Picture yourself looking up at a blue sky peeking through a huge canopy of leaves on a perfectly clear day in Kyoto. As the faint sound of Japanese flutes recedes softly into the background, it’s […]
On December 20th of 2006, I received an e-mail from my dad. It contained this Powerpoint file. The forwarding messages all included such phrases as: “I CANT EVEN LOOK AT THE PICTURES WITHOUT GETTING DIZZY!!” […]
You know how I’m always seeking out new and interesting experiences? Well last weekend I went drift racing. One of my coworkers, Miki, is extremely into cars. He has a Limited Edition Impreza (one of […]
At long last, I made it to Petra. Petra is a place that’s intrigued me since before I even knew its name – since I first saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as a […]
Peder and I left our pousada in Trancoso and started out for our day’s 30 km walk at around 11am. The plan was to follow the coast all the way to Arraial d’Ajuda, a neighboring […]
The following is not actually a single narrative of one continuous evening, but a composite of many. It’s written as a representative summary of my average night out in Kyoto. Nothing is exaggerated. It’s Saturday […]
Before I move on from Kazantip, there’s just one important thing I forgot to mention:
www.kazantip.com is NOT the real Kazantip. The festival has not moved to Portugal, and there are no plans to ever hold it anywhere but in Ukraine. Don’t let yourself be fooled.
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Warning: This post contains a few NSFW photos. View only in good company 🙂
The Republic of KaZantip, the legendary Eastern European Shangri La of parties, lasts for just one month a year in a walled-off region of the Black Sea Coast near the isolated ex-military town of Popovka. And although the Republic does indeed exist for a whole month – in truth, the proper core of the event is even shorter than that. Two weeks, from the official opening party until the official closing party.
I stayed the entire time.
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For its first few years, Eastern Europe’s biggest and most notorious rave was held in an abandoned nuclear reactor somewhere near the Crimean town of Shchelkino. But Kazantip quickly grew beyond control, and the authorities – scared by the volume of people and degree of debauchery – kicked them out. It wasn’t until 2000 that it found its current (and presumably permanent) home in the small coastal town of Popovka.
Popovka is exactly what I envision when I think of an old, Eastern-bloc village. There are unmaintained dirt roads, dilapidated concrete buildings, old Soviet military vehicles and some fairly disconcerting “barracks-like” structures. A most unlikely – or perhaps likely? – site for such a notorious party.
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Disclaimer: Kazantip is not a family-friendly event. In fact, it’s by no small margin the least family-friendly event I’ve ever written about. I’ve considered how to handle this, and decided that censoring too much would pretty much misrepresent it entirely. After all, this is a travel blog and should be about all the kinds of weird, off-the-beaten path experiences that most only dream of. In that sense, Kazantip truly fits the bill.
So in order to keep things safe-ish I’ll make sure that nothing offensive is visible on the homepage – you have to “continue reading” (or access the article directly). That way at least nobody will get in trouble for loading up my site while at work 😉 Continue reading »
Although I hadn’t slept a wink the night before my departure, I was pretty well rested by the time I landed in Kiev. The plan was to meet up with Herb and two of his friends – Gaurav and Jose – at the airport; we all flew in separately but managed to arrive within just a few hours of each other.
Luckily, despite never having been to Boryspil, we connected without issue and soon found a minibus into town. And the moment we hopped off Tanya was right there to greet us.
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