The truth is that it is Greek. But still the debate continues.
“Odessa is a Ukrainian name,” Anastasia Kalutskaya, a 13-year-old from Kiev, says. Varna resident Stoyan Radoulov (15) maintains that the original name of his hometown, Odessos, is Bulgarian in origin. Whatever the conclusion, Anastasia, six other teenagers and two grown-ups spent an educational holiday along the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, representing just a few of more than 100 000 Ukrainians who visit Bulgaria every year.
Drawn from various schools in their capital city, the group began their journey on June 19 with an overnight train ride to the port city of Odessa. There they joined holidaymakers from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus on board the sleek ferryboat, Krymskaya Strela (Crimean Arrow) for a nine-hour ride to Varna.
Anastasia, who had previously travelled by air and land to various destinations including Belgium, Hungary, Italy and Turkey, described the voyage as one of adventure and excitement. “We felt like pirates plying the high seas!”
Once in Varna, before they had a chance to properly view the city, their chaperone, Natalya Sergeyevna, a German teacher who had previously visited Bulgaria and arranged the trip, whisked the group off via a minibus to Dobrich and Hotel Bulgaria. This would serve as their base of operation for the next 11 days. The Kievans’ itinerary consisted of outings to seaside attractions, nearby villages, nature reserves and the Danube River. But first…classes.
Every weekday morning, the teens attended English and computer lessons as part of a short summer-school programme. It proved quite a challenge for their instructor Kaloyan Kostadinov, as they possessed varying levels of English proficiency, but sufficient overall to engage in various discussions, such as on the Eurovision Song Contest, the Klitschko Brothers and Taras Shevchenko, their cultural and national figure.
Through his writings during the mid-1800s, Shevchenko urged his countrymen to struggle for social equality and freedom from oppression by the Russian czars. His Kobzar (1840), a collection of poems, dealt with Ukrainian historical themes and made Ukrainian a popular language for poetry and books.
All the students, though, felt perfectly at home on the internet. One bright fellow, Dima Narovilo (13), had already created his own websites featuring fantasy characters and settings, and assisted Kostadinov in showing the others how to construct their own.
Noon. At last, fun time! The Kievans’ first call was Balchik, where they strolled along the promenade, lounged on the sand, then went swimming in the rain. Comparing the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov, a popular recreational area in south-eastern Ukraine, Dima said that the latter was not nearly as deep nor as saline. In subsequent days, they also explored Albena, Kavarna, Zlatni Pyasutsi (Golden Sands) and Cape Kaliakara.
Their other adult leader, Tamara Vladimirovna, originally from Simferopol, Crimea, said that the littoral of Bulgaria and the Crimean Peninsula both featured an almost subtropical, Mediterranean-like climate and ambiance, whereas Kiev, where she was now working as a concert organiser, was more frigid.
Later the group returned to Varna. The neobaroque facade of the Varna Opera House, and the onion-domed Cathedral of Assumption of the Virgin reminded them of the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theatre, and the Uspensky Cathedral.
To get a feel of rural life they took a train to the villages of Botevo, Oborishte and General Kiselovo with their scenic artificial lakes. Though they did not swim in them, the students strolled about the town squares and surrounding hills and woods. “People in Bulgaria smile more, they seem happier and more at ease than folks back home,” 14-year-old Sasha Babenko said.
The students’ efforts to communicate with natives produced curious results. Although the Ukrainians say their language and Bulgarian are “50-50” similar, it proved more convenient for them to resort to Russian when negotiating their way around with residents over the age of 28. “We use English 50-50, mostly with teenagers,” Sasha said. She and her friends also noted that Bulgarians speak faster than they do (some Bulgarians in turn, think that Ukrainians speak much faster).
With regards to Bulgarian food, Sergeyevna said: “Of course, we both have apples, cabbages, potatoes, and our main meat comes from the porky (sic).” That notwithstanding, the Ukrainians rated their own cuisine higher in terms of flavour and texture. Already they missed their mums’ dishes, such as varenyky. Possibly derived from the Turkish manti, they are dumplings filled with meat, potatoes, sauerkraut, cheese, plums or blueberries and eaten with sour cream and fried onions. Also served with sour cream is borsch, a soup made of beet, cabbage and meat. Their holubtsi resembled the Bulgarian sarmi: stuffed cabbage rolls filled with rice, buckwheat and minced meat (Sergeyevna also pointed out that Chicken Kiev did not originate in Ukraine). And as an afterthought, Sasha said that the physical morphology in her country varied considerably.
On a trip to Silistra, the Kievans encountered a third body of water in the form of the Danube River. “If we take a riverboat downstream we will end up in Budzhak,” said Dima. This region in southern Ukraine is also home to most of the country’s 200 000 ethnic Bulgarians, spread out over numerous towns and villages. Their ancestors had originally settled there in the late 1700s and early 1800s, at the invitation of it rulers.
As it were, at the end of their stay, the students and their chaperones returned to Varna, where they took the overnight ferry back home. They say it had been a unique learning experience, and looked forward to more journeys around the Black Sea basin and surrounding territory.
