Crimean appearances
Crimean appearances
If you come to Crimea and only see the cities, you could leave with the mistaken impression that people are actually reasonably well off in Ukraine. This deception is difficult to overcome, but is a product of the fact that all the wealth is concentrated in the cities, and that many people here spend a big portion of their money on looking good, and spend what money is left on more mundane things.
It is an interesting feature of the Crimean people that they care about, and put so much time into their appearance. You can spot a foreigner a mile off here as he's the one with the shorts on and the Mickey Mouse t-shirt! Men here darn bright clean shoes, dress trousers and shirts, and the women are ordained in impossibly chic outfits of high heeled boots, sumptuous skirt/top combinations and sleek hairstyles and - and this is all at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday morning at the market!
Crimean’s need to look good has its upsides and downsides. On the one hand, people here look REALLY good, very different to the more casual apparel prevalent on the streets in my home country Britain. The downside though, is that people have a tendency to make particularly strong judgements against you based on how you look. Looking good is not a voluntary pastime, but an obligatory code. If your clothes look old or unsophisticated, it will be assumed that this is due to lack of finances, as apposed to an inherent different scale of values regarding one's appearance. (Hence Crimeans get confused when they see millionaire Americans in shorts and Mickey Mouse t-shirts, as mentioned above).
We want to look good for others in the West too, but in Britain at least, this generally manifests itself on a higher financial level. We want to have a nice house, and we want to show it. In Ukraine, this is realised at a somewhat lower level. In Ukraine, for instance, the locals endeavour to purchase upmarket imported beer, and to show it. Yes; the beer you buy here has great significance. In Crimea, it seems to me that the best way to make money from Crimeans is to make your product more expensive than the competitor's. The more expensive it is, the more prestige it has associated with it, and the more people will strive to buy it.
If you want to see a show entitled 'Crimean Appearances', come to Crimea, sit back on a city street; Pushkin in Simferopol, Naberezhnaya in Sevastopol, get yourself the cheapest beer you can find (it will be no less tasty, and probably actually tastier than the 'upmarket' beers!), and watch as the spectacle unfolds before your eyes.
At AccessCrimea, we try to look good too, but we just cant compete with the locals. What we can do though, is offer you the best service in Crimea, at the prices that you are looking for. To find out more please go to http://www.accesscrimea.com
