Today is Friday the 10th of August and it is our first day in Odessa, the city is compact and mainly made of old buildings, and oddly enough there seems to be a lot of restoration going on in the city. Kiev was in state of neutral growth, the government doesn’t seem to want to spend money in the larger city but down here the buildings have had some form of refurbishment and or are going thorough it.
Our first step was to pack up from the Dream Hostel Mini and make our way to Orpheus Hostel that came under high recommendation from Sebastian the Dutch tourist who had already visited, the dream hostel chain throughout the country are of a very high standard, traditionally young people stay at them and they always have bright colours and clean facilities.
It’s about 10 AM and our first priority was to get coffee, David and i both need a canine hit before we do anything productive so he makes a great travel companion, our next hostel was located about 3KM away, now we could get a 1 euro taxi to the next site but walking over here is nice you always take in more or the view and get some idea of the basic layout and facilities nearby
David was “navigator” and did an excellent job, the walk took us about an hour and we darted in and out of old streets, where Kiev had a lot of topography and land marks, Odessa does not…. you can walk 1KM in the wrong direction and you would assume you are heading East… in reality your really heading West.
The hostel is situated in a classic old European style apartment building with a grand staircase that winds it’s way up level by level, our hostel is on the second floor and has been fortified by 2 large steel doors.
I technically don’t have a reservation here, David does along with Rory.. but Rory is chasing Kylie to Liviv… so for this stay am Rory white from Perth, the day manager greets us in Russian and has no comprehension of the English language…this makes it very hard to explain that Rory is not coming and i will fill the bed for the ext 4 days.. after some google translates few phones calls to his boss… i pay my 1000 Hryvnia and i have a bunk!
The rooms remind me of the film “the grand Budapest hotel” and have lovely wooden floor along with beautiful paintings scattered around the room.
We do a DAR (dump and run) of our belongings, whilst we are completing this manoeuvre the owner walks in and wants the first hand story about Rory, we got chatting to him and the building we are staying in is over 200 Years old!, while David finishes off i go into the kitchen and the owner shows us where we are located within the city and also the main attractions.
We head out and hit the street, the beach is about 25 minutes walk so we start navigating the streets to get to the main shipping port, from there we will head west along the gardens until we get to the beaches.
Along our walk we come across the famous steps “Potemkin Stairs” these stairs were built in 1837 and are made out of sandstone, they are 142 meters long and was a direct access from the port to the city’s Plateau. They are one of the largest tourist attractions in Odessa.
We start heading west and ran into another back packer from Kyiv, we said a quick hello and moved on , the walk from the steps to the beach was around 2.5KM, there a re two types of gardens here in Ukraine:
State gardens – beautifully manicured lawns and well kept facilities and fountains
City gardens – Nature for the sake of nature , not normally kept and left to grow on there own accord
The walk to the beach was through as city garden or a sort of town belt, young lovers scattered on benches looking out at the Black Sea making out and lying in each other’s arms…..i cant see how they do it, any form of physical contact here would be too hot for a kiwi traveller!
We make it to the beach and my fathers words burn in my ears…. “Odessa is a tourist location for fat Russians”….. he is not wrong, people in my home town of Dunedin quite often say the beach is too cold, but i would take the cold southern oceans and beaches of New Zealand over a dirty rubbish littered beach any day of the week
The beach was almost at capacity and to navigate up the cigarette littered beach was like walking through a land mine field. Every step you took you had to climb over a leg or a body… not relaxing by any stretch of the imagination!
We wandered up through the bars and then David stoped and said “is this it.. feel like we are missing something” i tend to agree with that statement, the city is beautiful but if this is all Odessa has to offer the next 4 days could be very quaint.
We both needed an ATM as the cash we had paid for the hostel basically depleted our reserves so we hopped on Google Maps and Popped in BNP Paribas (French bank chain)
To any traveler i would always recommend using a EU controlled bank, the local banks and currency exchange offices will try and take a double commission on transaction, so they charge you a commission from NZD > USD then USD> Hryvnia…. not cool
EU Banks the charge 1 commission from your local currency NZD > Hryvnia… easy
I pay about 118USD for 3000 local currency, 3000 will last about 5-6 days depending on how much you eat and drink. The general cost of living here is cheap so its not a biggie.
Lunch time is a simple exercise here in Odessa, walk till you find a cafe.. sit down eat and leave.
It was bridging onto 3.30Pm and i explained to David that i needed to find an english book shop,
We navigate to a small square in the centre of town to a shop called the Englishman’s bookshop, they specialise in translated ukranian , polish and English books…. i can see David is not interested so i whipped in and grabbed 3 books and headed to the counter i was in and out within 3 minutes and David was quite surprised by the level of efficiency I brought to the trip.
We started slowly strolling back down to the corner and then David says the 4 words that would be the downfall to the night…. “lets grab a Beer”….. and what a great idea it is!.
We sit down at a table on the corner of a street and it is filled with locals.. mainly alcoholic looking men drinking by themselves, David sends me on the mission to the bar and i pointed to the tap on the bar and asked for 2 beers please , she nods and starts pouring, i pay here 58 Hryvnia and wait by a wee window n the street
One beer appears in the window and i assume this is for us so i take it to David, David looks at me and asks what it is. I shrug and tell him its beer, literally as soon as David takes a sip i hear a commotion from the window… I have grabbed someone else beer!!!….
I turn to David and he has a finger in it now and i look back at the lady and say sorry… she looks dumbfounded on what to do…. like this has never happened in her whole time of working there!
