A lot has happened since last time, but let me start by telling a bit about where I am right now.
After having cycled for ten consecutive days, I found a room in the house of Baba Halia and her sons on one of the hillsides of the port town of Berdjansk for some badly needed rest. These days of rest are not so much lazing around, but packed with all kinds of maintenance tasks that need to be done; to the material as well as the body. My cyclepants needed some needlework again, my cloths in general needed urgent washing, and the same could be said about my body. From the southernmost point of Crimea I more or less cycled in one go to Berdjansk using only my tent as shelter, which is great, but it does goes at the expense of showers. It felt great to stand under Baba Halia's hot shower yesterday, and seeing the dirt disappear in the dig. 3S: shampoo, soap, shave; a recipe to feel reborn.
And then there is the stomach to take care of. For that I went to the rynok, or central market, where I bought apples, a watermelon, garlic, vegetables, dark bread (difficult to get by, but available in most cities), kefir (sour, yogurt like dairy product), chocolate, cheese, cookies, pasta and a couple of L'vivan beers that I've come to like. (Too bad 'beer' doesn't start with an 's', otherwise it would have been 4S.) This is a process that brings you to almost as many stands and shops as there are products.
By the time I got back to Baba Halia's house, and put all the groceries in the designated places (the kefir and beers in the refrigerator in the refrigerator room, vegetables and fruits after washing in the sink outside, piled in neat piles on the kitchen table (the kitchen is built outside in a tiny shed, just like the refrigerator room, the shower cell, the toilet and some other rooms to which the doors have remained closed), Halia turned up, looked at all the food with her hands on her thighs and told me with her eyes wide open: "OK!" which is the word that she uses to express a confirmation or approval (like the rest of the world, I know, but she does it since I arrived and we got stuck in a language barrier; now we have 'ok' in common, besides my basic knowledge of Russian). So in a way I still manage to impress the ladies...Her oldest son, Stas (short for Stanislav) was the one who came to me at the bus station where I went looking for a room, as you do in the Ukraine if you need one. In these cases I tend to go with the first person that feels comfortable enough to come to me, even though I don't speak the language and look a bit neglected. So in this case Stas, who lives in the same street as his mother Halia and tries to find people during the day that need a room for the night that he sets them up in one of the spare rooms of his family. I didn't know Halia had more children and so it could happen that after we both went to bed last night, and I all in a sudden started to doubt whether or not I had switched off the stove, I met her younger son, who had just gotten home, on my way back from the kitchen (which is outside), in my boxer shorts holding my torch like some burglar in underpants. He on the other hand didn't know his mother had guests. It made for an odd encounter. He must have said something like: "And who might you be?", and I tried to explain to him that I went to check whether or not the kitchen was on fire... The next morning, after having said 'dobry ootra' (good morning) we exchanged a look of: 'let's never ever mention that again'.
But back to the travel, as should be clear by now the Ukraine is a good place to be at the moment. There has been a good harvest and delicious fruits and vegetables can be found at the many markets that mushroom next to the roads.
Three weeks ago it was mainly tomatoes, cucumbers, gherkins, potatoes, apples and prunes, but now there are also sweet yellow melons, watermelons, strawberries, nuts and their dirivative products. And then there are the beekeepers that offer their liquid gold for the spare change in your pockets. You can get a liter for about 4 euro's, if you have the space to store it, which is problematic in my case. It's a great fuel though, so I carry a half liter jar in my backpack that serves as lunch box, and when it runs out (every two weeks or so) I stop at the first honey station to fill up. Perfect. In Crimea the beekeeper stands have grown to full-fledged beewagons where the beehives actually form the store. A bit like going for a bottle of milk and seeing the cows actually being milked to fill the bottle, as is the case at a farm store on the Flamish countrysidc that my friend Alexander has shown me. These mobile beehives remind me of old circus carts (from a time long gone, when Pipo the Clown was still cracking jokes on the Dutch public television), with their colourful appearance.
Just after entering Crimea, I came across the traffic sign pictured below. It says that in order to go to Kerc, the easternmost point of the peninsula, you still have to make 303 kilometres, but don't worry, cafe 'Traktir', is just around the corner. Sometimes choices are easy.
