So today we're in the town of Askania Nova which is pretty close to Kherson it's actually just a
couple hours down the road in the oblast and this place started as a German colony and the Falz Fein
family built not just here but also in other parts of Kherson oblast many huge estates and this is
one of them the Askania Nova and it has like this massive biosphere area goes on for hundreds of
kilometers basically here in the south of Ukraine it's pretty interesting place to take a walk
around kind of tragic what happened to the Falz Fein family most of them evacuated to Germany eventually
but the last owner of ... here in Askania Nova she actually refused and she was summarily
executed further down the coast nearer to Kherson at a place called Khorly by the Red
Army summarily executed it's pretty tragic they lost everything but the family continued to have
success even when they left the Russian Empire at the time and what is now modern day Ukraine
Edward von Falz Fein became a very successful Liechtensteiner actually the family in part moved
to Liechtenstein so there in Liechtenstein he was head of their olympic committee and
he actually died the oldest man in Liechtenstein at 106. So kind of interesting how he managed to
become successful even having had everything taken from him here by the Soviets anyways that's me
blabbering on about the family and stuff but let's go and take a look around the biosphere
So this is quite an amazing ruin behind me we got a beautiful view out on the Dnieper River so
this is where Edward Falz Fein was born against his birth date there in 1912. Just imagine what it
would have been like here back in the Tsarist times you had fountains with exotic fish you
had exotic animals here that after the family left were basically eaten shot and eaten by the locals
around here just what kind of a lifestyle that would have lived in such opulence and grandeur that they
built up over the generations for themselves when they had moved to the Russian Empire
under the Tsarina Catherine the Great and how quickly it was all taken away from them
So here we have the Swedish village so I was here four years ago
and I spoke with a Swedish speaking babushka
So I'm super excited to find out if the Swedish babushka is still
alive whether she's still here and whether she remembers me four years
later looking at the village I'm just here outside the church yeah they've changed the colors a
little bit still got the same memorial to those who were deported never came back
during the Great Purges 1937 to 1938 it's in Swedish so that is what I remember it saying is
So we went to the center and fortunately or unfortunately depends Maria is still alive but
she's not here in the village so I've come to one of her relatives and we're gonna sit down have a
little chat about the Swedish culture here and what's going on in the village and actually hear
a little bit of Swedish kind of interesting to see that she was telling me off camera that yeah
this old Swedish dialect that a lot of the people who watched it from Sweden actually commented that
it's like an interesting old dialect the generation of Maria is the last generation that
speaks that dialect and in fact her parents didn't teach it to her and used to use it as a cryptolect
so they would speak to each other secretly in that old dialect and then she learned standard
Swedish so anyways let's see learned a little bit more about Swedish culture here
So here at the yacht club at Nova Kakhovka the perfect way to spend that afternoon here
if you're down in this part of the world nice view ice cold spring good vibes1
I was just reflecting on yesterday having been out to the Swedish village at Gammalsvenskby at Zmiivka and yeah I
think it's pretty crazy that you know Sweden you know they rejected Lillia already in the 90s
coming to Sweden been able to immigrate there because they had you know other people coming
from the Balkans with those wars and now even if they was a war in this region of Ukraine
touch wood that doesn't happen of course they are unlikely to even accept them as refugees
because they say well they can go somewhere else Ukraine is big there's other places in the region
which is pretty crazy when you think about the fact that Sweden has been
so open to accepting people from all over the world flee indirectly conflict zones but you
know being Swedish doesn't seem to count for much not sure if that's a cultural trait or not