HISTORY

The territory of Ukrainian State is 603,700 km², or 5.7% of European territory and 0.44% of world's territory. Its territory is bigger than those of France (544,000 km²), Spain (505,000 km²), Sweden (450,000 km²), Germany (356,000 km²) and Poland (312,000 km²).
Ukraine has 49.5 mln. residents (as of beginning of 2001). In terms of population, Ukraine ranks 5th in Europe (after Germany, Italy, Great Britain and France) and 21st in the world. It has 7.3% of Europe's and 1% of global population. The majority of people (68%) live in urban areas. 32% live in countryside.

History of Ukraine

History Ukraine's geographic location between Europe and Asia was an important factor in its early history. The steppes were the domain of Asiatic nomads, the Black Sea coast was inhabited by Greek colonists, and the forests in the northwest were the homeland of the agrarian East Slavic tribes from whom, eventually, the Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian nations evolved.

Ukrainian history began with the rumble of hooves - Scythians dominated the steppes north of the Black Sea from the 7th to the 4th centuries BC, initiating centuries of outside political and cultural domination. Traces of Scythian culture can be found in Kiev's Caves Monastery, where the tombs contain superb goldwork depicting highly detailed animal and human forms. Following the Scythians, a series of invaders, including Ostrogoths, Huns and the Turko-Iranian Khazars, ruled areas of present-day Ukraine.

The first people to unify and control the area for a long period were Scandinavians known as the Rus. The Rus took Kiev in 882 AD, and by the late 10th century the city was the centre of a unified state known as Kievan Rus, which stretched from the Volga west to the Danube and south to the Baltic. In 988, the Kievan Rus leader Volodymyr accepted Christianity from Constantinople, beginning a long period of Byzantine influence over Ukrainian politics and culture. By 1520 the Ottoman Empire controlled all of coastal Ukraine.

Military devastation and plague had wiped out much of the population of the Ukrainian steppe by the 15th century, when the region became popular with runaway serfs and Orthodox refugees escaping more tightly controlled neighboring domains. These people came to be known as kazaks (Cossacks), a Turkic word meaning outlaw, adventurer or freebooter. Ukrainian Cossacks eventually formed a state that, although officially under Polish and later Russian rule, was to a significant degree self-ruling, but 20 years later the state was divided between Poland and Russia.

Ukrainian nationalism flourished in the 1840s, prompting Russian authorities to ban the Ukrainian language in schools, journals and books. Following W.W.I and the collapse of tsarist authority, Ukraine finally had a chance to gain its independence, but none of the bewildering array of factions could win decisive support. Civil war broke out and the country quickly descended into anarchy, with six armies vying for power and Kiev changing hands five times in one year. After prolonged fighting involving Russia, Poland and various Ukrainian political and ethnic factions, Poland retained portions of western Ukraine and the Soviets got the rest.
Ukraine officially became part of the USSR in 1922.
While the leadership in Moscow sorted itself out, another Ukrainian national revival took off in the 1920s. When Stalin took power in 1927, however, he made a test case out of Ukraine for his ideas about 'harmful' nationalism. In 1932-33 he engineered a famine that killed as many as 7 million Ukrainians. Execution and deportation of intellectuals further depopulated the country. Stalin also went after the country's premier religious symbols, its churches and cathedrals, destroying over 250 buildings. During the purges of 1937-39, millions more Ukrainians were either executed or sent to Soviet labour camps. W.W.II brought further devastation and death, with 6 million perishing in the fighting between the Red Army and the German forces. It's estimated that during the first half of the 20th century, war, famine and purges cost the lives of over half the male and a quarter of the female population of Ukraine.

The 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine and the appallingly slow official Soviet response provoked widespread discontent, and the Uniate Church emerged from isolation two years later. The Ukrainian People's Movement for Restructuring, an umbrella nationalist movement founded in Kiev by prominent intellectuals and writers, won local seats across the country in 1990.
In July of that year, the parliament issued a sovereignty - but not secession - declaration to little effect. Shortly after the failed Soviet coup in August 1991, the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) was banned, and in December the population voted overwhelmingly for independence.

Leonid Kravchuk, former chairman of the CPU, was elected as the first president of Ukraine. Factionalism forced the government's resignation in September 1992, and disagreements with Russia over Ukraine's cache of inherited nuclear weapons and control of the Black Sea fleet (harbored in the Crimean port of Sevastopol) strained relations between the two countries. Meanwhile, skyrocketing inflation, fuel shortages and plummeting consumer power plagued the country and exacerbated regional and ethnic differences. Pro-Russian reformer Leonid Kuchma beat Kravchuk in the 1994 presidential election. The CPU benefited from the political and economic turmoil, capturing a substantial majority of parliamentary seats in the 1994 elections.
In the late 1990s, new tensions arose between Ukraine and Russia over Ukraine's closer ties with NATO. A worrying turn from political stability occurred in late April 2001 with the dismissal of the Prime Minister, Viktor Yushchenko. He has vowed to return, but in the short term, Ukrainian politics looks fragile indeed.
Leonid Kuchma created a government of Ukraine that probably will come into the World`s history as a Crime Ukrainian Government. It was 100% corrupted and politicians of Kuchma`s government even killed journalists which tried to tell the truth. Many people in the world have heard about so called Cassette scandal. It was about the voice of the President Leonid Kuchma recorded illegally by one of the security officer. Kuchma ordered to kill a journalist Gongadze.
Now this scandal is in progress and we hope that Kuchma will be in jail for his crimes.
Old Kuchma`s government supported by Russian government and Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to elect for new President Viktor Yanukovich-the former criminal and the leader of crime group in Donetsk region. The results of Presidential election of November, 21, 2004 were falsified by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich and Ukrainian people arisen for Truth, Democracy and Freedom.

History of Crimea

This page gives a very brief summary of a long and complex subject!
The Ancient World
Crimea was known in ancient times as Tauris (Tavrida in Russian), home to the tribes who took Iphigenia prisoner in Euripides' play Iphigenia in Tauris. The Tauric tribes were absorbed first by Cimmerian and then Scythian invaders, who were later pushed back from the coast by Greek colonists in the 6th century BC.

The Greeks
Eastern Crimea became the centre of the Greek Bosporan kingdom, with Panticapaeum (today the town of Kerch) as its capital, and a major ports at Theodosia (now Feodosia). In the west, Greek colonists from Heracleia founded the cities of Khersoness (outside present-day Sevastopol) and Kerkinitida (now Yevpatoria). The Greeks never succeeded in taking over the whole peninsula, and had to defend themselves against frequent attacks by the Scythians and then by the even more warlike Sarmatians.(also known as the Alans). Nevertheless, the peninsula became the major source of wheat for ancient Greece.

Little remains to link Yalta with the Greeks apart from the town's name. The legend is that Greek sailors were blown off course at night on the Black sea, and completely lost their way in sea mists. At dawn the mist lifted and when the lookout caught sight of the green Crimean coast he shouted `Yalos! Yalos!' (`shore, shore') . They named the place where they landed Yalta.

