After returning home I realised how little I travelled inside of my own country, so I decided to immediately fix this unacceptable fact. My first destination happened to be the National Park Synevyr in my own Transcarpathian region.
The story goes as follows:
Synj (in Ukrainian it means "blue" and identified that she had gorgeous blue eyes) was an extremely beautiful daughter of the local duke, who once took her to his fields to check on how his people were working. She distracted herself from father's business by going deeper into the fields and picking some flowers. That was when she heard the sound of flute and discovered a handsome young man called Vyr...and voila...they fell in love from the first sight. Once the duke got to know about this unworthy affair of his daughter, he ordered his servants to kill Vyr and so they did. When poor young Synj realised what her father had done, she started crying so much , that her tears formed a beautiful blue lake with the rock from where her beloved was pushed off in the middle. Thus, people started calling this lake Synevyr as a tribute to this tragic love.
The nature is impressive, of course, however the recent changes have made some very negative influence on the state of the national park in general and the lake in particular. The lake is drying out quite drastically and in case we don't do anything about it the main water "perl" of Karpaty will soon become a legend itself.
Apart from that I am still bewildered by the fact that cars are permitted to drive up to the lake itself, even though it's a hiking area. No self-respecting national park will ever allow this - I don't think nature is that much thankful for all the gases from the cars. I wish it could be changed.
When walking around the lake you can find such stalls with honey and herb teas every 3 minutes. Literally. Green honey is told to be steeped in fir needles, red one - in cones.
Herb tea is made out of the variety of plants and berries growing in this mountain area.
The national park Synevyr has more to offer rather than the famous lake itself. Very recently a rehab for the abused and ill bears has been opened and everyone has a possibility to check it out (which reminds me of the same but smaller rehab in Bern). The rehab is quite spacey, so bears who are in good enough condition are free to walk around as they want. The newcomers are kept in the cages first until their treatment allows them to join their comrades in the free field.
I must say that I was quite touched by this visit to the bears mostly because of their stories. Think of all those real beasts, who made bears 'dance' on a sizzling hot plates, shut them down in the minuscule cages without any light ,forgot to feed them and used bears as live preys for the hunting dogs.
I hope that at least here they find their peace.
This is just the first step of so many to make in order to truly see all the perks that I have just near the corner.
