Room at the top by Victor Pogostin

That year, I traveled to the Black Sea with two friends. We arrived at Simferopol, the Crimea’s regional center, by train. Tickets were hard to get, and we were lucky to get upper berths in three different second-class cars. The station was built by a Russian architect but in Italian style, with a huge clock under the roof of the main building and symmetrical galleries on the sides. The inner yard had a fountain that hardly saw any water, at least not on my watch. Crimeans who wanted to rent their rooms would go to the city bus station or look for clients who gathered near that fountain. We spent an hour trying to find a room, but no one seemed eager to rent to three young guys. Finally, we heard someone calling us.  

“Hey lads…need a room?”

A suntanned, plain-looking man approached us.

“I have a great place in Oreanda with a sea view and only fifteen minutes to the beach.”

All I knew about Oreanda was that it used to be the imperial estate of the Russian czars and that Mark Twain had once stayed there before it burned down in 1882. Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Lady with the Dog’ took place in Oreanda. But we were tired after a long trip in a stuffy train car and the day was nearly done, so we agreed.

“My car is around the corner,” he said. “Follow me at some distance. I am not allowed to pick up passengers.”

It was gloomy and cloudy when his “Moskvitch-408,” nicknamed by people “The Cripple,” chugged up to the Angarsk pass, the highest point in the Crimean Mountains on the road to Yalta. Then, when we started descending towards Yalta, it was so foggy that we could hardly see the turns on the winding road, let alone the night lights of the Black Sea coastline. It cleared only at the last two miles after we passed the Livadiya Palace, where Franklin Roosevelt and the American delegation stayed during the 1945 Yalta Conference.

It appeared that our driver was our host, too. A one-bedroom apartment that he had shared with his wife and a nine-year-old daughter was on the fifth floor of a five-story building. The lack of an elevator was not a problem, but the promise of the sea’s proximity was overstated. Even from his fifth-floor balcony, the sea was barely visible behind the steep bush-covered hill. Getting to the beach in fifteen minutes was probably doable only if we had rolled down the slope.

“Can you take us to the beach now?” I asked. “We are dying for a swim.”

“Sure,” he said. “Let me show you your room first.”

I looked around, wondering where on earth he had wanted us to stay.

“Pay for a week in advance and follow me,” he said. “Your bags will be safe here. Take only swimming trunks.”

The so-called room was a roofed gazebo in the inner yard shared with the sheds and gazebos of all the dwellers in his building. Inside were three cots crammed together. A rusty washbasin hung on a nearby tree, and an old four-seater outhouse loomed out of the dark far corner of the yard. Clearly, we had been bamboozled.

“And where is the beach?” I asked.

“Downhill,” he said and then explained, “we are in the Upper Oreanda, and the beach is in the Lower Oreanda and is part of the Sanatorium.”

We started downhill, pushing through thickets of bushes. In about fifteen minutes, we reached a narrow path that looked like a patrol track. The Sanatorium was right behind the path, and in the gaps between the cottages, we could see the coastal moonlight on the dark and calm water.

“I am not going any farther.” whispered our host, putting a

finger to his lips to request silence. Two heavily built men in civilian clothes passed within a few meters from us.

“You are kidding,” said one of my friends.” What’s the catch?”

“If anyone asks, you don’t know me,” whispered the host and dove into the bushes.

For us, there was no way back. We waited for the patrol men to turn the corner and then ran for the beach.

The night was still young, but all the windows in the cottages and the nearby main building were dark. The pebble beach had showers, changing rooms, sun loungers, canopies, and even carpeted walkways with handrails leading you to the deep area. We dived, splashed, squirted, and laughed happily for half an hour. When we swam back, four security guards in camouflage uniforms were waiting for us.

“Look what we’ve got here,” one of them said as we tried to dry ourselves with t-shirts.

“Visiting anyone?” asked the one who looked older and seemed to be in charge.

“We’re on our own,” said one of my friends. “Students from Moscow. Just stargazing.”

“And how did you get here?” asked the third guard.

I pointed towards the bushy hill.

“Any idea where you are?”

We shook our heads.

“Dress and get the hell out of here the way you came.” said one of the guards.

“No,” said the older guard, “write down their names and take them up in the elevator to a checkpoint. Make it quietly. No one should know they were here.”

The guards took us in the hillside elevator from the pebble beach to the uphill checkpoint with armed guards.

“Can we ever come back?” asked one of my friends.

“Sure,” said the older guard, “if you want to stargaze through iron bars.”  

Our host seemed surprised to see us back so soon.

“What the hell was it?” I asked.

“State dacha for the members of the Politburo. All of us in the Upper Oreanda work there.”

“No shit,” said one of my friends.

“No worries,” said the host. “We’ll think of something. Let’s have a drink to your safe return.”

The offer was accepted. After all, hadn’t another traveler to Oreanda, Mark Twain, suggested, “never refuse a drink—under any circumstances.” 

The same night, exhausted combating mosquitos in the open gazebo, we fled Oreanda, leaving behind the week’s advance.

True hospitality

We spent the night shaking on the wooden seats of an old train and then in a squeaky bus that dropped us at the Leselidze bus terminal. In the first light of the day, the tiny Abkhazian town was dormant. Even the barkers luring the naïve vacationers to cots in the rooms with a view were still in bed. We walked about two miles toward a deserted beach and, fearing no deportation, fell asleep snuggled on the sea-polished pebbles.

It was almost noon when the scourging sun awakened us. We went to look for a room, but there was nothing ‘for rent’ anywhere nearby. We almost gave up when we saw an old man sitting on a bench by a wattle fence hidden in the shade of a willow tree. In front of him, he had a small wooden box with a 5-litre jar and a few glasses. Feeling thirsty, we came closer. The old man’s eyes were hidden under a huge black Georgian cap, nicknamed ‘airfield,’ and he looked like he was dozing.

“Can we have some water?” asked my friend.                                       

The old man raised the cap’s visor and gave us a sly look.

“Need a room?”

We nodded. He poured three glasses.

“Let’s drink together, bottoms up, and if you don’t gasp or cry, you can stay in my house one week free.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Chacha,” he said matter-of-factly.

We had never heard of chacha, but the motivation was strong, and we drank in one gulp. The old man smiled with pleasure and wiped his mustache. My friend and I froze, trying to hold back our tears.

“Good,” said the old man.” “Here is your key, and not a word to my wife.”

Mark Twain’s advice proved very handy. We were reimbursed for the one-week advance we wasted in Oreanda. Soon, we learned that ‘chacha’ is the Caucasian grappa produced for home brew up to 85% alcohol.

Years later, I read that the Sanatorium was built in 1958 on the site of a burnt-down royal palace. Leonid Brezhnev had a dacha in Oreanda, and we might have romped on its pebble beach. Richard Nixon visited Brezhnev in Oreanda in 1974 after the Moscow Summit, and in August 1987, Gorbachev holidayed in Nizhnyaya Oreanda, writing his Perestroika speech.

Call it a coincidence, but after the collapse of Soviet communism, the hillside shore elevator was closed due to corrosion and deformation of its base.