Many Greeks remained in Crimea after the Bosporan kingdom fell to the Huns and the Goths, and Khersoness became part of the Byzantine Empire. In 965 AD there were 16,000 Crimean Greeks in the joint Byzantine and Kievan Rus army which invaded Bulgaria. Orthodox monasteries continued to function, with strong links with the monasteries on Mount Athos in northern Greece.

The Byzantine Empire
The Romans arrived in Crimea in the 1st century AD and established protectorates and naval bases at Khersoness and in the Bosporan kingdom in the east of the peninsula. Roman legionaries were also stationed at fortresses built in strategic locations along the coast, such as the Ai-Todor promontory near Yalta. They lost their Bosporan acquisitions to the Goths in the 4th century, but Khersoness became part of the Byzantine empire and remained under the control of Constantinople until the 13th century, when it was overrun by part of Chingiz Khan's Golden Horde.

The medieval world

The Tatars
For centuries Crimea had been the subject of a tug of war between the Byzantine and Khazar empires, Kievan Rus (the fore-runner of modern Russia) and nomadic tribes such as the Cumans and the Kypchaks. Then in 1223 a new force appeared on the scene. Chingiz Khan's Golden Horde entered Crimea, sweeping all before it. Originating in current day Mongolia, the Tatars were a collection of nomadic tribes who had united under Chingiz Khan's banner, and gathered Turkic people to swell their army as they rode and marched across Central Asia and into Eastern Europe. Renowned for his ruthlessness, the Great Khan's success also lay in his ability to impose discipline and order in place of old tribal rivalries. He introduced laws forbidding, among other things, blood feuds, theft, the bearing of false witness, sorcery, disobedience of a royal command, and bathing in running water. The last was a reflection of the Tatars' animist belief system. They worshipped Mongke Koko Tengre, `The Eternal Blue Sky', the almighty spirit controlling the forces of good and evil, and believed that powerful spirits lived in fire, running water and the wind.

Crimea became part of the huge Tatar empire, stretching from China in the east to beyond Kyiv and Moscow in the west. Because of its sheer size, it was impossible for Chingiz Khan to govern his empire from Mongolia, and the Crimean Khans enjoyed a considerable amount of autonomy. Their first Crimean capital was at Qirim (now Stary Krym), and remained there until the 15th century when it moved to Bakhchisarai. It is during the Tatar period that the peninsula's old name of Tavrida fell gradually into disuse, to be replaced by the name Krym, derived from the name of the Tatar capital.

The breadth of the Tatar empire, and the power of the great Khan meant that for a while merchants and other travellers under his protection could journey east and west in comparative safety. The Tatars concluded trading agreements with the Genoese and the Venetians and Sudak and Kaffa (Feodosia) prospered in spite of the taxes levied on them. Marco Polo landed at Sudak on his way to the court of Kublai Khan in 1275.

Like all great empires, the Tatar empire was influenced by the cultures it encountered during its expansion. In 1262 the Egyptian Mamluk Sultan Baybars, who had been born in Qirim, wrote to one of the Tatar Khans suggesting that the Tatars should convert to Islam. The oldest mosque in Crimea still stands in Stary Krim, built in1314 by Tatar Khan Uzbek.

The Ottoman Empire
In 1475 the Ottoman Turks overran Crimea, taking the Crimean Khan Mengli Girei prisoner at Kaffa and releasing him to rule Crimea as their representative. Thereafter the Crimean Khans were appointed by Constantinople, although they still had considerable autonomy in day to day matters. Over the next three hundred years the Tatars remained the dominant force in Crimea, and a thorn in the side of the developing Russian empire. The Tatar Khans began building the great palace which stands at Bakhchisarai in the 15th century.

The 18th and 19th Centuries

Imperial Russia
In the 18th century there was still a sizeable Greek population in Crimea, but in 1778, only a few years before Catherine the Great finally took Crimea from the Ottoman Empire, 18,000 Crimean Greeks, along with other christians tired of living under Tatar rule successfully petitioned the empress for permission to move to Russia and emigrated to the shores of the sea of Asov, where they founded the city of Mariupol.

Fresh Greek settlers arrived soon afterwards, however, when the empress gave them land in Crimea in recognition of their services in helping Russia against the Ottoman Empire. Known as the `archipelago Greeks' because they came mainly from the Greek islands, they also provided soldiers for the Balaklava battalion which later reinforced Russian authority in the area. Some of the officers of this Greek regiment built substantial estates at Oreanda and Livadia near Yalta.

Catherine the Great took Crimea from the Ottoman Turks in 1783 and also established protectorship over Georgia, giving Russia access to the Black Sea coast from two sides. In 1787 the 58 year old empress travelled from St Petersburg to Crimea, with a retinue of 2,300 people. She was met by 12,000 Tatar horsemen in ceremonial dress who escorted her to the Khan's Palace at Bakhchisarai. A stone plaque was placed there to commemorate the occasion and can still be seen today. From there she travelled to Sevastopol, where she met Prince Potemkin, her governor-general (later rewarded with the title Prince of Tavrida) and saw the Black Sea fleet at anchor. She then travelled on to Akh-Mechet (present-day Simferopol), Stariy Krim and Feodosia. Catherine was too shrewd a politician to be indulging in tourism, although her letters suggest that she enjoyed much of the journey. She was here to make a point - that Crimea was now part of the great Russian empire. From the Khan's Palace she wrote: "This acquisition means an end to fear of the Tatars...This thought gives me great consolation, and I lie down to sleep today, having seen with my own eyes, that far from causing harm, it has been of the greatest advantage to my empire".

But soon afterwards the Ottoman Empire again declared war on Russia, and it took four years before the Turks capitulated after a series of naval defeats at the hands of the Black Sea fleet, and accepted the reality of Crimea's transfer from the Ottoman to the Russian empire.

Catherine then set about consolidating her new acquisition. She realised that the only way that Russia would hold on to Crimea in the long term was to change the population balance in favour of those sympathetic to the Russian cause. Not only Russians, but also substantial numbers of Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Armenians, and Germans were encouraged by Catherine to settle in Crimea, a process which continued into the 19th century. Some Tatars emigrated to Turkey, although most stayed. By 1863, the immigrants outnumbered the Tatar population.

The Crimean War
The decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century led to a complex international power struggle between the major states of europe.

The ostensible cause of the Crimean War was a squabble over custodianship of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, then under Ottoman control. In 1852 the French persuaded the Turks to take the church away from the Greek Orthodox Church and place it in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. Nikolai I of Russia, officially protector of the Orthodox population under Ottoman rule as a result of a treaty made under Catherine the Great, demanded that the right be restored to the Orthodox. When the Turks refused, he ordered Russian troups into Moldavia, then part of the Ottoman empire.

