As a 9-year-old, all that you really dream about during a school year is a summer holiday. I was exactly that age in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart.
As a 9-year-old, all that you really dream about during a school year is a summer holiday. I was exactly that age in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart.
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.
One holiday in Crimea stuck in my memory very well.
Twin featureless Soviet-built hotels were slowly taking over the beaches near the green rolling hills of the Crimea’s mountains. Shedding paint and bricks today, they looked modern and stylish in the ’90s.
We didn’t have the money to stay in any of them and booked a trip to a sanatorium instead through my mother’s work. As a nurse, she was entitled to spend two weeks at the seaside – nearly all paid for by the state – to improve her health.
My dad is not a doctor and he wasn’t ill, so to go together, 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.
My stay, however, 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.
A family spends a summer evening in their rented wooden shack in Zatoka, Odesa Oblast. (Petrut Calinescu)
Twenty years on, the options for summer travel changed tremendously. Most of the beautiful decadent villas went back into the private hands of Ukrainian millionaires. Ritzy international hotels slowly make their way in.
The coastline in Crimea and Odesa 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 Odesa’s lovely wicker chairs in a café across the opera house and headed for the suburbs.
Some 50 kilometers from the famous Arkadia beaches, we ended up in a small resort town of Zatoka. Hundreds of holiday-makers strolled along entertainment strips, which somewhat reminded us 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 fair.
Yet, this illusion of a Western resort lasted only until we checked into our hotel, which charged $50 per night for their best room (in Odesa, they don’t take less than a $100, by the way).
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 were a sight all too familiar.
We wandered out. The wooden houses on the hotel territory looked like prison cells with little windows, spring beds and 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 relevant. We lacked safety and physiological comfort.
There was a lot of greasy junk food sold everywhere but not a decent salad without mayo in sight.
I might have felt what my parents experienced 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 beach resorts in Crimea and Odesa 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]
