Bulgaria with Noodles

Well, I am very sorry that, once again, you could not join us for breakfast this morning. As usual, we did our scoffing on the terrace. The view was wonderful and that naughty little dog was up to her usual mischief.  We have had a dreadful time with Irena’s Russian tourist visa. It has been a complete and utter pain, as well as taking flipping ages and ages. I mean, it is bad enough that she has to even apply for a visa to visit her own blooming country. Have you ever heard of anything so totally crazy? As well as the actual visa, you also need medical insurance. The application form takes a long time to fill in, as there are so many pointless and repetitive questions. In addition to the visa application form, there is also something silly called “a Russian tourist voucher”. We had to go to Veliko Tarnovo, in order to go to some tourist agencies. The only problem was that these agencies did not know anything about this stupid voucher thing, so I had to buy one online. The next hur...

Every summer since we were married, Irena has gone home to the Crimea for a month, to see all of her family and friends. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Hmm. Well, she simply must go to see her parents and friends every year. I cannot argue with that. Both Mamulichka and Papulichka are rather elderly and not in the best of health. Irisha’s visit is in many ways the high point of their year, something for them to look forward to. There is, however, a more practical reason for Ira’s visit and that is that we do give some financial help to Mamulichka , as pensions in Russia are a bit of a joke (about 80 euros a month). Mamulichka has her datcha and her chickens, so in many ways she is a bit better off than many old people in the Crimea. There is, nonetheless, one little drawback to Irisha’s yearly trips home: I miss her terribly. Yes, this summer I have had Peter and John, two old friends over from the UK, to stay for a while. We have had a good time, going kayakin...

This is Simferopol's registry office, where we were married. I never intended this blog to become political. On the whole, I find politics amazingly boring, as do most people, but I have to write this post because I think that many people have just not heard the truth. They are probably not going to hear (or read) the truth because most TV news outlets in the UK and in the USA have not treated this subject in a fair and even-handed manner. I used to be (and to some extent I still am) a great fan of the BBC, but the BBC’s coverage of this issue has not been fair, balanced or unbiased. Well, this piece in my blog is going to try to present the other side of the coin, the side that CNN and the BBC do not want you to think about. So what am I going to write about? Russia’s “annexation” or “invasion” of the Crimea. The T34 tank was nicknamed "the Snow King". Russian casualties in the Second World War were 20 million. Huge swathes of Russian territory were occupie...

In Around the World in Eighty Days , my hero Michael Palin famously described the city of Alexandria as being “like Cannes with acne". Maybe Yalta used to be like Bournemouth with boils, but it was very different when Irena and I went there for the day. I had not been back to Yalta since before Irena and I were married. In a few ways, it was much the same (the mountains frowning down on the sea, the cypress trees, the vineyards and the church that does impressions of a wedding cake). But really Yalta is now quite a different place. Yes, the beach is still a painful and pebbly Via Dolorosa if you want a swim in the murky seawater. (And, just in case you were wondering, the water in the Black Sea is not actually black.) Wedding cake church in Yalta On the busy streets, you can still buy kvas , even though I am not sure how to spell it. ( But why would anyone want a stinky drink made from fermented bread?) Twenty-five years ago, kvas was served in jam jars, but now ...

Most Russians live in apartment blocks these days and so many of the city dwellers want to have something that is peculiarly Russian: a datcha . If I said that this was a "country house", then you might think of a French chateau or an English stately home, whereas a  datcha is usually quite a humble affair, a small bungalow or even a hut. Some have electricity and running water, but many do not. Sometimes you get to your datcha by driving on a proper road, but in most cases it will be a rough, muddy track for the final kilometres. Fruit trees, flowers and vegetables are the order of the day in the datcha . Nothing very special or splendid, just a simple, rural home-from-home. Picking blackcurrants for Mamulichka. Although Mamuluchka also has ducks and chickens, this is not normal because many Russians only go to the datcha at the weekends and holidays. A datcha , therefore, is more like an allotment with somewhere to live, but the living space is sometimes not ...

It must have been about twenty-five years ago when I was first in Simferopol and in Kiev. In those days, the Crimea was still very much part of the Ukraine and it was the era of perestroika , or maybe just after that difficult time. What I saw then made a big impression on me. Those who are so quick to criticize Putin's "illegal occupation" of the Crimea should do a bit of research and find out how dreadful things really were back then.  I remember that in the summer it was 18,000 Ukrainian  kuponi to the pound; by Christmas, 24,000. I remember having to pay to use the beach at Yalta. Then there were valutni magazini , the well-stocked shops for those with foreign currency. These valutni shops had almost no customers at all and all of the prices were in US dollars. The local shops, by way of contrast, were full of empty shelves or there were maybe just a few jars with some mysterious brown liquid in them. A strange object could sometimes be made out, f...