What led Britain and France to come to the Turkish Sultan's aid was not a pious desire to protect the rights of the Catholic Church, but rather the fear that, left unchecked, the Russians would now have an excuse to destroy the ailing Ottoman empire and gain control of the passage from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. In 1854 a large British and French expeditionary force landed at Balaklava, near Sevastopol, the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet, which had inflicted a major defeat on the Turkish fleet soon after hostilities began. The Russians scuttled their fleet in the harbour mouth at Sevastopol to block the entrance, and a lengthy siege began. Battles were fought at various points around the western Crimean coast, including Balaklava, scene of the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade, and Inkerman.

The war was essentially a stalemate, with terrible casualties on both sides. Many more soldiers died of disease than died in battle. Tsar Nikolai I died in 1855, and his successor, Alexander II realised he could not realistically continue the war in the face of growing social discontent at home. The Treaty of Paris ended the war in 1856.

Development of Yalta
In 1825, the Oreanda Estate near Yalta had been bought by the crown as a summer residence for Alexander I. His successor, Nikolai I built a palace there and approved a development plan for the newly designated district of Yalta. The palace was later destroyed by fire but the park remains. In1860, after the end of the Crimean War the Livadia Estate was bought for Alexander II and construction of the magnificent Livadia Palace began. This period also saw the building of other palaces such as Massandra and Alupka. The presence of the royal families attracted aristocrats and rich merchants, bringing investment and prosperity to Yalta and the surrounding area, and turning it into imperial Russia's most fashionable resort.

The nineteenth century saw the introduction of more modern farming methods, including wine-growing influenced by the presence of small German farming communities, and the building of the first vineyards by Russian Counts Golitsyn and Vorontsov. The latter was also responsible for major road-building schemes, such as the road between Yalta and Simferopol.

The 20th century
The 1st World War was disastrous for the last Tsar Nikolai II. Crimea and part of Ukraine were taken by German forces, and heavy losses on the battlefield, combined with food and ammunition shortages, demoralized the Russian army to the point of mutiny. The October 1917 Revolution was as much a response to the war as to general social conditions. Crimea was the scene of fierce fighting between Bolshevik forces and anti-revolutionary White Russian soldiers.

In 1921 Crimea was established as an autonomous Republic for the Crimean Tatars within the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist republic. However, this did not prevent theTatars from suffering severely during Stalin's purges of the nineteen thirties. Another group to suffer were the Greeks, many of whom lost their farms during collectivisation. Greek schools were closed and Greek literature destroyed, as they were labelled as counter-revolutionary because of their tradition of free enterprise, their links with capitalist Greece, and their independent culture.

The 2nd World War brought the return of German forces, who completely occupied the republic after the fall of Sevastopol in 1942, and held it until the spring of 1944. In 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Russian Secretary-General Joseph Stalin chose the Livadia Palace near Yalta as the venue for what became known as the Yalta Conference. The "big three" effectively set the stage for the cold war years which followed, but also began the discussions which led to the formation of the United Nations.

After the end of the war Crimea lost its status as an autonomous republic because of collaboration by significant numbers of Crimean Tatars with the occupying German forces, as a result of the previous mistreatment of Tatars by the Soviet regime. In retribution, in spite of the fact that some 50,000 Tatars had fought on all fronts in the Soviet armed forces, Stalin officially abolished the Crimean Tatars as a nation, and organised the mass deportation of the entire Tatar population - some 220,000 people - to Central Asia, along with 70,000 Crimean Greeks. It was not until 1956, when USSR Premier Nikita Khruschev denounced the Tatar deportation in his speech attacking Stalin's legacy, that there was any official recognition of the terrible wrong done to the Tatar people and others. It took until the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, for Tatar families and members of other deported groups to be allowed to return to Crimea in significant numbers.

During the Soviet era Crimea prospered as a tourist destination, and new sanatoria were built for the workers of the growing industrial state. Holiday makers from all over the Soviet Union relaxed on its beaches, and it became a favorite for tourists from East Germany. The infrastructure improved and manufacturing developed around the ports at Kerch and Sevastopol, and also in the capital, Simferopol. The Russian and Ukrainian populations more than doubled during this period: by 1989, there were 1.6 million Russians and 626,000 Ukrainians living in Crimea.

A Ukrainian by birth, Nikita Khruschev had returned Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. Thirty-seven years later, in 1991, after the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine declared its independence . Because of the majority of Russian-speakers in Crimea, there was a move to return the region to Russia, but this was not successful and Crimea is today an Autonomous Republic within Ukraine.

Brief History Of Crimea

Known in ancient times as Tauris, the peninsula was the home of the Cimmerian people, called the Tauri. Expelled from the steppe by the Scythians in the 7th cent. B.C., they founded (5th cent. B.C.) the kingdom of Cimmerian Bosporus, which later came under Greek influence. Ionian and Dorian Greeks began to colonize the coast in the 6th cent., and the peninsula became the major source of wheat for ancient Greece. In the 1st cent. B.C., the kingdom of Pontus began to rule the Greek part of the peninsula, which became a Roman protectorate in the 1st cent. A.D. During the next millennium the area was overrun by Ostrogoths, Huns, Khazars, Cumans, and in 1239, by the Mongols of the Golden Horde. Meanwhile, the southern shore was mostly under Byzantine control from the 6th to the 12th cent.

Trade relations were established (11th–13th cent.) with Kievan Rus, and in the 13th cent. Genoa founded prosperous coastal commercial settlements. After Timur's destruction of the Golden Horde, the Tatars established (1475) an independent khanate in N and central Crimea. In the late 15th cent. both the khanate and the southern coastal towns were conquered by the Ottoman Empire; the Turks called the peninsula Crimea. Although they became Turkish vassals, the Crimean Tatars were powerful rulers who became the scourge of Ukraine and Poland, exacted tribute from the Russian czars, and raided Moscow as late as 1572.

Russian armies first invaded the Crimea in 1736. Empress Catherine II forced Turkey to recognize the khanate's independence in 1774, and in 1783 she annexed it outright; the annexation was confirmed by the Treaty of Jassy (1792). Many Tatars, with their Muslim religion and Turkic language, emigrated to Turkey, while Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Germans, Armenians, and Greeks settled in the Crimea. During the Crimean War (1853–56), parts of the remaining Tatar population were resettled in the interior of Russia.

After the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) an independent Crimean republic was proclaimed; but the region was soon occupied by German forces and then became a refuge for the White Army. In 1921 a Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created; Tatars then constituted about 25% of the population. During World War II, German invaders took the Crimea after an eight-month siege. Accused by the Soviet government of collaborating with the Germans, the Crimean Tatars were forcibly removed from their homeland after the war and resettled in distant parts of the Asian USSR. The republic itself was dissolved (1945) and made into a region of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic; in 1954 it was transferred to Ukraine. In 1989, some of the Tatars began to return from their exile in Siberia.

In 1991, President Mikhail Gorbachev was vacationing in Crimea at the time of the August Coup. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia and Ukraine engaged in negotiations over the possession of Crimea and the disposition of the former Soviet fleet based in the Black Sea. In 1992 there was an abortive attempt by the Russian-dominated Crimean government to declare independence. Elected Crimea's first president in 1994, Yuri Meshkov called for the rejoining of the Crimea with Russia. In 1995, Crimea's government was placed under national control and Meshkov was ousted, but its assembly was retained. An accord the same year between Ukraine and Russia called for the division of the Black Sea fleet, and in 1997 it was agreed that Russia would be allowed to base its portion of the fleet there for 20 years.

