Stefania Dzini: My Crimea

Stefania Dzini Crimea 2014 photos: Stefania Dzini and Nikita Khokhlov

Italian journalist Stefania Dzini recalls his business trip to the Crimea.

I got out of the car with difficulty, opening the door carefully. Parged by rows, at a small distance from each other, dozens of single cars were crowded from all sides.

Having left their cars, their owners, in a hurry to escape from the stuffiness that filled the cargo department of the car ferry, which was anchored in the port of the Crimea, climbed the upper decks with a gusk.

Some have a camera in his hands, in the other video camera hung on his neck ... Everyone had a desire to perpetuate his farewell look at the Crimea, to always capture an exciting moment of departure from the shore and, of course, a picture running behind a ferry, which is about to slip through the Kerch Strait.

I, without hesitation, hurried after everyone. On the upper deck, a pleasant tonic sea breeze blew, and even the most exhausted from the heat passengers in the fresh air quickly cheered up.

On the contrary, I suddenly deprived of all kinds of forces, forgetting about the duty of a good tourist to let all the unique personnel through the lens, I put the camera into the bag and, closing my eyes, landed on the nearest free seat with all the weight. I experienced a similar condition in the university years after passing the exam, when strong fatigue accompanies a comforting feeling that the most difficult is behind, and now, you can relax and breathe a sigh of relief.

Suddenly, from the smell of ship fuel, it is characteristic of any port of the world, it was pinched in the nose, but not this and not the squeaky voices of the children frolic on the deck, woke me up. I was shocked by the idea that I have no right to be tired, after a two -week vacation, spent completely good in my beloved Crimea.

After all, soon in Moscow I will regret that I was not at a cheap Crimean grape-a kilogram of the most juicy cost no more than 40-50 rubles. I am upset that I drank too little wine. Crimean wine is completely not like Italian, but peculiarly tasty and natural. My beloved, the most similar to the domestic - Bakhchisarai: one bottle - 150 rubles.

I will think with longing for the Crimean Sea-it is transparent in places, like Sardinskoye-about local mountain landscapes, somewhere reminiscent of our ligurian ones. I will remember the Crimean air, completely non -fingering - before that it is clean - and miss the sun, which in the Crimea as much as us, children of the Mediterranean, to my below.

Still taking my place on the upper deck, I continued to list all the charms of Crimea and all the similarities between the Crimean and native peninsula, which, after the first trip ten years ago, brought me to the Crimea several more times.

The similarity of landscapes, and not just the beneficial location of the peninsula on the map of the world, attracted my long -standing and less old ancestors to the Crimea. Since the XIII century, the Republic of Ganuza has settled in Crimea for 200 years, and the descendants of representatives of later migration from the southern regions of Italy still live in Kerch.

At the end of the 19th century, several Italian family moved to Crimea, and the Italian community soon increased to 5,000 people. The mass deportations of the 40s elaborated from the new homeland of all the “Crimean Italians”, but in the 80s and 90s everyone returned to the Crimea.

There is a historical justification of my addiction to the Crimea, there are many connections between Crimea and my homeland.

I raise my eyes and see on the signs on the doors leading to the upper and lower Paduba, the inscriptions in Italian: "Discesa" and "Salita" - the descent and rise. Even a ferry called “Crimea”, on which swim, apparently, once ran between our shores and islands.

In Crimea, I would have to feel at home. I would have to look at the cups flying over a ferry with a flock of flocks to the south, and to be sad that the vacation is finished and soon I will not look at the sunny Crimean shores, but at the autumn Moscow. It’s a pity, the other, the opposite and stronger feeling absorbed everyone else.

This was a hidden, guilty joy that from a minute for a minute the engine would launch a engine and soon from the Crimea, which seemed to a separate distant island, I will go to a solid mainland, home, where, finally, I will rest.

Why did the time spent well in the Crimea cause fatigue and did not leave a real feeling of rest? I began to look for the answer to this question as soon as the ferry starred in the port of the Crimea and went through the Kerch Strait.

The road was a little tired

From Moscow to the port of the Caucasus, from where it departs the ferry to the Port of Crimea, the road took more than two days. Along the way, I had to survive several kilometer traffic jams formed in the Voronezh and Rostov regions due to road work, and one sleepless night at the wheel, but I got used to a long automobile travel.

The gloomy perspective of a multi -day standing in line at the crossing through the Kerch Strait was more exhausted.

While they were driving, they only did that they finalized the “x” plan: how would we sleep - there were two of us - in a small overloaded car? What are we going to do? And they did not take books with them, and forgot in Moscow a portable auto-TV.

The excitement grew into a slight panic, when, already at the finish line to the crossing, they remembered that they did not buy the desired supply of water with them for 40 hours of waiting. Such was the forecast according to the media reports, which, fortunately, did not materialize.

On August 17, only a few dozen cars stood in the queue on the funded platform specially equipped in front of the entrance to the Port of the Caucasus. It is good that I did not have to spend money on water sold in the shops built on the territory of 90 rubles per bottle. They barely managed to run to the cash desk with passports and with documents for a car and buy a ticket, so I had to quickly get behind the wheel again and stop by the steam. However, the return trip looked approximately the same: on September 1, the crossing was mastered for three hours.

Is it cheap to relax in the Crimea

No matter how you try to save money, any trip to Crimea goes expensive. As from previous trips, I returned to Moscow without a ruble in my pocket.

We set off, having a car, a tent, a small supply of food and 30 thousand rubles for two. In two weeks in urban conditions, they spent the night only three times - in Alushta in a private hotel, where a room without breakfast cost 1200 rubles, and 2 nights in a hostel in Bakhchisarai, where 400 rubles were paid for a bed per day. Three thousand rubles took to the crossing, 10 thousand - for gasoline, the cost of which in Crimea ranges from 37 to 40.50 (rubles near Yalta). The rest of the money is for food.

