Ukraine: Khotin (pics)

Oy. Just got back from a great four days of teaching students who will be going to America in the fall. Even though I was fighting a throat infection all week (including loosing my voice on the third day of teaching and teaching anyway), the kids had so much positive energy that it was a fantastic experience. It was more like a summer camp with classes than a orientation. Hope to get up some photos and vids soon (including all the kids singing an acoustic version of Britany Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time". No, I'm not kidding.)

But here's more pics from last weekend that I'm only getting around to:


So this is the castle at Khotin. Khotin is a village on the bend of a river that was of strategic importance at one point, but now it's just a village on the bend of a river with a really big castle. It's about forty minutes from Kominets Podilsky, so we made a day trip there, explored a bit, lazed around at the river and then finally went back to Kominets to catch our overnight train back to Kyiv.

Although a lot bigger and a lot cooler on the outside, the castle wasn't nearly as much fun inside as the castle at Kominets Podilsky, mostly because a lot of the interior was inaccessible (and free climbing would have been too dangerous) or gutted. Still, we had just as much fun wandering around the area outside the castle, which was this sort of mythical land of wildflowers and 500 year-old walls and aqueducts.



Above and below are two more shots of the castle.




Some of the interior of the castle, shot through a window of the tiny church in the castle. Every room of every building inside the walls was completely bare, which was a little uninteresting, but it was still pretty cool.


Me jammed up in a window.



Above and below are from exploring the area around the castle.




A church in Khotin


A horse drawn carriage in Khotin

Awesome weekend all around!