Like most other families in Ukraine, we neither dreamed of, nor could afford, travelling abroad. I used to spend three glorious summer months either skipping over the rope in our backyard or at the camping site sunbathing with grandparents. Very rarely did we manage to escape to the seaside as a family.
Twin featureless Soviet-built hotels – now shedding paint and bricks – back then looked modern and stylish. They were slowly taking over the beach in Odessa Oblast and Crimea.
We didn’t have the money to stay in one of them and instead booked trips to a sanatorium in Crimea through my mother’s work. As a nurse, she was entitled to spend two weeks in a sanatorium with a large discount to improve her health.
My dad is not a doctor and he wasn’t ill, so to smuggle him in, my mother had to ask her hospital to forge some documents and send him along as one of their former patients. They took me, of course.
I was completely illegal in that lovely mansion, converted from the early 20th century grand aristocratic home in the Crimean town of Simeyiz. So whenever somebody entered our room, I had to jump out of the window (luckily it was on the first floor).
That was in the 1990s.
Twenty years on, the options for summer travel changed tremendously. Most of the beautiful aristocratic homes went back into the private hands of Ukrainian millionaires.
Ritzy international hotels slowly make their way in. The coastline in Crimea and Odessa is just as good as in any Western resort, but that’s if you stay in central towns and don’t sidetrack.
A few weeks ago, we decided to leave the comfort of Odessa’s lovely wicker chairs in a café across the opera house and headed for the suburbs.
Some 50 kilometers from famous Arkadia beaches, we ended up in the town of Zatoka. At times, the main entertainment strips in the towns we passed reminded of Cancun in Mexico.
The sandy strip by the sea was peppered with hotels, private dachas, small hectic markets and slews of cafes. People traffic was huge and it was very noisy. Souvenir stalls with sea shells and sailors’ shirts, local wines sold in plastic bottles, darts, music stores – there was no end to this fun fare.
Yet, this illusion of a Western resort lasted only until we checked into our hotel, which charged $50 per night for their best room. When I walked in, I realized that the spirit of the Soviet Union was still alive and kicking. Some 30-year old furniture, absence of any curtains and a fridge making sounds like an old train looked all too familiar.
We wandered out. The wooden cabins on the territory looked like prison cells with little windows and spring beds, with facilities outside. They were crowded with families. I couldn’t believe people not only stayed in this decrepit accommodation but also looked quite happy about it.
We stayed in Zatoka for two nights. Suddenly, our regular needs of philosophical self-fulfillment, as in the top tier of Maslow’s pyramid, were no longer important. We lacked safety and physiological comfort.
I might have felt what my parents felt when they were hiding me from the staff in the sanatorium.
Luckily, I was only an observer. But for many people in Ukraine, Zatoka and other off-beaten destinations in Crimea and Odessa are still luxury destinations. And if they manage to afford a shack by the sea, it would make them happy.
But they deserve more. And hopefully, in another 20 years, they will be able to afford a room with a shower in it.
Kyiv Post lifestyle editor Yuliya Popova can be reached at [email protected]
