Proposing to German man in a sandstone cave beneath the city of Odessa was not how i planned to spend my Monday but i guess stranger things have happened in the darkness of Odessa.
It was morning and today is the final 24 hour stretch in or trip to Odessa, we had visited 99.9% of all the attractions on Trip advisor and google so we were feeling rather accomplished with our daily expeditions around the sea side town. Yet again it is 30+ degrees and the sky is clear blue not featuring one cloud in the sky, humidity is nominal and first thing first is to go and have a shower in the weirdest hostel in Odessa
We get ready for the day and make our way to our local breakfast cafe that was just down the road, our usual lady greets us and basically knows our coffee order by now, however she doesn’t want to get one step ahead of us and waits for us to ask for one Americana and one Espresso.
We take a seat at our usual table and order our food… today i will step out of my comfort zone of regular breakfast food i have been eating and try Ukraine Eggs Benedict with salmon, breakfasts aren’t the best over here but occasionally you can try something western and actually get western food… shock horror!. David had the onion chicken and bacon sandwich that i had yesterday under high recommendations from me, and to finish it off i had a slice of Oreo Cheese cake
Ukraine takes a lot of pride in its deserts and the cheese cakes in Odessa are top notch and has been a guilty pleasure for both David and i, not knowing what to do with ourselves i hopped back on the inter web and did some digging for anything we might have missed in the google guide book.
After about 10 minutes of navigating around the Ukraine links i came across an underground catacombs that were build during the Cold War, i showed the page to David and he said
“Yeah lets go check it out”
We finished our breakfast and decided to head out on our morning foot patrol
The walk to the Catacombs was relatively trouble free and took about 40 minutes to get to, it was in the east of the city down by the old prison in the outer suburbs, upon arrival it was a simple setting, a quite back street with an underground entrance to the catacombs.
The guide greeted us and asked if we had a reservation, i explained that I couldn’t navigate there website as there was no english sub page to the website, he agreed it wasn’t the easiest but assured me that it was there… however we had no booking but by pure luck we arrived at the right time as an English tour was about to start! (Funny how these things fall in your favour)
The guide checks with the 2 Swedish tourists if it would be okay if the 2 worst tourists in Odessa could join them on there tour and they we more than happy to let us on, so the guide asked us to pay our way of 500 Hryvnia each and then put on a blue hard hat and was handed a LED torch,
We start our decent Down the 172 steps to the subterranean labyrinth that lies beneath the city.
The catacombs were built at the tern of the 19th century and was a mine originally for the sand stone that lay beneath the earth, the sand stone was mined for many years providing a solid building material for the city of Odessa and also neighbouring countries, the caves stretch around 2700 Km throughout the depths of Odessa and are one of the largest underground man made caverns in the world
The miners would traditionally spend around 2 weeks under ground at a time and work, eat, sleep and work some more. during that time after there 2 weeks of work they would then take about 4 days off to recover, then go straight back underground for another stint.
The caves sit at 15 degrees centigrade all year round , summer or winter and the air is damp with water seeping through the rock and earth above and below in the chamber and i can imagine that the working conditions would have been challenging even for the most conditioned worker.
Workers were paid by the brick and traditionally those were cut and chiseled with hand tools and saws one brick would take around 3-4 hours to cut and a great worker would cut around 4 to 5 bricks a day.
In the turn of the 20th century mechanical tools became available and the industrial revolution allowed the workers to cut about 60 bricks per hour allowing the tunnels to grow to the size they are today.
During the Cold War the tunnels were equipped as a nuclear fallout bunker for the city of Odessa, the at the time of a nuclear strike the city of Odessa “in theory” the town would flow underneath the city and use the catacombs to shelter from the cell destroying gamma radiation, the set up was primitive and there were benches carved the length of the tunnels, there were basic long drop toilets along with storage rooms for food and medicine
It was evident that even in the case of a nuclear bomb going off there was no way anyone could survive the conditions down there, illness and doses would soon cripple the once vibrant town.
About 20 minutes into the tour we came to an underwater reservoir of fresh water, the tour guide explained that it was an Odessa tradition that men would invite there girlfriends on the tour and once at this beautiful underwater lake , they would then propose to them
Naturally there a 2 very simple responses to that questions
– yes or no
The women who said yes would go on to live there fairytale romance , however if the women said no, the folktale depicts that the women were left in the depths of the cave for there soul to perish
It was at this time that the guide wanted to turn the lights off in The cavern to give us an appreciation of just how dark it was if you lost your torch or lantern, without your torch you are dead!.
