A War in the Neighborhood

 'It isn't in our backyard, but it is certainly in the neighborhood,' wrote a fellow expat on Facebook of the invasion of Ukraine. He and his wife live in Prague, capitol of the Czech Republic. We used to live a few miles apart back in the Seattle suburbs.

Digital Art from Ukraine (details below)

Another expat friend and former Kirkland resident, now living in Switzerland, observed that being where we all find ourselves now 'gives us a different perspective than when we were 'home' [in the States]'. 

A different perspective of war from this side of the sea

They both nailed it.  We definitely have a different perspective than if we were all still some 8,000 miles away. Actually, it is amazing that we have so many expat friends from our old stomping ground on this side of the sea. Each of us willingly made the choice to leave all that we knew for the unknowns of a new country and culture. This week I think, "What a luxury, that word 'choice'?". 

We chose to leave our homes, friends and family behind unlike those forced to flee Ukraine this week. 

In Prague helping to meet basic needs

Our friends in Prague are helping with the Ukraine refugee relocation effort there. Many are arriving with nothing more than a small bag of belongings.. The numbers are mind-boggling: 5,000 a day, some 30,000 arrivals in the last week. The volunteers are scrambling to find accommodations both for refugees and to provide basic necessities.

Volunteers await arriving refugees at the Prague train station 

The phrase, 'all the comforts of home', comes to mind as I look around our Greek Stone House on the Hill.  We've brought so many items with us and have purchased the remainder of items necessary to make this house a home. Again, a luxury of choice unlike those who were so abruptly uprooted from their homes by the Russian invasion. 

In Greece the numbers of arriving Ukrainians last week were just over 1,000.  We know more are coming and efforts are underway to welcome and accommodate them. Throughout Europe authorities are racing to reduce red tape while volunteers meet, greet and try to ease these displaced persons into temporary housing. 

Collection drive in Mani poster 

Fundraising and collection drives are underway - even in our sparsely-populated slice of rural Greece. Just this morning I noted a collection drive notice and collection bin at our local supermarket. 

In The Neighborhood

Ukraine is to the northeast of Greece

The direct line distance between Greece and Ukraine is 1,276 km, or 793 miles. However the real travel distance is just over 1,668 km or 1,036.7 miles.  For those back in the States, it would be like living in Washington State and having a war break out in California.

Military ship off the coast of Ukraine 2014

Our media reports that Greek armed forces are on full alert. They also report a significant number of warships - both American and Russian fleets - are sailing a wider area of the Mediterranean. 

With restrictions finally being eased by authorities for travelers to Greece, there had been a feeling of optimism about this year's tourism bringing the lagging sector out of the doldrums caused by the pandemic. However, Russian tourists account for a large number of visitors to Greece. Estimates were for 303,843 inbound seats from Russia to Greece in the next six months.

 

I am reading more and more comments on Facebook Travel pages from those in the U.S. who are again rethinking travel plans to anywhere in Europe while this conflict continues.

 

Tourism is going to be impacted.. . but to what degree remains to be seen.

Meanwhile life goes on as Normal

Serene sunsets at Costa Navarino this week

However dire the headlines right now, I want to assure you that life is continuing quite normally around here.  The Scout and I just returned from a two night stay at the Costa Navarino luxury resort to the northwest of us and the place was full of golfers - European golfers, not just Greek locals.  The first two flights of the season - both from Germany -- landed a week ago at the Kalamata Airport and we suspect a large number of our fellow guests had been on those flights.

Almond trees are in bloom

Afraid we aren't real sympathetic to those in the States fretting about possible price increases at the pump as a  result of the invasion. Here we are paying $8US a gallon in the city and closer to $9 a gallon here in the village.  And that isn't because of the invasion - it is what we have been paying for some time.  We are braced for increases.

Wildflowers are in bloom

Our electric bills are so ridiculously high -- thanks to the European energy crisis, not the conflict - that we also brace ourselves for the shock of what we will find when opening the bill.  In January we had a 600 euro bill, nearly $700US for a couple of months.  (On that topic we are using the fireplace and oil furnace much more than our electric heat/AC units.)