GEOGRAPHY

Geography Location:
Ukraine occupies a central position in Europe,
bordered by Belarus in the north, the Russian Federation in the east and northeast, Poland in the northwest, Slovakia on the west, and Hungary, Romania and Moldavia in the southwest.

Area:
The area of Ukraine is 60,300 sq. km.
The longest distances: north-south - 893km.; west-east - 1316km.

Land boundaries:
T otal 4,558 km, Belarus 891 km, Hungary 103 km, Moldova 939 km, Poland 428 km, Romania (southwest) 169 km, Romania (west) 362 km, Russia 1,576 km, Slovakia 90 km

Coastline:
2,782 km

Terrain:
The territory of Ukraine is mainly flat. The chief physico-geographical zones are mixed deciduous leaf and conifer forests, forest-steppes and steppe.
The Carpathian Mountains (highest point: Mt. Hoverlia, 2,061m) extend to the westernmost part of the country, while the Crimean Mountains (highest point: Mt. Roman-Kosh, 1,545m) rise in the southernmost end.

Climate:
Ukraine's climate is temperate and subtropical in the extreme south. Nature has showered Ukraine with unique places for rest and recreation.

The Carpathian Mountains are great for hiking and climbing, as are the Crimean Mountains. Health resorts are a popular attraction in both mountain regions.

Natural resources:
iron ore, coal, manganese, natural gas, oil, salt, sulphur, graphite, titanium, magnesium, kaolin, nickel, mercury, timber

The capital of Ukraine is Kyiv.

The southern coast of Ukraine is bordered by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Black Sea has a surface area of 423,000 sq. km. Its depth is 2,000m. In the northwest, however, the sea is only 30-60m. deep.
The important ports of Odesa, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Sevastopol lie on the Black Sea.
Animal life is limited. Among the best-known fish are sturgeon, goby, mullet, plaice and such typically Black Sea fish as horse mackerel and scomber.

The Sea of Azov.
There are wonderful sandy beaches on its northern coast and it is rich in fish life.
In the winter the Sea of Azov freezes over.
It is small, and the world's most shallow sea, its average depth being 5-7m.

LANGUAGE

Crimea is an autonomous republic within Ukraine.This special status is a result of its history. When it became part of the Russian empire in the early 18th century, large numbers of Russians moved to Crimea, attracted by the warm climate and encouraged by Catherine the Great and her successors, who had political reasons for wanting to ensure that their newest acquisition became well and truly Russian. This process continued throughout the 19th and well into the 20th century. The result is that the majority of those now living in Crimea speak Russian as their first language. Most Tatars and Ukrainians living in the region speak Russian as well as their own language. Signs are in Russian, in contrast with the rest of Ukraine, where the Ukrainian language is the norm.

There is a bad and shameful story about Russian policy of killing Tatars, but that is another theme-read history. Now Ukrainian government makes a lot of efforts to give back to Tatars their rights and their native lands.

Russian is written in Cyrillic script, which has strong similarities with the Greek alphabet, although there are additional letters to represent Slavonic sounds not found in Greek.

Many younger Crimeans will have learnt English at school, while the older generation are more likely to have learnt some German, reflecting the significant numbers of East german tourists who visited the region during the Soviet era. Today there is a lively interest in learning western european languages, now that the political barriers to travel have disappeared, although the economic barriers still make it too expensive, in practice, for many people to be able to afford a holiday abroad.

Since the re-unification of Germany the number of German visitors has fallen, and restaurant menus, guidebooks and brochures are now beginning to be translated into English, in anticipation of a hoped for increase in visitors from the UK and other EU countries, and also the US, Canada and Australasia.

If you don't speak Russian, here are some tips for coping easily with the language challenge!

• learn the alphabet before you go, or in the first couple of days after you get there. That way you'll be able to read street names and the signs outside shops, banks, post office etc

• learn a few words and phrases - if nothing else: please, thank you, hello and goodbye - it does make a difference!

• Crimeans use the same written numbers as in western europe, so prices displayed on cash registers or calculators will be easy to read. But if you're shopping at the market, take a pen and paper so you can ask the market vendor to write down the price - then it won't matter if you can't understand what she says!

In any case, if you are the customer of CrimeaWelcome- you will be escorted with an interpreter-so, no problem!

 

CULTURE

Culture For a long time, the Western world perceived Ukraine as simply a part of Russia. But borscht, painted eggs and many of the famous Cossack song and dance traditions originated in Ukraine. Western Ukrainians consider themselves to be 100% Ukrainian and the vanguard of their culture, speaking their language and trumpeting their nationalism. In the east, where over 10 million ethnic Russians live, nationalism is less intense, and most people speak Russian. Though Russian speaking people in the east tend to trumpet Russian chauvinism with PR support of Russian government and Putin that try to recover their influence for East part of Ukraine.

Ukrainian, like Russian and Belarusian, is an Eastern Slavic language. It's arguably the closest of the three to the original 9th century Slavonic used in Kiev before the more formal Church Slavonic from Bulgaria was introduced with Christianity in the 10th century. Despite being watered down by Russian and Polish and being banned by Tsar Alexander II in 1876, the Ukrainian language persevered and is becoming more widespread. It was adopted as the country's official language in 1990, though Russian is understood by almost everyone.

The origins of Ukraine's national literature go back to medieval Slavic chronicles such as the 12th century Slovo o polku Ihorevim (The Tale of Ihor's Armament). The beginnings of modern Ukrainian literature stem from mid-18th century wandering philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda, the 'Ukrainian Socrates'. Skovoroda wrote poems and philosophical tracts in Ukrainian, aimed at the common person rather than the elite. Taras Shevchenko, an ardent nationalist who was born a serf in 1814 and became a national hero, was the first major writer in Ukrainian. His work launched a golden age of Ukrainian literature. The most talented and prolific writer of the early 20th century was Ivan Franko, whose work spanned fiction, poetry, drama, philosophy and children's stories. Many writers made the Soviet occupation their subject, and many suffered for it. Vasyl Stus' Winter Trees (1968) and Candle in the Mirror (1977) set the agony of dissidence to poetry; Stus eventually was killed in a Soviet labour camp. The Union of Ukrainian Writers in Kiev was instrumental in bringing about independence from the USSR in 1991.