Among the first people I met in Crimea were these joyful folks. 'Cyclebeasts pur sang', I thought (a goat, boxes full of stuff, a cooker... must weigh up to 30 kilo's easily!), but when I stopped, their frontman (with beard) clearly disapproved of the cyclebeastphilosophy. He looked at me, pointed at the asphalt, shouted something, after which he used the same index finger to cut his throat, forming the mental image of my 'sudden and imminent death' (remember 'Stranger than fiction'?). His friend (in the back of the picture) was lighter of heart. He said something to me like: "all the best to you my friend!" I just hope his bearded friend isn't right.
During these ten days of cycling I first went to the westermost point of Crimea: Chornomorsk. Bad idea. Like that other western place that I am cycling away from, it proved to be flat and rainy. But yeah, then I still had the idea of cycling the entire coastline of Crimea so off I went. At night I camped out on one of the cliffs west of Chornomorsk, which was quite a frightening experience. It stormed that night, and although I had pitched my tent in the lee of a weather station with a big iron antenna (if lightning was to hit this area than at least it wouldn't be my tent) that didn't prevent the water from coming in at one point. To give you an impression, this is what the tip of my tent looked like at three o'clock at night:
The next day, everything was covered with mud. The tent, its content and my bicycle. When I found my way back into Chornomorsk
(the name of this place somehow resembled the way I felt at the time) people were looking at me strange. Who's this stranger covered in dirt? The guys at the cycle wash had a good laugh, and did a great job for what they thought was a 'turyst amerykansky'. It surprised them that I understood what they were talking about, when I corrected them by saying: "Nije, Hollandia". After the washing, they didn't want to have anything in return for the water and thumb pressure, but when I gave them some hryvnia's for 'pivo', their faces beamed.
After the Chornomorsk storm, I thought it was high time to find a dryer and above all, sunnier place. So I continued cycling southwards. That night I camped at the beach of Saky. Very comfortable night (a moment like this is always amplified if it's preceded by a difficult one; overall it indeed sums up to a balanced sequence of ups and downs ; ) ), that started with an invitation of a Russian family to come and have supper with them. Or not exactly with them, as they had already eaten, but just to come and eat their food. I am always up for offers like that, so I sat with them and ate their bread, strange looking cheese and tomatoes, and drank delicious kefir and hot water with honey. They wanted to know whether or not I am a believer and whether or not I am married, so I guess it was quite a typical family.
The next day I made my way to Bakhchysaray, where I visited the song contest at night that I wrote about earlier, but is placed above this story (and that was met by a deafening silence of you, the audience! Apart from my mother and my friend Jw no responds at all... Perhaps it was one of those events where you actually had to be present to enjoy it). But there was more to that visit than the music. I stayed with Ana (the woman in the yellow dressing gown; if you enlarge the picture (by clicking on it) you can see her in her younger years as well) and Mehmet, a household of two, since Mehmet's older brothers have left the house. Mehmet is clearly fighting the teenager's fights at the moment, which made the atmosphere in the house a bit tense. Ana, who's originally from Uzbekistan, didn't seem to mind. She went throught the same process before I imagine. She kept on telling me about all the other foreign travellers that they had hosted over the years. Perfect strangers from Poland, the Czech Republic, Belgium and the Netherlands (she gave me the contact details of one of them and made it clear to me that she wanted me to convey their regards, as if I know all the other 16 million Dutchies... But I did what I could, found a matching email address and sent this guy the greetings of what I think are our mutual friends in Bakhchisaray) passed the scene, while I kept half an eye on the television set in the corner of the room where a classic movie in black and white was shown. English and German soldiers that are stuck on the same island in the same monastery that live relatively peacefully, until this truce is disturbed by a beautiful Italian woman who washes up onshore after being shipwrecked. Too bad the movie was dubbed, but the images spoke for themselves. In the morning Ana cooked a great breakfast of pasta and ratatouille, a herbivorous cyclebeast's best friend! 
After Bakhshisaray I dipped into Sebastopol for lunch in the harbour, where I met with student of accountancy named Alexander. We spoke about different topics, but when he asked me what my previous job had been, he surprised me with his knowledge of European affairs. I think it has something to do with the political situation in Crimea, where a majority in especially the southern part of the peninsula feels more Russian than Ukrainian, and is therefore maybe a bit more sceptical about the European integration process as it plays out in the European Union at the moment. In Sebastopol, home to a large Russian marine base, you can see Russian flags on public buildings. Aside from this, I thought it was a beautiful town, with stately white houses in the centre, a good atmosphere on its squares and a beautiful, what I think is an opera house at the waterfront.