Kalamata ready for visitors

The villages and Kalamata are opening up for the season with all the fun and fanfare that comes with spring.  Restaurants and tavernas closed for the winter are getting spruced up with new paint and new fixtures.  We are heading into Lent here with Clean Monday celebrations after having celebrated Carnivale last week.  Greek authorities are removing the 'mask-up' mandate when outside and they anticipate having - finally, after two years  - 'normal' Easter celebrations. 

And for those travelers coming this way, rejoice:  the pesky Passenger Locator Form, is on its way out!

Yet, Lest We Forget

Last year's ferry trip on the Mediterranean Sea

Yesterday the BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation, announced it has returned to old fashioned short-wave radios as a means of reaching Ukrainians who are cut off from normal sources of news.  Four hours each day of news will be broadcast in English over short-wave frequencies that can be heard on cheap devices in Kyiv and parts of Russia.  The announcement couldn't help but make one think of World War II and the role short-wave radio played then.

Victims skulls - memorial Chora Sfakia

We live in an area of Greece that has known conflict and blood-shed brought on by attempts of outside forces to rule this area through the ages. The memories and horrors of invasions - from the time of the Venetians and the Ottomans to the Germans and Italians during World War II - remain vivid here.  The significance of what is happening to Ukraine is sadly all too real for so many. 

Before I close this week, I want to mention the artwork used in the blog opening is a digital piece created by a Ukrainian artist that was purchased by a friend from Etsy Shop.  Purchases provide money to those in Ukraine and the art being digital is available immediately to the purchaser. The photos from Prague are from posts by Cheryl and Chip Kimball, our friends from Kirkland. Anyone wanting more information on their efforts there, please contact us and we will put you in touch.

Safe travels to you all and thanks for the time you spent with us this week.  Our tales and travels will continue and hope to see you back here for the next installment~

Linking soon with:

Through My Lens

Travel Tuesday

Our World Tuesday

My Corner of the World Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Friendship Friday Blog Hop

Ukraine: When Travel brings Headlines Home

Travel not only makes the world feel smaller, it also brings the headlines home.  And with this week’s headlines, we are taking a brief break from our Hawaiian tales, to take you with us on a trip down our travel memory lane:

Back to Sevastopol, Ukraine.

It has been three years since a Black Sea cruise introduced us to  Sevastopol, the city established in 1783 by Catherine II after Russia gained control of the region.

We spent but a few hours in this port city that figured prominently in the Crimean War (1854-55) and the Bolshvik Revolution.

Those few hours were far long enough, we had thought back then. 

It was autumn. An incessant rain fell from a leaden sky. The sky and sea the same gun metal gray as the military ships docked not far from our pleasure craft.

But have you ever found in your travels, there are a few places you visit - if even ever so briefly- that leave a  hauntingly vivid memory ~ the kind that keeps details alive in your brain and your soul? Sevastopol was such a stop for us.

As most of you know by now, we prefer to set off on our own to explore our cruise ports of call and this stop was no different.  We saw the usual ubiquitous influences of the Western World. . .

They were ‘lovin’ it’ at McDonald’s and this hotel, (pictured below) the Best Western Hotel Sevastopol, was housed in a stunning building.

We didn’t walk very far from the well-groomed flower beds of the park to find ourselves on  real neighborhood streets.

It was the emptiness of the streets and the people,or the small numbers of them, we encountered that created the most vivid memories.  The rain perhaps kept people inside, but it was those few people we encountered that we we won’t forget.

As we approached one trio I commented to The Scout that they had been staring at us – the hard penetrating kind, not the curiosity gaze - from the moment we came into view.  As we neared them, I smiled and they raised their eyes, focusing on some far distant spot over our shoulders; as if we’d ceased to exist.