Ukrainian music has its roots in centuries-old oral traditions of bylyny (epic narrative poems) and dumas, which were long lyrical ballads glorifying the exploits of the Cossacks. The roots of Ukrainian folk music lie in the legendary kobzar, wandering minstrels of the 16th and 17th centuries who accompanied their songs of heroic exploits (mostly of the Cossacks) with the kobza, a lute-like instrument. The bandura, a larger instrument with up to 45 strings, replaced the kobza in the 18th century. Bandura choirs were soon all the rage, and the instrument became the national symbol. Today, the Ukrainian Bandura Chorus from Kiev performs worldwide. Mykola Lysenko is probably the best known Ukrainian classical composer, famous for basing piano works on Ukrainian folk songs. Popular contemporary musicians include the rock group Vopli Vidoplyasova (VV) with its leader Oleh Skrypka, rock group Ocean Of Elsa with a leader Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, punk band Plach Yeremiyi, Ruslana Lyzhychko-the winner of Eurovision contest of 2004, Gryndzholy rock group -most known as an author of Revolutionary Athem Rap song of Orange Revolution and the singer-songwriter Nina Matvienko, who draws heavily on Ukrainian folk traditions.

Christianity came to Ukraine late in the 10th century. The Catholic and Orthodox churches split in 1054, and Orthodoxy itself later split into three main branches, each one with a different relationship to Moscow-controlled Russian Orthodoxy and to Roman Catholicism. Church buildings dominate Ukrainian architecture. One unique genre is the wooden church, featuring gables and wooden-shingled onion domes and cupolas - all held together by complex joinery without nails. As part of their campaign to crush Ukrainian identity and nationalism, the Soviets demolished hundreds of sacred buildings in the 1930s, including four 12th century cathedrals. Painting also has its roots in religious themes. Until the 17th century, the key expression was the icon - a small image of Christ, the Virgin, angels or saints, painted on a limewood panel and attributed with healing and spiritual powers. Church murals, mosaics, frescoes and illuminated manuscripts developed at the same time as the icon. The rise of the Cossacks in the 17th century stimulated new schools of secular painting with nationalist themes. After the deadening chill of decades of Soviet Realism, stylistic experimentation and nationalist themes are once again rampant.

WEATHER

Crimea lies in the same latitude as Venice, and its summer temperatures are similar to those on the French and Portuguese Algarve mediterranean coasts. Although it's so much further east, it avoids the high humidity experienced by parts of mainland Greece and Turkey in the summer months because of its position as a near-island in the Black Sea. Fresh sea breezes ensure that the high summer temperatures don't become uncomfortable.

Crimea has two seasons - the warm / hot season, which lasts from May through to October, and the cool season running from November to April. Rainfall is light , averaging around 1 inch (38 mm) per month in summer and 3 inches (83 mm) in the cool season.

In the warm / hot season temperatures rival those of the mediterranean resorts and the average sea temperature in summer is 23ºC. Swimming begins in earnest in May and continues through to the end of October.

As you travel west along the coast to Yalta and Sevastopol, the climate stays hot but the landscape becomes greener, with mountain forests where the trees and animals have conservation status. The further east you go, towards Sudak and Feodosia, the more rugged the terrain becomes, although softened in places by vineyards which provide the grapes for the many Crimean wines. Eastern Crimea is famous for the Kara-dag nature reserve, a wild area of volcanic mountains where rock formations boast names such as the Devil's Finger. Here it can be noticeably hotter and drier than in the leafier western areas.

The Crimean coast is shielded from the north winds by the mountains, and as a result usually has mild winters. Cool season temperatures average around 7ºC and it is rare for the weather to drop below freezing except in the mountains, where there is usually snow. Flowers are already appearing in March and by April the warm weather is on the way back.

Climate
The southern coast from Aya Cape to Kara-Dag Mountain has a subtropical climate, the northern part has continental mild one. From the middle of May to the end of September it is sunny, hot and dry with seldom short rains. The autumn is sunny as well, but it often rains. Winter on mountains is wonderful: dry frosty air, clean fluffy snow. Thousand of Crimeans leave for Angarsky Pass and Ai-Petri Mountain for weekends. In spring the deep Black Sea warmers slower in Yalta and Alushta than in the western and eastern parts of Crimea.

Relative humidity us about 65-80 per cents here. Yalta has lowerest relative humidity. Worthy to be reminded that dry subtropics is the health climate for Europeans.

Yalta

t-C

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Monthly average

+4

+4

+6

+10

+16

+20

+24

+23

+19

+14

+9

+6

 

FOOD

Food

Crimean food is tasty and very varied, reflecting the Ukrainian, Russian and Tatar `ingredients' which combine to form Crimean culture and society. Some dishes have already made a name for themselves abroad - for example, you're likely to be familiar with Chicken Kiev, Beef Stroganoff and Borshch from the pre-cooked versions on your supermarket shelves.

But these are just the tip of the iceberg. You should try Pelmeny - delicious meat-filled dumplings, or the sweet equivalent Vareniki with a cherry or sweet cottage cheese filling. Or Tatar Lagmaan soup, or Shashlyk - kebabs which rival their Greek or Turkish counterparts in marinade and flavour.

You'll find restaurants and cafes to suit every conceivable taste and pocket, from the cheap Stolovaya (self-service cafeteria) or the pavement snack kiosk to the high class Restoran for a candle-lit dinner. Apart from restaurants serving Crimean-style dishes, there are those which specialise in Tatar or Georgian food. And because you're by the sea, there's no shortage of restaurants serving really tasty seafood and fish dishes.

If you want to be really adventurous, why not visit a Tatar eatery and try charcoal-grilled sheeps' testicles (delicious - tastes like a cross between chicken and kidney).Or if the very idea makes you feel queasy, you can opt for something familiar instead like a Chinese restaurant - or even MacDonalds (there's one in Yalta and one in Simferopol).

On the other hand, you may prefer to cook your own meals. There are plenty of well-stocked food supermarkets like Gastronom, but the best place to go is the market. There are several in Yalta, one specialising in vegetables (but also selling other things like bread), one specialising in groceries - all sorts of household goods, bottled drinks and canned food - and a couple of `paper' markets selling books, magazines and stationery. A trip to the vegetable market is a must, just to see the amazing variety of colourful foods on display and savour the atmosphere.

Drink

In summer you'll want lots of bottled water, and there are plenty of good fruit juices on sale too. But don't forget that Ukrainian beers are excellent chilled. Obolon and Slavutich are prize-winning lagers which can hold their own with the best of europe's light beers. Stella Artois is popular too.

Borshch In the west most people think of borshch as beetroot soup, but that's only one of the many varieties. With a dash of sour cream they're all delicious!

Other soups There are the Solyanka soups, made with pickled ingredients, Shchi, where the main ingredient is cabbage, the Ukha range of fish soups, a huge variety of broths with meatballs, dumplings, rice, and of course the Tatar Lagman and Shurpa from Turkmenistan. In summer there is Okroshka - chilled soup.

Zakuski (starters) include a wide variety of salads and cold meats and specialities such as Golubtsy (stuffed cabbage leaves), Sarma (stuffed vine leaves) or stuffed peppers. You can get caviar on an open sandwich or in pancakes (Blinchiki). Manty - originally from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, these steamed dumplings are filled with meat and usually eaten with a hot sauce. Can be eaten as a starter or a main course.

Shashlyk - Kebabs of pork, lamb or sturgeon grilled over charcoal and served with rice and garnished with lemon, onions and tomato. If you thought Greece and Turkey had a monopoly on kebabs, you were wrong!

