Sevastopol by the Sea

Sevastopol – By the Sea

Soviet Memorial to WWII
Thursday October 29.2009
Sevastopol is a lovely city and on the Black Sea coast, indeed a beautiful place to visit. Drove around to different monuments and such today but the things I learned from my guide were ever so much more interesting than some of the things I saw. So here are my guide tips.
My guide is almost my age and I so hate saying that I am getting to be the "older person" on my trips rather than the guides or other travelers. My guide is a retired Soviet Union Naval Officer. Isn't that a mouthful? He served 25 years in the Soviet Navy on different ships which including being a submariner for awhile. When I found out there was a lot of scuba diving in Balaclava – diving on old wrecks from the Crimean War onwards – I mentioned that I was a diver. He explained how he would have to crawl out of torpedo tubes every time the submarine was getting ready to leave port, as a check out the ship kind of thing and an emergency preparedness thing. He didn’t much like it as it wasn’t in the lightweight (yes, comparatively speaking) equipment we use to pleasure dive. He would be in full deep dive equipment which weighs an awful lot. I don’t think I would have liked it a bit either.

Memorial to scuttled ships of Crimean War
Sevastopolians (Sevastopol people) mostly still speak Russian. They seem to be more Russian than Ukrainian and they seem to have more ties to Mother Russia than Baby Ukraine. That is logical after all as the Russian Navy in the Black Sea has been stationed here for many, many years and is still stationed here. When the Soviet Union dissolved and Russia broke up into its component parts and the Ukraine became a free country again, the agreement with Russia sort of split Sevastopol between districts that would remain under Russian control and districts that would go back to the Ukraine. So everywhere I walked and looked, there would be Russian flags flying over certain buildings: the Russian Navy headquarters, the Russian Navy Officers Club, the Russian Consulate, the Russian harbor side territory, etc. In fact, according to international law, I was inside the sovereign territory of Russia today and on Russian soil. Wow, I didn’t even need to get a visa and sure didn’t think I would be traveling to Russia on this trip.

Lenin
There are many monuments around town that are dedicated to Soviet things, to Russian things, to Ukrainian things. Several buildings have busts on Lenin on the walls and some have the hammer and sickle on the walls also. In the harbor sit more Russian Navy ships than Ukrainian Navy ships. It’s definitely a city that doesn’t know who it is yet.
The city is so Russian that I found myself looking around at policemen and other people in uniform wondering if they were going to stop me taking photos of whatever I wanted. But there is definitely a freeness about the city as there are cruise ships that come into port and tourists wandering throughout the city in all places and most with cameras. Per my guide book, Sevastopol wasn’t even allowed to have tourists until 1996. They have made up for it in opening their arms to anyone who wants to come and laze by the sea or stroll around their streets or shop for souvenirs. I’m sure they will work out eventually whether they are Russian or Ukrainian.