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Crimean people
are hospitable people, and are quick to invite you in if they like
you. A meal in a Crimean home is likely to be accompanied by vodka
or cognac and frequent toasts - to the guests, to prosperity, to
anything that comes up at the time. You will be expected to propose
a toast too, so don't hold back! Since it became possible for some of their traditional
customers - Russians, Ukrainians, East Germans, Poles and others -
to travel to the west for holidays after the end of the Soviet
Union, the numbers of tourists have dropped, and some of the
sanatoria and hotels are badly in need of new investment. This is
not helped by the refusal so far of the regional government to
privatize the sanatoria. But the industry is beginning to look
westward now for new business - some of the hotels now have websites
in English, where you can book on the internet, and a number of
Yalta hotels had stands at the International Travel Mart in London
last year. The combination of summer sunshine, warm sea, mountains,
historic places to visit and the richness of Crimean culture mean
that western European firms, particularly from Germany, are already
beginning to take an interest. Ukraine has adopted membership of the
European Union as a long-term strategic aim, and encourages these
kinds of developments.
Two thousand years ago Crimea exported grain to
ancient
Greece and today it still produces around a million tons of grain a
year, along with sunflower oil and other agricultural products for
export. Vineyards like those at Massandra
and Inkerman in the west, and Koktebel
and Solnechnaya Dolina (Sunny Valley) in the east produce
grapes for famous wines which are exported throughout eastern
Europe. But although farming employs a lot of people, others work in
enterprises manufacturing consumer goods - clothes, shoes, perfumes
and cosmetics, furniture, and more recently computers and
software. Many Crimean people work in the seasonal tourist
trade, which means long hours in summer and then making money as
best they can by other means between November and March. During the
Soviet era tourism flourished as workers flocked to the south
coast's sanatoria. Built from the19th century onwards in well
laid-out park land they are in fact hotels, most with private
beaches. The name sanatorium comes from the south coast
resorts' long tradition as health spas. 100 years ago people came to
Crimea in the hope that the sea air would help them recover from a
variety of illnesses, in particular tuberculosis. Today many of the
sanatoria have medical wings for patients with health conditions or
recuperating after operations, and in addition offer the full range
of health and fitness treatments for their other customers -
massage, mud baths, fitness and weight loss programs, saunas and so
on. Many of the mud and mineral-based treatments are derived from
natural mineral springs and medicinal mud's, found in the Crimean
environment. The south coast resorts are also a favorite holiday
destination for people suffering from asthma or hay fever, as the
sea breezes help both these conditions.
Crimea is a country of striking beauty -
rolling, fertile countryside, with fruit farms and vineyards in the
centre witch give way to the forested gorges and rocky escarpments of the
mountains as you travel south towards the beaches of the Black Sea.
And below the Yaila mountains is one of the most breathtakingly
beautiful coastlines in the world. The Crimean people
are a mix which has been determined by their
history. The
population of 2.5 million (out of a total Ukrainian population of
around 50 million) consists of a majority of Russians and
Ukrainians, substantial numbers of Tatars, and smaller numbers of
Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Kareem. When you come to Crimea, you're likely to arrive by
airplane
or train in the modern Crimean capital, Simferopol. This
is where the Supreme Rada and Council of Ministers meet - Crimea has
the special status as Autonomous Republic and can pass its own laws,
while remaining subject to the national laws of Ukraine. Simferopol is a commercial centre at
the heart of a farming region, with food processing, fruit canning
and machine manufacturing industries. But it also has several
universities and research institutes, and a lively cultural life
with theatres, museums and concert halls all close to the recently
pedestrians town centre. Like most Crimean towns, Simferopol is in
transition. The old certainties of the Soviet era disappeared in the
nineties, and the region saw the privatization of several thousand
businesses. The effect of the move to an enterprise economy has been
mixed - some people have done well out of it, and new jobs have been
created. But the lack of regulation also resulted in a thriving
informal or black economy, which has limited the ability of the
regional government to raise revenues through taxation. The result
has been high tax rates on those who do declare what they earn -
which in turn has made people reluctant to have anything to do with
the taxman. The knock-on effect is that the regional government has
been slow in investing in the infrastructure which is badly needed
for further development. Foreign investment has been slow, and the
government has created special economic zones, to encourage both
local and foreign investors through tax concessions, for example in
the seaport shipyards and in the chemical industry - Krasnoperekopsk
and Saki produce fabric dyes, potassium permanganate, bleach and
detergents. There are some indications that this is paying off -
that is, the tax revenue generated is more than the cost of the
concessions.
Crimea is a country of contrasts. In
summer Yalta's streets are full of young women in fashionable
clothes (very short last year), while weather-worn old women in
aprons and headscarves sell home produce on the pavement or simply
beg. .People queue to go on the waterslides in the new aqua park at Simeiz in spite of having to pay
€ 18 for a day ticket. Yet for
others this amount is not far of a week's payment. Simferopol too is a mix of prosperity and the struggle against
poverty. New buildings are going up, and older ones are being
restored, the shops are well-stocked, there are internet cafes and a
good proportion of the young people on the streets are wearing
trendy clothes. There is an air of optimism about the place, but
within walking distance of the town centre, near the 16th century Kebir-Jami Mosque, the roads are unmade and the housing
dilapidated. Over the last ten years the return of over 250,000 Crimean Tatars
- deported to central Asia by Stalin - has presented the
administration with a challenge. In the late nineties, the Rada
agreed to create a Tatar Council to represent their interests, to
create Tatar schools and to recognize the right of Tatars returning
from Central Asia to own land. Since 1998, all schools in
Bakhchisaray, the previous Tatar capital, have taught the Crimean
Tatar language as well as Russian, and a number of purely Tatar
schools have opened in the region. Simferopol State University has a
Department of Crimean Tatar Language and Literature with some 600
students. But the rate of unemployment is still significantly higher
in the Tatar community than it is among the majority Russians and
Ukrainians, and progress has been slower than most Tatars would
like. The right of returning Tatars to claim land has been accepted by
both the national and regional governments, but there has been
controversy over where this land should be. The authorities
have given, in general, government-owned land which was previously
collectivized, but this has not necessarily coincided with the
Tatars' wishes to return to the specific place their families were
deported from by Stalin.
source: De Krim, een hele andere wereld. Netherlands |
Weather
History and people
Wines and food
Today at
Crimea
Crimean War
Kazaks
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Prepared Travel
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