Another trio stood talking on the sidewalk outside this church – until I paused to take photos of the façade. They quickly disbanded. (I took this photo to capture the bullet holes that you see in the upper right hand corner.)

In watching the news this week, I think back to the somewhat Pollyanna-like observation I made to The Scout as we walked back to the ship, “Gee, these people aren’t very friendly. They don’t even make eye contact or smile at us.”

To which he replied, “Think of their past.” 

Today, I wonder if it perhaps it wasn’t the past, but their present and future that caused their behavior?

The last photo I took of our stop in Sevastopol was of the submarine off our side as we set sail.

Have any of your travels brought headlines home? Or did some place send you home with hauntingly detailed memories of it?

We’ll be back soon with more tropical tales for you. We appreciate your time and interest and would love to hear from you. And please come back again soon! 

Linking up:
Travel Photo Thursday at Budget Travelers Sandbox

Sevastopol: We're not in Kansas,Toto!

In  Sevastopol, Ukraine, I knew how Dorothy felt after she and her dog, Toto, arrived in the Land of Oz. 

We generally consider cruise ports of call to be 'appetizers', giving us enough taste of a place to prompt a return someday. But, this stop -- of less than three hours, in our case -- took Sevastopol off our 'future's' list.

Admittedly, we had but a snapshot of a city on a  rainy, gray day; a setting that gave a spy-movie feel to the place, but that wasn't the only thing. . .  

First, on the positive side -- unlike the guarded welcome at Sochi, Russia --we were allowed off the ship here to wander the streets on our own. So we had a chance to explore the town - unlike fellow cruisers who saw  Romanov's Summer Palaces and the Best of the Crimean Riviera on ship-organized tours. 

                        Strolling through the park

Tourism websites describe a Sevastopol that is vastly different from our 'snapshots' which include:
* Sodden streets, empty, but for an occasional pedestrian or two.
* Empty parks - music playing from high mounted speakers in one gave a haunting feel to the empty surroundings.
* Closed stores.
* A handful of elderly women standing on a street corner near the padlocked sprawling market area selling produce from small plastic bags.

Weather conditions and timing of a visit can affect first impressions, but it is the interaction -- or lack of -- with people, that leave lasting impressions  Here, I wondered, were people's souls as empty as the streets? 
Although there were people, we had no verbal or non-verbal contact with them. It was if we were invisible. Or maybe they wanted to be invisible?

Our travel fall-back greeting, 'smile-and-nod-if-you-can't-speak-the-language' didn't work.  You have to have eye contact for that. There was no eye contact. There were no smiles.

I tested my invisible theory on those we did encounter:  a family at an espresso machine in the park, a few lone pedestrians, a trio outside a church, a clerk in a deli. . .each time their gaze -- (and in each case they had watched us approach) was quickly averted to someplace off in the horizon just beyond our shoulders. 

An elaborate fence reminds one of Sevastopol's history

  

A War Torn History
When one considers the history here, these folks, and generations before them, really haven't had much to smile about. The Crimean War and its Siege of Sevastopol in the mid-1800's and World War II are local history.  With all the memorials and monuments they've erected, those battles won't soon be forgotten. We saw war memorials (guns are prominent in the designs), statues of war hero's and Lenin, elaborate ironwork fences with designs incorporating the dates: 1941 - 1944. Even the facade of the stately Vladimirsky Cathedral was pockmarked with what appeared to be bullet holes.

 Gun Metal Gray
Even today there is a strong military presence. Our ship anchored in such a manner that our balcony was a viewing stand from which we could watch a passing gunmetal gray military ships . . .we weren't sure if they were Ukrainian or Russian ships.

With the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, both Russia and the Ukraine claimed the Black Sea fleet stationed there. By 1995 they had agreed to divide the fleet between the two countries.  The ownership of Sevastopol continued to be a point of contention and in 1997 Russia dropped any claim to Sevastopol but got 80% of the fleet.

A cruise stop is but a snap-shot of a place - the one we put in our memory book of Sevastopol is gray-toned, well, in fairness with just a splash of color: