Belgorod

A Katyuska at the Dioarama

Thursday 9^th was our last day in Russia. We loaded our bags into Alex’s car and headed off to the Diorama. This wasn’t yet open, so we had a stroll in the park. Belgorod has numbers of parks and seems to have preserved its trees on the streets. The town of about 300,000 seems clean and well cared for.

We had a look at the Diorama. The by now familiar collection of Soviet armour was evident at front and back of the building. Inside, the diorama is actually quite impressive. It consists of a large, semi-circular painted background, with a life-sized battlefield in the foreground. You view this from a balcony about two metres above the battlefield. The whole effect gives some understanding of the confused and violent environment of the Prokhovovka battle with its mass of tanks and infantry.

Following a coffee, we had a look at the Regional Museum, which surveyed the local fauna and history from the Neanderthals to the current day, including mammoth tusks and bones and stone age flints and axes.

We visited mass grave and memorial for 2500 locals who were killed by the Nazis during the occupation. We then headed off to the city centre for lunch. Lunch was at a popular buffet restaurant, a style which seems common in Russia.

Shortly, it was time to head to the station, where we found our train to Sevastopol. We have all four beds in a second class compartment, so we have it to ourselves. Russian immigration locks the train at the station and deals with the departure formalities without problem.

The train moves off. A stream of entrepreneurs pass along the corridors offering clothes, trinkets, money exchange and heaven knows what else, a process that continues for some hours. This is something that we haven’t seen previously.

Our Second-class compartment

It’s only a short distance to the border, where Ukrainian immigration officers board. One didn’t seem to like us or our passports, so he wandered off  to find a comrade who spoke some English, with sounds of “Australian” resonating down the corridor. We didn’t understand the concern, as we had the correct visa. We were asked for evidence of where we would be staying or details of the tour company we were using. They weren’t interested in our Russian tour company, but luckily we had a confirmation for our Odessa hotel. Still they persisted – “tourism?”; “how long are you staying in Ukraine?” We liked the next question – “do you have any Australian money you can show me?” – which prompted a confused “no” from us, even though we were both thinking that this was a Ukrainian shake-down. They lost interest and stamped our passports.

Our train stopped at Kharkov, where numbers of passengers alighted. About an hour or two later, three men flashed id-cards and wanted to see our passports and tickets. They had very little English. The examined our passports in detail, muttering over our Ukrainian visas. We explained that we were Australians, that we got the visa in Australia and we were travelling to Sevastopol and Odessa. After some more muttering, they gave us back our passports and with a gruff “good luck”, left us. We can only think that they see very few non-Russian tourists and were are therefore somewhat suspicious.

We now knew something of why Russians told us that they preferred to holiday in the Red Sea, Turkey or Cyprus, where service standards were higher.

The friendly welcome for tourists in the Ukraine is starting to look an exaggeration……..

We then rolled on though the Ukrainian countryside into the night. We hit the sack early, as the train was due in Sevastopol at the unsociable time of 5:05 am the following morning.