Feeling uneasy and full of anxiety Melanie starts this seemingly harmless trip. The cruise liner 'Borysthenes' is going down the Dnieper river from Kiev, heading for the Black Sea and on to Sevastopol in the Crimea. Foreseeable 14 days: church viewing, museum visits, city tours. What she fears is confronting the past - which nevertheless is her motive for being here. The reason for this journey is a research assignment, but she isn't succeeding in keeping the scientific question free of her own emotions. What she wants to know from her fellow travellers is superimposed by what she knows...