Even preparing mainly at the stake, it was not always possible to save, since the prices of products from Kerch to Yalta gradually doubled and sometimes exceeded Moscow. The cost of dinners in a cafe also vary very much: from 200 rubles in Feodosia, 300 in Alushta “home dining rooms”, up to 500 and higher under Yalta per person. We tried to get food themselves, fishing, but there are no fish, no mussels, nor oysters. The latter disappeared with the advent of rapans, who destroyed them and died in unpeeled water, since the water is not filtered without mussels.

There was no fish, as the famous local cook explained, because of uncontrolled poaching, and in the markets he resocused fish: either it is not local and thawed, but is sold like fresh, or it is very expensive. A kilogram of flounders, for example, can reach 2000 rubles.

In a word, we could spend less only if you switch to pasture, our budget also did not allow to improve living conditions. The night in the private sector costs from 500 rubles in a small town to 2000 in Yalta; In the hotel, a room in a two-three-star hotel costs from 1200 in the eastern and western Crimea and up to 5000 on the southern coast.

Motor transport remains the cheapest way to get to the Crimea. A plane ticket to Simferopol from Moscow can be minimally purchased for 3,500 rubles, on average its price is 5,000 rubles, and at the peak of the season the cost reached 25 thousand. A ticket in a reserved seat car from Moscow to Crimea and back costs about 6,000 rubles.

In general, attempts to fit into our meager budget prompted me, a lover of an independent rest, not at all characteristic of me - but is it next time to choose a solid and predictable Turkish or Egyptian All Inclusive?!

Local tourism industry

Conversations with worried owners of restaurants and hotel owners showed that while Crimea is bewildered and does not know what to expect from recent big changes. If the current tourist season was successful, as in the last years, the inhabitants of the Crimea would be calmer, but most employees of the local travel industry regarding the past summer as a failure.

The decline in tourist flows, according to them, was simply colossal, especially in the eastern and western Crimea, where the number of tourists was reduced by 70-80% due to the minimum presence, compared to past years, vacationers from Ukraine. In these areas of Crimea, the flow of budget tourists who historically choose these directions instead of the road of Yalta also decreased anxiously.

In the coastal tent towns, instead of the usual thousands of cars this year, there were a few dozen cars, and then on weekends, taking into account local vacationers. On weekdays, this is just a few. Hotels are half empty, but the prices for rooms are still not reduced. Many of them closed on September 1 or did not open at all, which is nonsense for Crimea.

Everyone understands that tourists have become much smaller not from the unwillingness to relax in the Crimea, but due to the high cost of air travel and the disappearance of direct railway messages. Otherwise, you can get to the Crimea through a narrow neck of the Kerch Strait. The capacity of the Kerch crossing over the summer has improved, it will be extremely difficult to increase the tourist flow without a bridge through the strait.

Whether this year will be the velvet season, which usually began from mid -September and lasted until October, no one knows. Whether tourists will be for a year or on May holidays is also unknown. Previously, on short holidays, the local tourist industry could count on the shaft of tourists from Ukraine and from the near regions - they could get to the Crimea by car per day.

It will be possible to ensure the influx of long -distance tourists on vacation on the weekend only at the expense of regular and inexpensive air traffic, but so far they are afraid to guess about it. So far, in anticipation of answers, many Crimeans who make up the Turin in the tour are preparing to survive this winter, which optimists call them difficult and unusual, and pessimists are hungry. Only those who are dealing with VIP tourism did not complain.

Dear Yalta hotels were completely loaded all summer, since rich tourists began to go to Crimea this year. They were saturated with Asia, America and Europe, they wanted to better look at the Crimea and, in addition, comparing Crimea with the former, as it was still as part of the Soviet Union, it became simply fashionable.

The impressions of tourists

Talking with tourists raised my mood. Without exception, all the tourists with whom I had a chance to communicate were delighted with their trip to Crimea. Basically, Russians met - from Moscow and the Moscow Region, many from St. Petersburg, in general, from all over Russia, less often from Ukraine, the Baltic states and Belarus. Foreigners could not be found.

They got to the Crimea, who, more often, for a long way by train or by car, but none of them complained about the tests experienced on the road, which on average (not counting time in the ferry) took at least forty hours.

The young mother from St. Petersburg, for example, said that she chose Feodosia for purely patriotic considerations to show her daughter Russian Crimea. The family from Kazan was going to Anapa by car, but reoriented to the Crimea under the influence of advertising reviews of acquaintances.

No advertising and no policy, on the contrary, could influence the decision to “go or not to go” a young camp from the Moscow Region, who every summer is trying to spend his free time in the Crimea. The reason, according to him, is one - Crimea is an amazingly beautiful place that allows you to be alone with you, living in a tent on wild beaches, in the mountains and in forests, teeming with wild animals, where far from city life, falling out of the usual society, you can really relax.

The husband and wife from Minsk reached Yalta from Simferopol, the Ukrainian border was crossed without adventure. Not the first time they are in the Crimea, in the Russian Crimea for the first time, but no matter what - Crimea always evoked and will cause them those warm feelings that are usually tested for something native, homely and family.

In addition, in the Crimea, in addition to the sun, there are grapes and wine, vegetables and fruits - local, natural. Last but not least, the opportunity to eat great, relaxing in their native environment, where everyone speaks their native language, played an important role among both more and less secured tourists in choosing Crimea instead of abroad.

According to the climate, Crimea resembles resorts in Turkey. And although Crimea is nicer for us, you can always choose tours to Turkey in all tourist companies in the country. Moreover, they are still popular and in demand.