Robbed And Shaken Down At A Soviet Factory Seaside Resort: My Black Sea Getaway Gone Wrong!

Think you know post-Soviet Ukraine? This dystopian tale of beach bungalows, balaclavas, AK-47s, crooked cops and a vanished wallet might change your mind.

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In the summer of 2000, feeling invincible after surviving my first year in Ukraine, I set off with my girlfriend and her family for one last seaside break before my CELTA teaching course in Krakow.

We were headed back to a “resort” called Mikron, and I use the term “resort” loosely.

It was no “Club Med”…

The place had once been a prized summer retreat for employees of the massive Mikron factory, one of the Soviet Union’s industrial giants, but its heyday had faded with the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Walking through the Mikron “resort”, you could almost feel the ghostly presence of long-gone Soviet workers who had once marched through there proudly on their “socialist holidays.”