Fish Large sea fish like sturgeon and beluga (these are white sturgeon, not whales!) are cooked in many different ways. Trout is also a favourite, stuffed with mushrooms or vegetables. And of course there's the full range of seafood dishes.

Meat Kotlety po-Kievsky - Chicken Kiev - is available in some restaurants, but in Crimea it's only one of countless ways of preparing chicken. In the same way, Beef Stroganoff - fillet of beef braised with sour cream - is just one of the many ways to make a beef stew. Pork may come as schnitzel in batter, as escalopes with mushrooms, or stewed with prunes. Every restaurant has its own names and its own creations. You just got to try them out...

Desserts These tend to be fairly simple - fruit or ice-cream in summer, although the more imaginative restaurants will offer their own confections

Snacks Street kiosks sell all sorts of drinks and snacks in the summer months - Chebureki are Caucasian deep fried pasties filled with minced lamb, Blinchiki are pancakes - either stuffed with minced lamb and doused with sour cream, or with any number of fruit and sweet fillings.

WINES

Massandra

The first vineyards around Yalta were planted in the early 19th century by Prince Lev Golitsyn and Count Mikhail Vorontsov, Governor general of Crimea, using imported grapes such as the Semillon, Aligote, Pedro Ximenez and Pinot varieties.

The Massandra cellars were the first to be built in tunnels underground to maintain a constant temperature of around 12 - 13 degrees C. This also had an unforeseen advantage - when revolution arrived in 1917 the wine stocks could be protected by simply walling up the galleries. In 1922 Stalin ordered the wines from all the tsar's palaces to be put under lock and key at Massandra, where wine production was re-started and continued over several generations under the Yegorov family. Just before the Nazi assault on Crimea in 1941, all the wine was removed to secret hiding places, and brought back after the German army had departed. The result is an unparalleled collection of wines going right back to some of the 19th century vintages. The shop at the Massandra cellars sells everything from very affordable to very expensive wines, so you can take your pick!

Magarach

In 1828 Count Vorontsov ordered six hundred acres at Nikita, near Yalta, to be planted with Pinot, Verdot, Malbec and Merlot vines. The wines that followed took their name from the locality - Magarach, or natural spring. In 1873 some of these won the highest awards at the International Exhibition in Vienna. Particular attention was paid to the ageing process and the present day Magarach Institute claims to have a collection of over 21,000 bottles, including an 1836 vintage rose muscat.

Koktebel

At the eastern end of the Crimean coastline, on the plain not far from the wild volcanic Kara-Dag mountains, lies the resort of Koktebel. The wines bearing the same name are predominantly dessert wines ranging from ruby ports to fine madeiras. The latter are aged for between 3 and 15 years and spend a part of that time in barrels outside in the baking hot July sun (right), continuing the tradition begun hundreds of years ago, when it was noticed that wines transported from the island of Madeira to the New World gained softness and flavour as a result of passing through the heat of the tropics.

The main cellars are underground away from both the sun and the winter chill. As you literally walk into the hillside and the huge doors close behind you, the temperature drops by more than half in the space of a second or two. After the summer heat outside it's like walking into a cool-box, and the contrast can make it feel quite chilly. Take a pullover if you go in summer!

Right Bottles of Kara-dag port lagered in the cellars of the Koktebel winery

You may remember seeing this headline a couple of years ago:

This bottle just happened to come from the collection of 19th century wines at the Massandra cellars on the outskirts of Yalta. Bought on the telephone by a private collector on October 17 2001, the sherry was a deep golden colour, with an intense nose of raisins and nuts and was one of the few surviving bottles of its period in the world. The sale price set a new world record.

Although your holiday budget may not stretch to this kind of shopping, a wine-tasting at the Massandra cellars is a must for any visitor - whether you're a connoisseur or just someone who knows a good taste when they meet one.

Crimea makes a wide range of wines, including dry reds and whites, but the regional speciality is sweet wines such as madeira, sherry, muscatel and port.

Spirits

Vodka translates literally as `little water' - an affectionate diminutive of the word for water - voda. It's made by blending grain spirit with demineralised water and filtering it through charcoal. Traditionally drunk neat in one swallow from small vodka glasses, it 's the ideal warmer for an icy Siberian winter - but be wary of its effects after a day in the sun! There are around 50 Ukrainian manufacturers of vodka - some of the best known names include Nemiroff, Knyazhyi Grad, Ivanoff and Kozak. Apart from the pure and largely tasteless variety, there are many varieties flavoured with walnut, plum, apricot and so on. And there are speciality vodkas made with honey or hot peppers - or both. Take a bottle of the hot pepper vodka home if you really want to put fire in the bellies of your party guests!

While vodka is popular throughout Ukraine, there is a marked preference for cognac in Crimea, because it's a wine-growing region.

There are some excellent brands such as Ay-Petry and Koktebel. Ukrainian cognac tends to be mellow and soft on the palate.

TIPS

Traveling to Ukraine
Most international flights go to the Boryspil International Airport in Kiev, about 40km (25mi) south-east of the centre. The airport at Lviv, about 8km (5mi) west of its centre, has connections with Warsaw, Prague, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London and Chicago. Odessa's airport is about 12km (7mi) south-west of downtown, and has flights to and from Vienna and Moscow.
International trains enter Ukraine from seven countries at more than 10 locations. As long as you've got a visa, border crossings are pretty straightforward. Most major Ukrainian cities have daily services from Moscow; it's 15 hours to Kiev and 28 hours to Lviv. You can go between Kiev and Berlin (26 hours) via Warsaw (16 hours) and Brest (10 hours). The station is on the western fringe of downtown Kiev. Lviv has rail connections with most major Eastern European and Russian cities; the station is 3km (2mi) west of the centre. A few buses a day head into Russia from Kharkiv; it takes 20 hours to reach Moscow from Kharkiv by bus.
You can travel by ship between Odessa or Yalta and various cities on the Black Sea and Mediterranean. The main year-round destinations are Haifa (Israel), Limassol (Cyprus), Piraeus (Greece) and Port Said (Egypt). The most frequent and reliable is the Odessa to Istanbul route. It's also possible to sail down the Danube River between Odessa and a number of Eastern European river ports. There's a car ferry running between Kerch, at the eastern tip of Crimea, and the Russian ports of Temryuk, Anapa and Novorossiysk.
All official land border crossings into Ukraine are unrestricted, though they'll always go more smoothly if you have a visa ahead of time rather than relying on getting an emergency visa at the border, especially when entering from Russia.

Getting Around
Getting between major Ukrainian cities is best done by train. They're frequent, cheap and often a convenient night's journey. If you want to save a few grynia and don't mind the extra time, buses serve almost every city and small town; they're best for short trips outside main cities not served by trains.
With fuel hard to come by, spare parts rare, road conditions rugged and getting lost inevitable, driving in Ukraine is not recommended for the faint of heart. Cars can be rented at a few major hotels in Kiev and at a handful of agencies in the major cities. You'll need an International Driving Permit; driving is on the right.

