So I'm in Izmail.
Now Izmail from the name doesn't sound like a Russian or Ukrainian name that's because
it's named after the former Ottoman Grand Vizier Izmail.
That should give you a big clue as to origins of this city.
In 1790, the Russians captured this town from the Ottoman Turks and this marked a new expansion
in the Russian Empire and they even went a little bit further west and conquered more
of this region which subsequently became part of Romania for a while.
Now today when you look at it and I'm walking around here in Izmail, it feels a lot more
like neighboring Moldova than other parts of Ukraine and it definitely feels a good
bit away from the oblast capital in terms of culture at least, Odesa.
So Izmail is also the gateway to the Danube River.
Now last summer I went down to the mouth of the river to Vylkove which is known as Ukraine's
Venice in inverted commas and this this we're going to go into the hinterland to the lakes,
to the vineyards and see what this part of Odesa oblast has to offer you.
Поехали!
I'm standing here at the entrance to a village and a museum I had hoped to show you but when
we went there, they were kind of scared of us because they were I guess we were tourists,
international tourists so it kind of shows ... that's really serious the woman called
her director and said who are you I mean I have obviously my camera and stuff and then
they wanted us to come and visit the director at her home, just to be allowed to not just
to film apparently the museum but even to have them tell us anything about Gagauz culture
pretty crazy.
The director seemed to want us to invest time going to her house and whatnot to get permission
and the assistant there said that without the director's permission, I can't even tell
you anything about the culture, show you the museum, very bizarre to have a museum where
tourists are basically not welcome and think that's maybe a little bit indicative of what
I've been seeing here in terms of the development, like we went to the Bulgarian museum in the
center of Bolhrad, it's like 5 minutes away from here and there they were super friendly,
the woman there, the curator, she wanted to be on camera and she wanted to show the local
culture, the Bessarabian culture
so people out there so people like you to know about it if you're
interested in coming here at some stage and actually this predominantly Gagauz small town,
basically a village looks dramatically poorer just having driven around it than Bolhrad
itself so yeah I think that's probably because no one comes to see their culture because
they don't promote it and they don't really feel comfortable having even tourists come
so that's something that obviously needs to change in order for them to develop.
Ok, let's go further, there's an Albanian village the other side of Bolhrad and I'm
optimistic that they're going to be a little bit more welcoming of me as a foreigner wanting
to learn about their unique culture here in this region of Ukraine.
Поехали дальше!
So that behind me is the Cathedral here in Bolhrad so I just made it here I guess we
could say that it's the ethnic Bulgarian capital of Ukraine, the Bessarabian Bulgarians.
This city has about 15,000 people and the majority of them are ethnic Bulgarians you
can hear Bulgarian on the street here and this makes it really interesting if you have
come from say Odesa or another big city and you get out here and it definitely feels like
a different vibe.
It's very provincial.
You have the Bessarabian culture which is all these cultures all mixed together.
All these different languages spoken, it's very multi-kulti in the Ukrainian sense, I
guess we could call it.
I'm kind of impressed with the town so far.
The infrastructure is not so bad except for the fact that there was only one hotel that
I could find but other than that it's pretty clean and they seem to be investing a good
bit so I kind of predict that this region is going to become massive for tourism, especially
ecotourism in the future because you know they have a lot of local produce, cheeses,
wines, you've got very close by to here you have Kolonist, which is a pretty notable vineyard
here in Ukraine in terms of wine you can see ...
So on this absolutely sweltering summer's day.
It's so hot out here.
I've come to my favorite winery in Ukraine so I've already been and you can see that
in my previous vlogs to Trubetskoy vineyard out in Nova Kakhovka and also to Shabo which
is kind on the way here I guess, it's near to it's actually in Shabo that's the name of
the village but it's near to Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi but it's also close to Odesa
but we are in, I think the name is the small village is Krynychne
Krynychne and it is a majority ethnic Bulgarian town a bit like Bolhrad about 10-15 minutes drive
from Bolhrad and I'm here and I have to say that those 3 vineyards in general having tasted all the wine that I can
in southern Ukraine, this is actually the brand that I like the wine the most from we're right on the border with Moldova
it's definitely a very different vibe and yeah really super cool to see the vineyard, I'm just looking out at it right now
I'm looking forward to trying my favorite Ukrainian wine so let's go and drink a few scoops of it