Has anyone been to KaZantip in the Ukraine?

ToxicPaddy

Seriously thinking of heading over to KaZantip for a few days in August and was wondering if anyone has been there and can give me a few tips..

Tox

fricatus

Haven't been there myself, though I have been to Ukraine.

Nice country, friendly and civilised, and cheap as chips. It's high up on the corruption index though, so while people in general are nice, I would warn against doing anything that could get you into trouble with the authorities.

The site mentions that you shouldn't do any drugs there, and I would agree strongly with that, even though I would have been partial to the odd banger and bit of blow back in the day... the police are fairly inconspicuous there, but the odd time you would see them, you'd think to yourself it would be better to avoid any run-in with them.

That part of the country is Russian-speaking I believe, and if not, it's close enough that Russian should be well understood and tolerated (in western parts they're more nationalistic about the Ukranian language and don't always like to be addressed in Russian straight off).

In any event, I found very few people who spoke English, so my smattering (and mixture!) of Polish and Russian came in handy. It might be different at a big festival like that, of course, but don't bank on it - learn the basics and bring a phrasebook. (Definitely learn off the Russian alphabet because very often you'll be able to decipher something familiar from a menu or sign outside a shop, even if it's not written in Roman characters).

The food there was surprisingly good, and you can eat in a very good restaurant for the price of an ordinary lunch here. Borsch is a lovely soup (just don't get it on your white T-shirt!), sometimes clear, sometimes creamy - I got a delicious one that was the consistency of hot chocolate - mmmm mmmm!!!

Vareniki are dumplings (sort of like ravioli) that are stuffed with meat, cabbage, potato, cheese, etc. or a combination of these. Pelmeni are something similar. Shashlik (like skewer kebabs) is good too. I had a thing called syrnik (a bit like cheescake) as my desert one time and it was gorgeous.

Beer is good (Lvivskie was what I drank, but it may not be available in your part of the country). Make sure to try kvass too (looks like a cross between Guinness and coke) - an acquired taste, which we acquired!

Have fun!

ToxicPaddy

Ahh well I tend to avoid anything chemical or herbal related and stick to natural highs..

According to their website, they have multilingual staff etc, so I'm sure I can manage to survive with a phrasebook and some hand signals..

I probably will be flying into Simferopol via Riga and making my way from there to the festival venue.. so fingers crossed I wont get too lost. As for it being a corrupt country, I have friends who have travelled around the Ukraine fairly extensively so I have got a few tips off them and anyway I think anyone who looks at me will figure its not worth wasting their time trying to get anything out of me as I'll be travelling light, basics only and nothing worth stealing..