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<\/a><\/a>We spent our time in Gurzuf walking along the beach, visiting Chekhov\u2019s cottage, and seeing where Pushkin had spent some time in his southern \u201cexile\u201d (If only I had such problems.)<\/p>\n
From there we went on to Yalta, spending a couple hours in what is arguably Crimea\u2019s most famous resort town.\u00a0 In Anton Chekov\u2019s famous short story Lady with a Lapdog<\/em>, the two lovers meet while on vacation in this town. <\/em>Yalta was the summer retreat of the nobility and upper classes of the Russian Empire, and during the Soviet Era was used as both a vacation destination and a place where the ill could convalesce in a more temperate climate.\u00a0 On our way out we stopped at the palace where Franklin D Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin met to decide what to do with Europe after World War Two.\u00a0 Any student of history would recognize the white arches behind the iconic picture of the three leaders, and it was incredible to stand in the same spot so many years later.<\/p>\n We spent that night in Sevastopol, a city we had talk previously discussed at length.\u00a0 Long the center of Russia\u2019s Black Sea fleet, Sevastopol was ravaged by the Crimean War. Leo Tolstoy\u2019s experiences in the conflict inspired his Sevastopol Sketches<\/em>, which we had completed the week before.\u00a0 In 1954, Khrushchev transferred Crimea from the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, something that at the time was thought to be a mere technicality.\u00a0 But with the fall of the Soviet Union, Crimea became part of an independent Ukraine.\u00a0 Today, Sevastopol has been extended for use by Russian Federation until at least 2045, and the city retains a distinctly Russian character.\u00a0 Russian flags abound, as do St. George ribbons.\u00a0 Sailors are constantly passing to and fro.\u00a0 But Sevastopol is still in Ukraine, and we were reminded of this when we ran into a Ukrainian submarine crew at Greek ruins outside of the city.\u00a0 Only in Crimea, right?\u00a0 They were quite pleasant, in the austere, military type way.\u00a0 They answered our questions and even posed for this photo.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From there we moved on to Bakhchisarai, the capital of the peninsula when it was a Khanate of Crimea, which was established in the 15th<\/sup> century and lasted until the middle of the 18th<\/sup>.\u00a0\u00a0 The Khanate was ruled by the Crimean Tatar line Girey. The town is farther inland, isolated from the cost but amid beautiful mountains.\u00a0 Our first visit in the ancient city was to visit the remainder of the mosque and educational center of the Crimean Tatar Khanate, as well as the museum that is trying to once again foster the study of Crimean Tatar history and culture.\u00a0 We then immediately embarked on a steep hike up a mountain, to the former city of the Karaim people that had lived alongside the Crimean Tatars.\u00a0 A Turkic people, the Karaim were Jewish, and therefore excluded from the capital itself.\u00a0 They were forced to build on the top of a mountain, and much of the city still stands in impressive ruins on the top of the cliff.\u00a0 Our last activity in Bakhchisarai was to the palace of the Girey\u2019s, which contained not only beautiful architecture but also the famous Fountain of Bakhchisarai, about which Pushkin had written his poem.<\/p>\n Thus,\u00a0exhausted\u00a0but extremely happy, we made our way back over those\u00a0treacherous\u00a0mountain roads to our hotel and our last few days in Crimea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our last Friday in Crimea, we students of Crimean politics and culture embarked on a four day road trip across the southern coast of the peninsula.\u00a0 In typical Colorado College fashion, we managed to see a remarkable amount in such a short period of time.\u00a0 So without further ado, here\u2019s an account of our whirlwind … <\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>