Kurortniy Reyon

Back to Crimea and so are the tourists. The Kyiv Post reports that "while high cost, poor service and unsanitary conditions are turning some summer vacationers away from Crimea in favor of such destinations as Egypt and Turkey, the fact remains that 6 million people are expected to visit the still-beautiful peninsula this year." Still beautiful, but a little trashed. Sounds great, huh?

(My mother visited me here last week and was positively outraged at the amount of trash just lying around. She immediately stopped a lady selling newspapers on the beach to find out which newspaper is most widely read in Sevastopol and plans to write a letter castigating the citizenry. And you wonder where I get my energy from...)

In less than 48 hours back in Simferopol, I managed to get pulled back in to the Tatar community as if I had never left. Attended a wedding near Bakhchisaray, marked the 30th Anniversary of Musa Mamut's self-immolation at his burial site near Simferopol, chatted with Ukrainian nationalists, and have a whole new roster of musicians to interview.

Also, while at Kraina Mriy in Kyiv, I met the inspiring organizers of a summer camp called the "Chemistry of Tolerance," taking place in Bakhchisaray from July 11-21. A friend told me on the phone earlier today about how she and a group of Ukrainian-speaking students got kicked out of an internet cafe in Sevastopol recently for... speaking Ukrainian. (Luckily, the teenagers at the village internet shack from which I am currently writing seem to find my Ukrainian to be funny and harmless.) Point being, tolerance is a wise thing to spread around in these parts, so please check them out: www.chemistryoftolerance.org.