Guiding Lines: Ostensible Claims of Seaside Resorts

I do not keep track of spending habits of the Moscow city hall, or of anonymous “private investors”, but I regularly visit what may be justly described as “holiday destinations with top quality of service”. (Incidentally, the quality of service in Asia is considerably better than in Russia.) This summer, however, I had to revise my holiday itinerary, the only reason for that being that my wife had lost her foreign travel passport. Thus, it came to pass that for the first time in my life I visited the three above mentioned health resorts.

Anapa turned out to be the worst of all. In utmost despair we were wandering along deserted Pionersky Prospekt, looking in vain for a shelter that would meet minimum requirements for a decent lodging. Finally, we came across a recently developed townhouse community. Rooms were charming, cheap (below 1,000 rubles), bathrooms wall clean of a previous guest’s hair, but the window and the verandah – a nice place to revel in the rays of sunset – were overlooking the same verandah, where other holiday-makers were reveling too, and how! The architect of the complex had been quite consistent: all the sections of the new hotel were facing one another.

The guests attending Kinoshock Film Festival, held in Anapa during a low season, are given accommodation at Feya II resort, comprised of somber four- and five-storied buildings raised in the late perestroika years, with no private grounds and rates as high as those charged at European resorts. Booking a room at Feya in June is impossible, it is all packed.

Anapa’s great woe is lack of well-developed, private beaches. The seaside dunes are magnificent, of course, and walking along the seashore without having to jump over hotel fences may be truly pleasant. But where one could have a glass of cola? Or beer? Where to leave one’s Longines, before taking a sea bath? The only service available on Anapa beaches is having one’s sleeping body thrown into the sea by one’s heavily drunk friends. But it is hardly necessary to leave the capital to attain the same degree of pleasure.

Eventually, we stopped at Selena Hotel, also touted as a premium lodging facility. At a rate of 2,000 rubles per day we were given a lackluster room with oppressively dull, gray furniture. I fail to understand why the Russians prefer dark-brown, sordid and saturated green colors in d?cor of seaside holiday rooms. Guests at Selena are not trusted. Payment must be made in advance.

The check-out involved another humiliating procedure whereby a maid, who had never showed up once to make up the room during our stay, carried out a full inventory of all items so as to make sure that no glasses or forks had been stolen from the hotel by the editor-in-chief of the Na Rublyovke newspaper. When I was so na?ve as to ask on our first day of stay why the beds had not been made a receptionist said: “What do you mean?”

Sochi seemed to be a city on the verge of insanity as we arrived there. In those days the local government was mulling the issue whether to preserve Sochi as a seaside resort or turn it into a dump for steel and concrete products. The city hall opted for the latter and embarked on the course towards high-rise development. Shanghai and Tokyo are seaside cities, too, but their seaside location alone has not turned them into sea resorts.

Magnificent subtropical scenery is already disfigured with dozens of ugly glazed high-rises, but in the near future those structures will dominate the city’s skyline. Traditional southern Russian developments are disappearing giving way to prime residential estates. A price of 1 sotka (0.01 of 1 hectare) of land - in a city where all bans have been lifted has skyrocketed to $200,000.

Still, Greater Sochi that stretches for miles both along the seashore and inland has only one decent hotel – Lazurnaya – the joint creation of Gazprom and the hotel chain Radisson SAS. In the first five minutes of our stay I saw familiar faces on the beach – Natalia Ryurikova, the owner of Nashchyokin House gallery, and a singer Lev Levshchenko.

Vacationers from Moscow – real people, not some mysterious “private investors” – find shelter at Lazurnaya, which features a magnificent private beach and, for some unknown reason, charges 2 euros extra for a glass of sparking wine delivered to your room. Others lodge at Pyotr Veliky (Peter the Great) Hotel, which serves the best salmon in caviar sauce in this country. But that feature alone does not suffice for the city to meet international holiday destination standards.

The rumor has it that companies controlled by Oleg Deripaska are about to open the seaside Rodina Hotel for the public at large who can afford rates of $400 per room, surrounded by a charming garden. If those reports prove true the city will have another decent facility. The second – in how many years?

As to the quality of service in Sochi, only those who have never left the territory of the former Soviet Union for various reasons – ranging from outstanding convictions on their criminal record to traditional Russian unwillingness to learn – may speak highly of it. Rundown Zhiguli cars, providing transfer services at the airport, are steered by migrants from Caucasian provinces whose Russian is so obscene, that even the most daring Moscow gypsy cab drivers cannot compare to them.

The list of dishes served at the seaside is confined to just one item – the shashlyk. Enormous chunks of tough inedible meat of vague origin – a disaster to one’s teeth – are grilled until they turn into coal. Shashlyk is served with local wines stored in barrels. It would be worthwhile for [Russia’s chief sanitary inspector Gennady] Onishchenko pay attention to them. A single decent eatery, in addition to Lazurnaya’s restaurants, is Tinkoff on the quay. Those are the only addresses I know of.

Gelendzhik, the coziest town in the seaside area, has absolutely no catering establishments whatsoever. You are advised to bring your sausage along, as only cereals are available at local groceries. The sea in the Gelendzhik Bay is gray with mud. Apparently, the proximity to the port of Novorossiysk tells on the environment.

One more point. Strikingly, there is absolutely no place along the Black Sea shore offering fish, procured from its clean – as local officials claim – waters. In some places, goatfish is served at exorbitant prices. A portion of sole costs approximately 1,000 rubles – just as much as Arkady Novikov’s restaurants in Moscow charge for gilthead bream. A city where fish is more expensive than a draught ox is a lost city. The ancient sage was right, indeed.