The plan was to leave today and do some more Crimea exploring but after the girl owning the hostel told me about the weather forecast that sounded like a bad idea. They were predicting heavy rain in the afternoon. I tend to trust weather forecasts in foreign countries so I decided to stay another night in Simferopol.
I had an interesting conversation with the young girl that was running the hostel. She opened the place a year ago and was doing everything herself. This actually meant being on standby 24/7 just in case anybody would show up. Since she was basically doing it from her own appartment she had no keys to give to her guests. They had to ring the doorbell each time they wanted to enter the building. Needless to say, she was basically trapped in her own place all the time. Not exactly a dream job if you ask me. I tried convincing her that she should at least get some extra keys to hand out to guests so she didn’t have to be glued to the door buzzer all the time. I hope she succeeds in freeing up some time for herself.
Now extending my stay for another night, that was the easy part. The hard part would be to actually find stuff to do while staying another day. To say that the city has an abundance of tourist attractions would be an overstatement.
There is a museum and that was on the top of the list of places to visit. I was not yet raining so I was already beginning to doubt the weather forecast. In the museum they had an exhibition about the last Tsar of Russia. Most signs were in Russian so I could only look at pictures and guess what was going on. Well, some of the pictures had a little english explanation on the side, like ‘Tsar in Navy uniform’ or something similar. The longer texts were usually just in Russian. It was a really small exhibit and when I went to the natural history section of the museum I found out that my ticket did not grant me access to this section of the museum. But I already had a glance at some of the displays before an old lady wanted to check my ticket, and from what I saw I was not overly depressed of missing this part of the museum. I went outside and strolled around again, looking for interesting sights.
This is a massive government building
This is a wedding party
This is a square with a statue of Lenin
That is basically pretty much the interesting things I could discover on my second day in Simferopol. I am pretty sure that I am making it sound worse than it really is. There are after all some more museums in the city which I didn’t visit (partly on advice of my hostel).
After my leisurely stroll I could finally see the rain clouds roll in and oh boy, that weather forecast was spot it. It started pouring down like crazy and I was incredibly happy that I was not spending the afternoon on my motorbike. I had to take shelter a few times and my shoes were already getting soaked. I managed to pass an art gallery and checked it out in order to collect some dry time. I can’t remember the name of the painter whose paintings were on display but some of them I really enjoyed. After that I started walking back to the hostel, being completely drenched. I resorted to taking a bus for a short bit as the rain was simply too much to handle. Completely soaked I arrived at the hostel where I had a rather uneventful evening to spend since the place was empty. Lets just hope that weather clears up so I don’t have to spend another day in Simferopol. Not that it is a bad place, it is just lacking in the number of attractions.
Goodbye working holiday visas, Europe here I come 