berets. "How much?" "Hats aich!" His accent is thick and it sounds like he is offering two hats for eight dollars.
One American pulled out eight dollars and tried to take both hats. The young seller looks shocked, jerking back the berets while repeating his cry, "Hats aich!" Finally it dawned on the would-be buyer. It's eight dollars for each, not both. This time, the price was too high, and buyer and seller drifted apart.
We evaded the vendors and entered the palace, where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met from Feb. 4-7, 1945 for the famed Yalta Conference that determined that shape of post-war Europe.
During that war, the Nazis captured the palace, looting much of its art and furnishings. The table that the allied leaders met at remains on display today, but it was not original to the czar's time. Exhibits and photographs detail the status of the war at that time and the details of the meeting.
Our tour of this palace (again, shod in cloth slippers) took us by the conference room, and into the rooms President Roosevelt and other members of the U.S. delegation stayed in during the summit. The rooms are small, but beautifully designed. One small room, used as a study by President Roosevelt our guide tells us, has walls with beautiful wood panelling topped by stunning dark gold wallcovering. The wallcovering is stained, torn in places and worn by age.
After touring these historic rooms, we are led to a wing with a small museum of Soviet art and a gift shop. By this time, our energy is flagging, and we are grateful when we see the exit. Outside the palace we encountered more free market enterprise. On the lawn is a man with a long mustache, sitting on a small stool as he bends over to play a small, oddly shaped harp.
"He's a Tatar," our guide explained. "He plays for money."
The passengers contribute to the Tatar's economy, and continued walking back to the bus only to encounter a last-ditch attack by the black beret and military medal vendors.
Awash in medals and carrying enough hats to equip a Soviet platoon, our troupe staggered on the bus for the return to the ship.
The Spirit sailed as the sun set. West of Yalta, we passed by a small warship anchored about a mile offshore from a large red-roofed villa on a hillside above the shore.
"That's the house where Gorbachev was staying when he was taken prisoner during the coup" in August, 1991, one officer told the passengers gathered in the forward lounge for a pre-dinner cocktail.
It's a sobering thought, one we hold in mind when we arrive in Odessa and dock at the foot of the Potemkin Steps, one of the historic shrines of the Communist world.
Odessa is a city of a million built on a bluff overlooking the sea. It is a beautiful city, one whose elegant 19th Century architecture is diminished by years of dirt, pollution and neglect. The buildings, many built from a crushed stone material that was painted in some distant past, often are host to grape arbors whose thick vines occasionally stretch from one building to another.
We divide our visit into two portions, a morning bus and foot tour of major attractions and an afternoon visit on foot to some places the tour guide didn't want us to see.
The bus and walking tour was remarkable not only for what we did see, but for what we were not allowed to see.
The major attraction on this four-hour tour was a visit to the Opera House, a Classic-Baroque theater built in 1884 along the lines of the Vienna Opera House and Dresden Court. From the outside, the Opera House is a tired structure, smudged by pollution, its statuary decorations eroded and worn by time.
Inside, the story is different. The main staircase in the foyer is elegant, adorned by golden figurines supporting light fixtures. The 1,600 theater itself is even more stunning: a vision in red velvet and gilt whose gilded ceiling is painted with scenes from Shakespeare's plays.
The acoustics are superb, with even the slightest spoken word audible throughout the theater.
After the Opera House, a guide led us on a walking tour of the seafront promenade, called the Primorsky Boulevard. We are taken to the Archeological Museum, but are told we cannot go inside. "There is no time" she said. Then to the Museum of the Soviet Fleet, whose facade we admired though once again we are not allowed in. The explanation: "No time."
After passing by a monuments to Alexander Pushkin, the poet who spent a year in exile here, and the Potemkin sailors, we arrived at the celebrated Potemkin Steps.
The 192 steps are probably best known in the West from the famous Eisenstein film, "Potemkin," which was based on a mutiny that took place in 1905 aboard the Tsarist battleship Potemkin.
The mutiny occurred at the same time revolutionary strikes were taking place in Odessa. The two groups - mutineers and strikers - combined in common cause, but one that ended in hundreds of death when loyalist forces crush the rebellions.
The Potemkin Steps are an optical illusion, we discovered. The rose granite steps are narrower are the top - 41 feet - than at the bottom - 70 feet - and create the illusion that they are built along parallel lines.
We paused to admire the steps and the view of the harbor then reboard our bus for a tour that took us past the city's main department store, the Pushkin Literary Museum, the Philharmonic Concert Hall, a World War II memorial and then back to the ship. Our requests to stop and actually visit these attractions were ignored.
After lunch we returned to the city, walking up all 192 steps to the Primorksy Boulevard in search of Odessa's largest department store.
We found it, and what we saw told us more about Ukrainian society than all the monuments and museums. The main department store is located is about the size of a large McDonald's, lighted by three short fluorescent tubes glowing down dimly from the 14-foot ceilings of the single-room store.
It's hard to describe it as a department store. The only goods for sale were in boxes, piled in twos and threes on the floor or stacked up along the walls. The dim light made it difficult to see colors, and the haphazard system of boxes made it even more difficult to discover exactly what was on sale.
Things were no better in nearby shops. One shoe store had 12 pairs - twelve total pairs - for sale, a clothing store offered men's suites for 500 rubles (about $5) and women's dresses for 200 and 300 rubles ($2 and $3) though the styles seemed out of the 1950s. These clothing stores were small, with all good kept behind a counter and not fitting rooms or areas in which to try them on.
The story was much the same at a nearby supermarket, which was divided into three areas that offered canned pineapples, cheese and one variety of sausage, the latter of which drew long lines waiting for what appeared to be a limit of one per customer. There were no fresh vegetables, fruits, breads or frozen goods in any form.
Street vendors fared better, though. Women were doing a box-office business selling ice cream or small potatoes from hand carts. Book vendors were also drawing a lot of attention.
Despite this lack of commercial offerings, the citizens of Odessa did not appear poverty-stricken, unhappy or angry. We saw no signs of homeless people or public drunkenness or even a heavy police presence. In fact, the only policeman we saw during our visit was directing traffic on and off the pier parking lot, and the only uniformed soldier was visiting the monument to the Potemkin sailors.
But by western standards, Odessa is a beautiful though spartan city, it forced us to recall a conversation some ship passengers had with our tour guide after she stopped our bus at the Black Sea Hotel for bathroom visit.
We walked inside the Black Sea Hotel, which the guide described as one of the finest in the city. The bar, lit by a single fluorescent tube, was partitioned off from the main lobby by a wall of wire fencing, and looked far more depressing than bars in the United States.
The bathrooms were apparently even less inviting. The women from the bus entered the women's room and walked quickly back out, expressing disgust at the sanitary conditions there.
"The Black Sea Hotel is nice, no?" the guide asked the women. The silence from the women drew out into an uncomfortable moment until one woman passenger said, "By our standards, the hotel's bathrooms would be condemned."
Her comments drew an murmur of endorsement from the other women on the bus.
The guide was at first surprised and then defensive. "You must understand that we are a poor nation," she said. "We are still learning about tourists. We have many needs. Perhaps in time it will be better."
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