The lights go out and we sit there in silence for around 3-4 minutes
“Pssst David?”
“What”
“Will you marry me”
“Nein”
(Swedish man in the darkness)
“Hahahahahah”
The guide suddenly decided that it was enough of being in the dark and lead us up to a bunker room that they had converted into a dimly lit tea room with candles and old photographs of heads of the city for Odessa, the caves was big enough to sit At least 50 people.
Here we sat and drank a small portion of black tea and were offered some kind of cookie, neither David or i took the cookie but were happy to drink the tea with pleasure and hear our guide tell us more about the caves.
The tea break was then brought to a close with a shot of Wodka the vodka was home made and if the we weren’t in a dark enough place the last thing we needed was Odessas finest Methanol surging through our veins causing us blindness.
They had 3 flavours and the one we settled on was called “Nuclear Winter” its alcohol content was of about 60% and there had been a fine addition of Horseradish and mushrooms added into the bottle to give the paint stripper some flavour.
I downed the vodka quickly knowing very well that all it would do is cause me pain and misery… .first the fire came follow by a vulgar after taste of horse radish and feral mushrooms which i can tell you look nothing like anything you can buy in the supermarket.
Looking at David he was struggling on this one, the Russia’s vodka 3 days before was easy but Nuclear winter was biting back for David, after some light encouragement and some constructive name calling he got it down and by the look on his face he very much paddled the same boat of regret for having the shot.
We were taken to a few more caverns and then it was time to start making our assent to the surface.
When we got to the top the weather was exactly how we had left it and the heat hitting your body after being down in 15 degrees was not only pleasurable but also a lot less damp making the transition into the heat very pleasant.
It was about 3PM and we decided that we would start making our way back to the centre of town.
We had walked past what we had self named “the worst street in Odessa” and we both vouched that we have to walk it in daylight just to confirm that it was as bad as it looked from in passing
The street lay below us from the hostel and you could access the street from the lower terrace of streets.
The street greets you with some concrete barriers and burnt out buildings, as you make your way up the street the buildings get increasingly worse with topless men wandering around aimlessly and abandoned cars left right and centre, the street passes beneath 2 bridges… the first bridge has its underside coated in the finest delinquent spray paint and from what look likes to be needles and other utensils on the ground
As we make our way to the second bridge we are greeted by an old sandstone building that has looked like it has collapsed under its own weight, when we were on the tour of the catacombs the guide did say that there was a period of time at the start of the 20th century where the mine owners were getting greedy and would ship out the sandstone blocks before the drying process of 6 months could take place… maybe this is what has happened here.
We get to the second bridge and ascend it in a rather orderly but brisk fashion hoping that we have managed to avoid confrontation on the street.
We get back to the hostel at around 6PM and i start my pack out routine of charging all devices followed by a separation of dirty washing in my pack and ensuring the next days clothes are placed out ready to go with toiletries and day pack loaded with travel documents and passport
As i lay on my bunk and read some more of my new Michale Koontz book David did the same and we could exit in a timely manner and make the most of the little sleep we could get in the noisy street we resided in.
It was about 8PM and we decided to have one last meal in Odessa, i did some looking and Black Pepper seemed to get a great review with a medium price point so David trusted my judgement and we hit the beat in search of our stomping ground for feeding time at the zoo.
The restaurant was only about 500 meters away from the hostel and as we walked up the final meters on google maps to the door of the restaurant it looked nice , an older lady played the piano in the Odessa moonlight and there was a nice water fountain to accompany here… little did we know that the 2 worst tourists in Odessa would get the wrong restaurant…. Black pepper was next door down a stair case.
We sat down in what we thought was black pepper and looked over the menu, it seemed good, i would love to tell you about the amazing food we ate, however I’m writing this 3 days late and I actually cant remember…
After dinner we plonked ourself in a bar and had a few quick beers ensuring that we were ready for the 7 hour train ride and we would end up going into a state of detox halfway back to Kiev.
As for Tuesday there will be no update unless you want me to tell you about every minute on a 7 hour train journey …
Quantum Entanglement 