Public Transportation
Public transportation can be found in almost every Ukrainian city and operates from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m.
Taxi is comparatively cheap for Ukrainian/Russian speaking passengers. Probably everywhere situation with taxi is like this – if one speaks a foreign language price for a taxi goes up. There are numerous taxi services, orders are taken via phone. A taxi or a gypsy cab can be hired right on the street simply by putting out your hand. Services of gypsy cabs are less expensive but are not recommended from the safety point of view. However, if you wish to use a gypsy cab make sure there is nobody else inside but the driver and negotiate the price before you get in the car.

Activities
The best prospects for hiking, trekking and camping are in Crimea and the Carpathians in the south-west, along with a few scattered national parks. In south-west Crimea, easy hikes lead to the cave cities of Chuft-Kale and Manhup-Kale. Other Crimean trekking highlights include the 300m (985ft) Bolshoy Kanyon and the Dzhur-Dzhur and Uchansu waterfalls. With a good map you can walk anywhere in the Carpathians, where most of the territory is uninhabited and very scenic. A good place to start is the Carpathian State National Park, about 55km (35mi) south-west of Kolomyya and 500km (310mi) south-west of Kiev. Boat trips down the Dnipro from Kiev to Odessa are a fun and relaxing way to see the country.

Holidays and Events
January 1 - New Year
January 7 - Christmas
March 8 - Women’s Day
May 1, 2 - Labor Day
May 9 - Victory Day
June 23 - Whitsunday
June 28 – Constitution Day
August 24 – Independence Day

Ukrainians place gifts under fir trees and sing holiday songs for New Year's Day.
The country celebrates Orthodox Christmas Day on 7 January.
Paskha (Easter) is the main festival of the Orthodox Church year, beginning with midnight services and continuing with parades around village churches throughout the country.
In Lviv, the National Virtuoso fills the month of May with musical and theatrical performances focussing on national themes.
The capital celebrates spring during Kiev Days, held the last weekend in May.
In August, Crimea fetes itself at Yalta's Crimean Stars. On 28 August, religious pilgrims flock to the monastery in Pochayiv for the Feast of the Assumption. Cities and towns honour Independence Day on 24 August with performances and special events.

Money
Currency: Ukraine gryvnia
The Hryvnia, also spelled sometimes as Hryvna or Grivna (UHR) was introduced September 2, 1996 by the National Bank of Ukraine. It replaces the old 'Coupon' (or 'Karbovanets') which was a temporary currency used in Ukraine during the period of separation from the rouble zone. Coupons were later exchanged at the fixed rate of 100,000 coupons to 1 Hryvnia and as of September 15, 1997 the Hryvnia remains the only legal tender in Ukraine.
There are bills for 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 Hryvnias. There are coins called 'kopiyka' for 1, 2 ,5 10, 25, and 50 kopiykas. (1 kopiyka is equal to 1/100 of Hryvnia.) Alo there are 1, 2 and 5 Hryvnia coins as well as some commemorative collectible coins.

Food
You will be impressed with quantity and quality of restaurants here - national Ukrainian cuisine, European entrees, Italian Pizzerias or just fast food. Most restaurants have affordable prices even for a traveler of modest means.

Ukrainian cuisine restaurants become more and more popular with traditional Borsch – red and green, several kinds of Ukrainian Vareniki (dumplings) stuffed with potatoes, mushrooms, all kinds of meat or cheese, Golubtsy (cabbage rolls) - cabbage leaves stuffed with rice, meat, carrot and fried onion, usually served with sour-cream, jellied meat with horse-radish, suckling pig, stuffed fish and plenty of other Ukrainian specialties. Ukrainian cuisine is rich of natural components grown in the fertile Ukrainian soil. Tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet onion, lettuce, peaches, watermelons, apples, grapes - all vegetable and fruits produced in Ukraine taste marvelous.

Water
Tap water in Kyiv is chemically safe but may contain elevated levels of lead from the pipes. This problem is remedied by letting the tap run for 10 seconds before collecting the water. There is also no detectable radiation in the water.
You should be aware that hot water is typically turned off for a month during the summer so the pipes can be cleaned.
Speaking about drinking water, the majority of food stores and supermarkets in Ukraine have a big choice of bottled water: carbonated and non-carbonated, mineral or simple potable water.

Alcohol
Throughout Ukraine alcohol is quite inexpensive and easily accessible.
Ukraine is a Zero Tolerance country, so please do not drink and drive. The penalties are severe and you are never sure what may happen in such incidents involving the Police.

It is advisable to purchase liquor in the better shops rather than small kiosks; this reduces the risk of weak, fake or dangerous products.

Electricity
220V, 50Hz.
Adaptor with round plugs is necessary if your appliances are for US/Canada electric net.

Floors in buildings
In official buildings the entrance hall is considered the "Ground Floor" The next flight up takes you to the "First" floor. This is the standard floor numbering system used in all European countries. For private apartments the "First" floor is usually exactly that - the first floor.

Business hours
An eight-hour day is considered a normal work day, Monday through Friday. A lunch break is taken between the hours of 1:00pm and 2:00pm. Most banks are open without breaks, Monday through Friday from 9:00am to 1:00pm. As for food stores, many of them work 24 hours 7 days a week, a few – from 8a.m. to 8p.m.

Local time
The time in Ukraine is set 2 hours ahead of GMT (3 hours ahead during day-light time). When it is 12:00 in Kiev it is 11:00 in Warsaw and Berlin, 10:00 in London and 5:00 in New York. Clocks go forward one hour on the last Sunday in March and one hour back on the last Sunday of October.

Weights & measures
Metric

Shopping
Ukraine is famous for its high-quality textile, as well as food products and drinks: delicatessen, caviar, confectionery, chocolate, juices, beer, vodka, Crimea wines and plenty of others. Shops and markets trade via Hryvna only. However, some of shops accept Visa, MasterCard/EuroCard. You can identify such places by credit cards signs on the entrance door.

Buying a souvenir, a painting, a sculpture or other handcrafts it is a good idea to get a certificate identifying historical value (its absence) of the purchased good. This document might be useful when going through the customs upon departure from Ukraine.

Religion
Ukraine is a mostly Orthodox Country. You will enjoy Ukrainian churches; some of which were built almost a thousand years ago. Kiev-Pechersk Monastery is a complex where many religious people gather to celebrate religious holidays. Catholics will find St. Alexander's Cathedral along Kostyolna Street next to Independence Square. The Kiev Central Synagogue on Shota Rustavely Street represents the Jewish community.
Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu communities are represented by their churches, worshipping centers, mosques and temples.

NIGHTLIFE
All the resorts along Crimea's south coast have a thriving nightlife during the summer months. This page concentrates on Yalta as an example. Detailed information is available in the guidebook which you will receive if you book your accommodation in Yalta through us.

The seafront
The hub of Yalta's nightlife is the seafront. In the high season it's full of entertainers - musicians, mime artists, jugglers - and it's fun just to walk along the front, savour the atmosphere and watch all the other people doing the same. The shops along the front stay open till 11pm and the fairground carries on till late too.

