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.

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.”

Faded murals of cheerful workers and factory smokestacks dotted the peeling walls, each one glorifying the virtues of hard labor and their “Bright Socialist Future.”

Above the canteen entrance hung a corroded old sign that read, “Glory to the Workers of Mikron!”

Now, it dangled precariously by a couple of rusty rivets, a sad relic of paradise lost.

This place wasn’t winning any tourist awards, but the beach was clean, the water swimmable, and we were paying next to nothing.

The previous year, we had signed up for the camp’s “meal plan”, a regrettable decision that left us eating off forks with three prongs and developing a deep distrust of retro-Soviet era cafeteria cuisine.

“Ah, the culinary pleasures of a stolovaya…”

Instead, we stocked up on groceries and left the cooking to my girlfriend’s mom, we men of course handling the grill and the beer…

It was shaping up to be a peaceful retreat of lazy beach days and long lunches…until a shifty “shashlik” (“shish-kebab”) cook and one vanished wallet changed everything.

A Seaside Dinner with an Aussie Twist

On one of our beach days, we crossed paths with an Australian guy and his Ukrainian girlfriend, who had actually grown up Down Under but remembered Mikron from part of her childhood.

Her nostalgia brought them back here, and, feeling a sense of camaraderie in this little Black Sea outpost, we agreed to venture into the local village together for dinner.

If by “village,” you’re picturing some quaint collection of seaside cottages, let me correct you.

The place was a mishmash of old kiosks, open-air markets, and a few rickety shashlik stands, all furnished with those classic white plastic chairs that could’ve fit right in at a Bangkok street food stall.

The night felt surreal, and my wallet, stuffed conspicuously in my shorts pocket, seemed like the least of my worries.

Until, that is, I reached for it and found it gone.

Gone in a Flash: The Wallet, The Keystone Cops, and the Balaclavas

I leapt up, frantically retracing my steps, but I knew that sly shashlik cook had swiped it during his “friendly” service.

I made a scene, American-style, and soon a squad of local police showed up, suited in balaclavas despite the heat, AK-47s slung across their shoulders like they were handling a high-stakes hostage situation.

The captain stepped forward, looking like a washed-up keystone cop from an old sitcom, squinting at me as if I’d just beamed down from outer space.

After a few questions, he informed me that if I’d introduced myself to the local police upon arrival, they could’ve been “looking out” for me, a service I’d soon discover was anything but.

Bureaucratic Purgatory at the Local Station

The police took us down to the station to “file a report”, which meant I watched my girlfriend copy our story by hand in triplicate, with officers inspecting each word like she was composing an official State memo.

I couldn’t help but feel we were living out some twisted scene from a 1970s sitcom where the main character is stuck in a one horse town, locked up by a crooked sheriff on trumped up charges.

By the time we (I mean she) finished the paperwork, it was 4:30 a.m., and as dawn crept over the horizon, I asked, somewhat naively, where was the ride back to our “resort” they had promised.

The officer’s reply? A shrug and a wave toward the open road.

So, we walked back to the bungalows, with my girlfriend muttering under her breath about my endless streak of “American idiocy” and her parents awaiting our return with worried looks of bemused disappointment.

This was just the beginning, though, the real bureaucratic circus was waiting for me the next morning.

Enter: the “Investigator.”

An Investigator with One Question: How Much Cash?

The investigator, clipboard in hand, launched into a polite but firm interrogation, his interest fixed squarely on one thing: the cash in my wallet.

“How much was in it?” he asked. “$100,” I replied, hoping to keep things simple.

He pressed further, his tone shifting to something more suspicious. “Are you SURE it was only $100?”

Then, he threw in that I wasn’t registered in the oblast, hinting that this “oversight” could lead to trouble.

It was clear what he was after, and it wasn’t justice.

I’d have to play along, and perhaps add a little creative revenge while I was at it.

The Great $400 Bluff: My Wallet “Grew” Overnight

I glanced sheepishly at my girlfriend before responding, “Actually, it was $400.”

Her eyes widened as she translated, then she hissed, “What? You had $400!”

The investigator’s beady eyes lit up as he scribbled something in his notepad. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?” he asked, suspiciously.

I shrugged, saying I’d been embarrassed to admit it in front of my girlfriend.

He asked again, one last time, “Are you sure now that it was $400?”

I replied, “Why would I lie”, as I nodded my head in defeat towards my exasperated girlfriend…

Satisfied, he handed back my passport and left, but I knew his “investigation” wasn’t quite over.

Next on his trail would be the shashlik cook, who would have to explain what happened to his cut of the now $400, and not the original $100.

I could almost picture the “confrontation” in the back of the cook’s grungy stall as the investigator tried to get his cut by beating it out of this little schmuck.

I wished I could’ve been a fly on the wall watching him demand his missing extra share of the loot from a thief who only stole $100 and not the $400 I had later claimed.

As my girlfriend later explained, the investigator had hinted that my wallet might “mysteriously” appear, without any money of course, if I kept quiet and warned us not to expect any help from authorities.

Apparently, the shashlik cook was “protected” by a krysha, or “roof,” a cozy arrangement that extended to the investigator himself.

Justice, it turned out, was one thing I wouldn’t be tasting anytime soon.

Except of course, with the thoughts of the little shashlik guy getting his ass kicked by that “investigator”..

The Aftermath: A Victory and a Bit of Earned Respect

When we finally made it back to the bungalow, exhausted and wallet-less, I felt like I’d turned our vacation into a disaster.

Over lunch, my girlfriend recounted every detail to her parents, who looked bewildered until she got to the part where I’d “confessed” to having $400, instead of the $100 she had written in “the report”.

Her father’s exasperation turned to a bemused smile, as if realizing I wasn’t entirely hopeless.

When I admitted to my girlfriend that I really had only $100, her confused look of shock softened into reluctant admiration.

Her father, who had silently observed my cultural blunders over the past year, gave me a nod that felt like high praise.

He understood what I’d done and even seemed a little impressed by my quick bluff.

For her parents, this absurd episode became a comedy of errors. They shook their heads at my “stupidity” but seemed oddly impressed with my improvisation.

I left the Black Sea without my wallet but with a small boost in family standing and a new respect for the art of bluffing.

Back in Kyiv, one of the first lessons I had learned was to always stash some cash around my flat.

In coat pockets, behind bookcases, and old shoes, as apartment break-ins were practically a rite of passage there.

I would find this out for myself many years later….

By the time I left for Krakow, my wallet was long gone, but my hidden cash reserves were exactly where I’d left them to use on my trip.

And as her father pulled away from the Black Sea coast, I looked back at the fading horizon and silently thanked Ukraine for the lesson in bluffing, a skill more valuable than any teaching certificate I would be getting.