Crimea - Ukraine - page 378

Sudak's bus station (every 20 minutes) and get off at Kapsel stop, then walk 500m to-
wards the sea. More distant beaches offer more elbow room, while the crowd becomes a
bit esoteric. Meganom attracts a lot of alternative and New Age types.
TOP OF CHAPTER
Koktebel
06562 / POP 2500
A merry band of Russian bohemians led by the gregarious bearded artist Maximilian Vo-
loshin descended in the 1900s on what was then a small and remote village of Bulgarian
refugees, transforming it into a favourite playground for the intelligentsia. This boho at-
mosphere lingered for a century, but the tide of wild capitalism has largely washed it
away. Still, with two major jazz festivals, a couple of good musical venues and a naturist
beach on the eastern side of the bay, Koktebel is not your average Crimean resort town,
even though the majority of Ukrainian and Russian youngsters who flood it in summer
are so very mainstream and provincial.
Sights & Activities
Voloshin's House MUSEUM
( www.voloshin.crimea.ua ; adult/student 35/15uah; 10am-5.30pm Tue-Sun) Poet Maximilian
Voloshin came to live on this bay beneath the anthropomorphic shapes of the Kara-Dag
mountains (which his friends claimed looked like him), and his home turned into a meet-
ing place for intellectuals of all professions and political convictions. He stayed here
even while the Civil War was raging in Crimea, 'waiting for the Reds to shoot me for be-
ing White, or for the Whites to hang me for being Red', as he noted in a letter.
Aquapark WATER PARK
(adult/child from 240/140uah; 10am-8pm) Max Voloshin's big jaw would drop at seeing
this symbol of Koktebel's commercialisation, but heck - this is a ruddy great aquapark
with multicoloured slides like liquorice and many pools.