Travelling has always been a passion of mine. Being an amateur photographer, I find seeing new places, meeting new people and getting to know different cultures, exceptionally inspiring. By the age of 32 I had already been to the majority of exotic places: the Emirates, Ethiopia, Turkey, India, Laos, Thailand, Japan, Egypt, Australia and Cuba. So, when a friend of my dad who was working as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Ukraine invited me to visit him for a couple of weeks.
But the problem was asking my parents if I could go with him, but then it was not a problem anymore when I asked them as he was a trusted friend of my dad and they were both thinking like me, I thought: “Why not?! I do not know what to expect from this country since I know very little about it. So, it will definitely be an interesting experience!” And we were so right about that.
Ukraine turned out to be completely different from everything I have seen so far.
A post Soviet Union country, it is still struggling to build a developed society. But, being an amateur photographer, I was far more interested in nature, people and sites, than in politics. Ukraine appeared to be a beautiful, even gorgeous country. Being slightly smaller than Texas, it is extremely diverse and is full of natural wonders that take your breath away. Kyiv, the capital city, appeared unexpectedly well-groomed, green and wealthy. Lots of bridges across the Dnipro River, a great number of beautiful parks, a couple of botanical gardens, and many, many flowers everywhere you go.
A lot friendlier than you would think. Next we went to the western Ukraine with its own peculiar culture and atmosphere.
The Carpathian Mountains are gorgeous and very authentic, with small distant villages and little country houses that seem like the progress will never reach them. An amazingly romantic place! I had been there in late May, but my friend says these mountains are beautiful all year round – a great hiking spot for spring, a beautiful tent camp landscape for summer and autumn, with tiny fast mountain rivers that amazed me with their pureness, and a couple of perfect skiing resorts that do not yield to the Austrian or Canadian ones even a tiny bit. People of Western Ukraine amazed me as well, especially the elderly – very smiley, very positive and very active.
The west was basically the first place to which my dad’s friend took me, and it made me fall in love with the Ukraine completely. From the Carpathians we travelled to Lviv, a gorgeous medieval city that is somewhat similar to Prague yet is very special in its atmosphere: 800 year old castles, wooden churches, gothic catholic temples and palaces, flowers at every corner and on every window seal, original block pavement streets of the Old City (Stare Misto), and lots of people in beautiful national clothes – vishivanki (embroidered white shirts). Lviv is a magical city and it fuelled me with inspiration to see the rest of the country.
Next my dad’s friend took me to Zaporizhzhya – an Eastern city with an impossible to pronounce name and two thousand years of history. The city is built on two banks of the River Dnipro, and has an island in the middle – Khortitsa – the biggest river island in the world. The place is very spiritual – no wonder that so many centuries ago the wild tribes of skiffs and sarmates, and later the cossaks (famous Ukrainian soldiers of 1400-1600’s, that had a long moustache, a long forelock and wore wide red trousers), built their fortifications on the Khortitsa Island. The City itself seemed to me to be still very Soviet-like in its spirit and atmosphere, so it was interesting for me to take photos of their famous dam with the huge Lenin statue pointing at it, and the factories that were once the pride of the USSR and, amazingly, still successfully function for export purposes nowadays.
Our next stop was Crimea – a big heart-shaped peninsula that is washed by two seas – the Black Sea and the Azov Sea (the shallowest in the world, by the way), has beautiful mountains, fantastic crystal caves and scenic deep lakes. It’s a very picturesque place – so green, so virginal, so unlike anything I have seen before. The pictures I took at the Crimea I consider to be one of the best series in my photo collection. We also attended a wine festival in Koktebel, where they make pretty good local wine, visited Askania Nova – a marvellous biosphere reserve sanctuary established in the nineteenth century. A great chance to get a scope of what the country’s nature was like some twelve hundred years ago, still very much unpopulated and virginal. I knew all the facts about this place, thanks to my dad’s friend.
There was one thought that didn’t leave my mind, even for a second, during the whole time I spent in Ukraine: “I cannot believe that this country and its fantastic nature, history and culture are so unknown to the rest of the world!” Ukraine was a true discovery for me, and one of those times when your expectations are nothing like what you really see. I have wished to visit this country two or more times over again, and I’m extremely sure that anytime I go back there, my impression will get fuller and fuller. If you should ask me what place I can recommend to those avid and blasé travellers who seem to have seen it all, I’d say without a second of hesitation: “Go to Ukraine! Whatever you will expect, this will still amaze and astonish you!”
Remember! This is just a sample.
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