DREW VO: I’m Drew Scanlon.
I’m exploring the world through the lens of games, and I’m doing it with the support
of people like you on Patreon.
Help us out at patreon.com/clothmap.
Cloth Map came to Ukraine primarily for Chernobyl (and its puppies), but the aim was also to
get a sense of the modern Ukraine as a whole.
After all, a subject’s surroundings and history add so much context and richness to
the experience.
But I didn’t feel like I could get a sense of the modern Ukraine without visiting a place
that recently, depending on who you talk to, stopped being Ukraine.
Days after demonstrators gathered in Maidan Square in Kiev, soldiers without insignias
marched into Crimea.
Less than a month later, Russia claimed the territory, prompting outcry from the international
community.
Appropriately, during my time in Crimea, I often felt confused and unsure of what was
going on around me.
Is this place safe or dangerous?
Am I somehow breaking international law by being here?
What country am I even in?
Regardless of the answers to those questions, Russia is here.
Russian flags fly above buildings, billboards of Vladimir Putin flank the roads, and the
vital port of Sevastopol is packed with Russian ships.
And the occasional fisherman.
What Crimea is not packed with is tourists.
International sanctions have made it difficult for non-Russians like me to visit.
For example, my credit card didn’t work, and the nearest US-compatible ATM was 350
km away.
I had to make all my purchases with cash rubles I had extracted from the Moscow airport on
my way in.
Inconveniences like these have undoubtedly crippled Crimea’s tourist industry.
It was the perfect time of year to go, but none of the places I went could be described as bustling.
To save my finite cash, I ate mostly at pay-by-weight restaurants called Stolovayas.
Thankfully I had my guide to help me out a lot of the time, which enabled us to have lunches like this consisting
of local mushrooms, snails from the black sea, and a this drink made from cornelian
cherries.
Of course, it’s not just recent events that define Crimea’s history.
Livadia Palace, once the summer home of the last Czar of Russia, also holds world renown
as the site of the Yalta Conference.
Numerous monuments to the Crimean War of the 1850s dot the landscape, from this marker
in Sevastopol commemorating scuttled ships, to this vista overlooking the Valley of Death,
site of the Charge of the Light Brigade.
The charge was a doomed assault by British forces against Russian defenders during the
Battle of Balaclava, a port just a few kilometers away.
The port of Balaclava, after which the British named the face-covering masks they used there,
harbors monuments to modern conflicts as well.
Deep in the rock is a submarine base used during the cold war.
The base is open to visitors, but only for part of the week, some say because the Russian
navy is currently using part of it.
The museum is impressive, practically as close as one can get to being in a classic
submarine sim...
..or The Hunt for Red October.
It’s also a little unsettling, as mockups of nuclear warheads lay casually around.
DREW: Wait.
It’s a snow cone machine.
DREW VO: But Crimea is not all horrific battles and nuclear doom.
In fact, the area is home to some incredible natural beauty.
A hike to the entrance of the port of Balaclava reveals gorgeous scenery.
Including wild dolphins...
..and more people fishing.
The rest of Crimea is similarly stunning.
Plenty of beautiful architecture is to be found, too, like this famous castle called
the Swallow’s Nest...
..Alexander III’s former haunt Massandra Palace...
..and Vorontsov Palace,
where Churchill stayed during the Yalta conference.
Nearby, a couple was getting married...
...and a few guys were fishing.
Right outside of Yalta is Anton Chekhov’s seaside residence, which reminded me
of the surreal world of Riven.
Minus the ichthyosaurs.
In Sevastopol, there’s even a ferris wheel you can ride to get a better look at Crimea’s
emerald-green countryside.
Keen-eyed viewers may recognize this as the stand-in for the Pripyat ferris wheel from
the dream sequence in Cloth Map’s Chernobyl video.
The visual splendor didn’t stop there.
Just outside the town of Bacheserai is a church built into the side of a cliff.
Hiking up from the bottom of the valley for a few hours will take you past angry cows
and into dense vegetation.
If you want to skip the walk, you’ll have to hire a jeep.
Either way, it’s worth the effort.
DREW: Look at this.
DREW VO: At the top of the ridge is an ancient town carved into the rock called Chufut-Kale.
When the rain rolled in, we took shelter in the ruins.
We stayed the night in Bacheserai in a bed and breakfast owned by a family of Crimean
Tartars, the region’s indigenous minority.
Not only was the food the best I had in Crimea, but despite not sharing any language,
they were the warmest people I had met on the entire trip.
I mean, nobody else gave me chocolate.
The homemade coffee was pretty great too.
Indeed, the lack of tourist support made it hard to inquire about games of any kind, but
chess seems to be popular.
I spotted a board owned by a Soviet diplomat at the Yalta Conference palace, and walked
by a chess tournament during a night out.
I felt quite out of place in Crimea.
I was rarely understood and was discomforted by the lack of a safety net imposed by the
sanctions.
But if you can get past those difficulties, Crimea is a gem, unfortunately hidden by international
dispute.
As usual, the few people I did get to interact with there were warm and friendly.
WOMAN: Second floor, please.
DREW: Spasibo (thank you).
DREW VO: It was a reminder that people are different from the place they live.
No matter what flag flies above their buildings, good people everywhere are good people…
..who love to fish.
This concludes Cloth Map’s Ukraine series.
In case you missed it, we traveled to Chernobyl to get an up close and personal look at the
setting that has inspired so many games and other media.
We even met some puppies there,
and put together a video with some of Chernobyl’s unique sounds.
We visited a nuclear missile base to get a more real (and maybe too real) sense of apocalypse
than we’re used to in our games.
DMYTRO: You nuked Washington D.C.
GUIDE: Goodbye, America.
We released two travelogue videos showcasing what modern Ukraine is like to walk around
in, and the things that can happen when you’re up for adventure.
And we took a detour to one of the world’s glitziest competitive events, Eurovision,
to see what it’s like from the audience perspective.
If you liked this video, or any of our other ones, consider supporting us on Patreon.
Regular folks just like you contribute a few bucks a month to keep Cloth Map going.
Their support helps pay for flights, lodging, guides, translators, camera operators, editors,
music licensing, and more.
If you think learning about the world and bringing us all closer together is important,
we'd love to have you with us.