Restaurants
There are restaurants all along the front, ranging from cafeteria-style to sophisticated up market ones with waiter service and live music. The Zolotoye Runo (Golden Fleece) is in a replica viking ship raised on stilts above the sea. At the K. Valter you can choose between japanese or russian and crimean dishes, both cooked to a high standard in modern surroundings -or if you prefer the ornate Tsarist style with chandeliers, the Byely Lyev (White Lion) is not far away.The Hispaniola is in a replica schooner that was made for a russian film of Treasure Island, and then turned into a seafood restaurant serving a good range of gourmet fish dishes, washed down with either Crimean or western european wine. The Aisha is a Tatar restaurant serving traditional food where you can recline on couches in Tatar style.

Live music tends to be russian and ukrainian pop mixed with western standards, but at the Vremena Goda (the Seasons) hotel you can hear good jazz in the restaurant, which is open to non-patrons. This restaurant is marked out by its collection of wall to wall modern art originals, and its curious mirror-work structure in the centre of the room which reflects the light in interesting shapes across the paintings in the evenings.

Clubs and discos
Yalta has plenty of nightclubs where you can drink and dance, some with extravagant floorshows like the Mirage. In summer you can dance in the open air by the sea at the Filibuster, or go to one of the open air discos in the park (if you're young enough!). There are casinos too, if you like to live dangerously. The high class one called Third Rome on the seafront is rumoured to belong to the ex-president of Ukraine's wife.

If you want something really different, take the cable-car from the centre of town. This swings you up and away from the noise and bustle of the seafront, which begins to spread out beneath you as your car climbs steadily higher, swaying slowly in the night air. With the lights of Yalta sparkling on the hillsides and the lights of the ships out on the Black Sea, it's magic. At the top of the ride there's a semi-open air nightclub in front of a huge statue of Poseidon, the sea god, where you can drink and dance - or you might just want to ride back down so that you can enjoy those views again.

TRANSPORT

You will not find it expensive to travel around Crimea. There are plenty of options for getting about . You can travel by

BLACK SEA

Why Black?
As you look out across the Black Sea from the top of Ai-Petri mountain, you may wonder why such an iridescent blue sea is called the black sea. Nobody really knows - it can be pretty stormy in winter, and it's thought that the name was given to it by sailors and pirates who were struck by its dark appearance when the sky turned leaden with storm clouds.

It has had other names in the past. The ancient Greeks knew it as the Scythian Sea, after the tribes who held its shores at the time. Shipwrecked sailors could generally expect no mercy from the Scythians, who plundered the wrecks and made wine goblets out of sailors' skulls. The Greeks also called it Pontos Axenos - the inhospitable sea - until they settled in Crimea, after which they changed their minds and called it Pontos Euxenos: the hospitable sea.

Beaches
Crimea has 517 km of clean beaches - mostly small pebbles although there is black volcanic sand at Morskoye and Sudak in the east and silver sand at Yevpatoria in the west. Many beaches are public, and the private ones owned by hotels and sanatoria are usually open to non-patrons at a price of around 3 hryvnias (£0.40p or $0.56 cents) per day. There are naturist beaches near Koktebel in the east.

The main tourist beaches have opportunities for pedalo, jet-skiing, yachting and speed-boating, sea fishing, para-gliding, flights in microlite aircraft and a range of other pursuits, in addition to sea cruises along the coast. Wind-surfing is still developing and good quality boards and sails may not be easily available, but there is a windsurfing club in Feodosia at the eastern end of the peninsula.

The road which runs along the coast from Feodosia to Sevastopol in the west is one of the most beautiful drives in the world. For much of the journey you're looking out over the sea from the mountains which slope down to the shoreline and the views are spectacular.

The rocky Black Sea bays are ideal for scuba diving, and there are many centres along the coast. Balaklava is a favourite, where there is a large underwater reef. From there you can also dive to the underwater ruins of Khersoness, where part of the Byzantine city was swamped by rising sea levels.

Marine life
Playwright Anton Chekhov's dacha at Gursuf looks out over a small bay where he used to watch the dolphins. Apart from Bottlenose and other species of dolphin, the sea has about 180 species of fish, including tuna, anchovy, herring, grey mullet, mackerel, and the famous white sturgeon, which you will find on the menu of most good Crimean restaurants.

There are also some seals in the Black Sea, but their numbers are declining rapidly. Bottlenose dolphins are in demand from amusement parks and dolphinaria because of their playful acrobatics and receptivity to training, and about 120 live Black Sea dolphins were traded internationally between 1990 and 2001. Black Sea dolphins are genetically distinct from those found in the Mediterranean and Atlantic and an attempt was made by Georgia in 2002 to use the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species to outlaw all further trade in the bottlenose to prevent it from being wiped out. The proposal for an outright ban was rejected but Georgia later succeeded in getting the Black Sea dolphins placed on a list that restricts trade through annual quotas - and in this case the quota is zero.

If you swim in the Black Sea at night, especially in August, you may notice that the waves have a strange luminous quality . This is phosphorescence of the sea, caused by plankton interacting in the water.

Noah's Flood
The Black Sea is very deep (1,271m at the centre) but it's less salty than most oceans.

It began life as a fresh water lake about 22 thousand years ago. Then, about seven to nine thousand years ago, global warming melted glaciers and the polar ice-caps, sea levels rose and eventually the Mediterranean overflowed through the Bosporus, turning the lake into the Black Sea. Many archeologists think that this catastrophic event was in fact the Noah's Flood of the Bible.

The sea is unique in having two layers, an oxygenated upper layer, about 200m deep, teeming with life, and a `dead' lower layer, where until recently nothing was thought to be able to survive. The lower layer may have formed when the Mediterranean salt-water flooded in. Denser than the fresh lake water it displaced, it would have plunged straight to the bottom, leaving a diluted mix of fresh and salt water at the top. Over thousands of years great rivers like the Danube and the Dnipro poured organic material into the new sea. Due to a lack of vertical currents, the inrush of organic matter was too much for the bacteria that would normally have decomposed it aerobically, and the result was a loss of oxygen in favour of hydrogen sulphide. This means that the lower layer, 87% of the Black Sea's volume, is an almost sterile zone of water impregnated with hydrogen sulphide.

Another peculiarity of the Black Sea is the bi-directional current where it flows through the Bosporus straits on its way to the Mediterranean. The surface current flows westwards through the straits into the Sea of Marmaris, but there is a deep current which flows simultaneously in the opposite direction, back into the Black Sea.

Methane-eating life form
Recently, German scientists have discovered corals made by micro-organisms processing methane and sulphates in total darkness at the bottom of the Black Sea. These corals are now believed to be the world's oldest life form. Traditional views of early life on earth have centred on plants which began converting carbon dioxide into oxygen some three billion years ago. The newly discovered organisms live on methane and are thought to have originated four billion years ago. The German scientists believe they could prove useful in ridding the earth of excess methane, the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide.

 

History

Culture

Weather

Food

Wines

Tips

Nightlife

Transport

Black Sea