I hand her a 50 Hryvnia note and apologise , I gesture to the owner of the beer and say sorry. He doesn’t seem to mind too much.
As we sat there in the shade taking in the views 2 Russian men next to us are also sitting there enjoying the city and drinking and laughing we finish our first beer and its David’s turn to go and piss off the bar owner by asking for 2 more beers… luckily he gets the right beers first go and everyone is happy!
The 2 Russians are getting louder and then Sergei the lager one walks off for about 10 minutes…. his friend Edward is on the mobile fluttering away in Russian to a friend. Sergei returns with a half watermelon cut into cubes, he then darts off to the bar and comes back with an ice cold bottle of Vodka.
Sergei looks at us and says “you join for vodka!” We look at each other and think… why not, we pull up our seats and introduce ourselves… the language barrier was thick… we couldn’t get thorough so after a few taps on the mobile we managed to get a Russian keyboard on the phone and google translate working, they wanted to know about our travels and where we are from.
We start on the first shot of vodka which was served to us in quad shot glasses …. so 80ml in each after 2 shots each the bottle was gone as they were only 500 ml bottle.
The vodka here is smooth and cool it doesn’t have a kick back effect unlike in New Zealand and i can see why the Russians like it as a drink.
The first bottle is demolished quickly and i head to the bar for the second bottle while David head to the melon shop for the next round of water melon, when we rendezvous back at the table i whip out my Bluetooth speaker and the Russians want to hear New Zealand music, i put on Che- FU and the Feelers and we sit there drinking and laughing,
A third Russian then joins called Igor he is a local man and likes what we are up-to so decided to sit down and join us for kiwi music, Russian Vodka and local Watermelon. We sit there for another hour and then somewhere within our hazed Russian induced state we decide on the the third bottle….. this was the down fall of the Anzacs and the SS against the Red army….
Halfway through that bottle David and i made an executive decision to get the Hell out of there….. we explain in a very drunken term that it was time for us to leave , we had been there for 4 hours and enjoyed our time there with the new friends we had made
I must admit…. i was in far worse condition than David… i had y sea legs on and in fine Kiwi fashion was zig zagging up the street with David giving me an occasional tug on my polo shirt to avoid obstacles and people up the street.
We were about a 4 KM walk from the hostel so it was paramount that we got some food.
David found the all famous Kebab shop … it wasn’t famous…it was just like any other Turkish kebab shop… but within 5 minute and a lot of hiccuping on my end we both had a kebab and we strolled down the dark streets back to the hostel
The walk took about 1 hour 15 minutes which felt lie a life time….
At the hostel we realised that we were on a very different level to the rest of the residents and were a subdued form of rowdy… the day manager who checked us in was not happy about it, David and i decided that water was the next beverage or else w would heavily regret life in the morning, we sat there on the couch in the dorm room and listened to music and drank copious amounts of water.
We got chatting to one of the bunk mates, her name was Yulia and she was heading back to Russia tomorrow, she had been here working as a clothes designer for the summer. She was friendly and kindly gave us a bunch of sunflower seeds out of her purse… god only knows where they came from and David quite happily munched away on them for 20 minutes while we gathered our defeated brain cells trying to figure out the next move.
We decided to head out to the kitchen as people were starting to get ready for bed, we laughed in the kitchen and shared stories, we decided to name the day manager Dracula as he does not sleep it was bridging onto 12 AM and he was still up… we couldn’t believe it!
We then got into a bit of trouble, David spied a dried fish hanging from the roof and decided to smell it… i followed suit however i stood on a chair…. word of advice… in Ukraine… don’t stand on a chair with shoes….. the moment i stand on the chair to smell the fish Dracula screams out in Russian at us… we have no idea what is going on
David looks puzzled and so do i, we ask him to speak english and he just gets angry, he runs off to his office and grabs his phone then shows us a message “i think you should go to bed now!”… david and i are still uncertain to what is going on so we gesture okay and grab our shoes and decide to head back out to find another bar as the night is still young.
I ended up messaging a girl from the hostel in Kiev and explained what happened, she said to stand on chairs here with shoes was a big no no , however i still protest that If there were more gestures given and less screaming a simple resolution would have presented itself.
We leave the hostel not quite sure what has gone on and make our way back to town…
From a distance we notice a strobe light flashing in a window, we take this to be a night club and start making our way down the cobbled streets under the street lamps, the air is cool and the town has almost gone to sleep.
We finally arrive at the door way where the flashing lights are coming from and a big neon sign says “girls XXX” in bright red neon letters, we both look at each other with disappointment and sigh, we agreed not to go in as we were after alcohol and night life not wasting money on girls collage tuition in Odessa.
We wander across the street to a local 24 hour supermarket and grab a drink… our heads are starting to throb and realise that the vodka was well on its way to being a hang over that we both knew would not work in the heat tomorrow.
As we wandered back to Dracula’s castle we stopped of at a shop call the Sandwich shop, it is basically Ukrainian SubWay, they don’t actually have Subway here but this sandwich chain makes a good substitute for us.
Naturally the menu we cant read so a few minutes of deciphering the images we point to a couple of Subs on the menu and wait patiently…. we are not sure if it was Duck or chicken… however it was well needed as we had walked 26.6KM that day and it was paramount to fuel the legs to get home.
We strolled in the hostel at about 2AM and both flopped down on the bunks……. then BLANK!
“In wine there is wisdom , in beer there is freedom , in water there is bacteria
-Benjamin Franklin
Quantum Entanglement 