When I cycled southwards in the afternoon, I had spontaneous exclaims of amazement when I first saw the southern shore of the peninsula. This road, that lingers along the coast between Sebastopol and Alushta, is one of the most beautiful ones I have ridden so far. With dramatic rock formations, wide views on the Black Sea, pine tree forests with a delicious scent, and proud standing conifers, it was a joy for the senses. 
At night I stayed at the camping pitch of Foros, a beach resort with an open air disco. Here young and old mingle on the dance floor at night and dance on summer hits (I don't know about other European countries, but Lady Gaga's Poker Face is one of them here). At the campsite I met with Stanislav, who reminded me of Daniel Day-Lewis in Milan Kundera's 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' and Christina. Stas had invited me to their not so mobile mobile home (the wheels had been replaced by bricks) with the question: "Hey Amsterdam, come and join us!". After the introductions my first hunch wasn't that far from the truth, as Stas was in fact a doctor and his girlfriend one of the nurses from the Emergency Room in which he operates. No offence Stas, I remarked, but I hope I don't meet with you further down the road... On this camping pitch, named the Swallow's Nest (typical because on the road to it, I felt a bit like a cycleswallow: if I would have opened my mouth on some of the downhill bits, I would have had enough flies to make up for a dinner) one of the staffers had gone through the effort of giving names to the immobile homes. And not only that, he or she has translated them into English too! Like this, Stas and Christina's caravan was named: "With dear; Paradise in a hut", and a bit further down the path there was one that had the illustrious name: "Crimea: order on the breast of the planet." Also the rules for the common spaces had been translated, and like this the plastified note on the shower cell door reads: "You will switch off, or you will not leave!", which referres to the heating. It smelled awful in that tiny bathroom, so I decided to switch off.
Continuing to Alushta, I met with one of the most special cyclebeast so far:
73-year old Eduard from Moscow. He actually came down to Crimea by train, but had already cycled 400 kilometres on the peninsula. And don't go and think that he has a stallion from the 'Diamant Chemnitz Fahrradwerke' to make his trip! No, he was doing this on a rickety old bike, with a bedraggled, improvised saddle. After we had introduced ourselves, I asked him if I could try his bicycle. I couldn't believe that he managed to ride this thing. When I asked him why he used this saddle, he told me: "I have ill at prostate, that's why it's only halfway." So this 73-year old man, with what I think must be prostate cancer, is still travelling alone on an old bicycle with nothing more than the cloths on his back and the shabby matress behind his seat. Now that's what I call a great spirit, and it made me feel very little with all my equipment. Eduard, if it's up to me, you are heralded in the hall of fame of cyclebeasts.
Still didn't tell you about the great reception I got in Simferopol, where Alexander and his grandmother couchsurfed not only me, but also Jonathan and Nicola from Switzerland. And of course my very pleasant stay in the pension of Ludmila and Tanya in Alushta, where I met with one of the people behind the news headlines we consume on a daily basis: Igor, a Russian seaman who was captured for 3 months and 17 days by Somalian pirates (that he invariably introduced with the f-word). And ... Well, this dive into life comes with many impressions and encounters, and I simply cannot write about everything...
Last but not least, there's a nice surprise waiting for me on the other side of the border with Russia, which I will cross in two days time if everything goes according to plan: Cycledad! My father decided this was too much fun to miss out on, so he booked a ticket to Rostov and will join me to Volgograd, from where he takes the train back to Rostov, and after that the plane back to Amsterdam. Looking forward to it!
Crimea has it's own tune, written and played by 'Oi-Va-Voi', to which I actually did not listen that much, but which is such a nice coincidence that I put it on the OST:
Although commercials are on my 'wish-it-did-not-exist'-list, I'd like to draw your attention to my friend Daan's latest invention: the mTV (mobile television) or tv-bike. According to his description the television weighs about 10 kilograms, and the batteries about 20, so that classifies it as a 'fietsbeest' (cyclebeast from the Netherlands) in itself:
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