OK here is the final installment in my Ukraine travel notes. After spending the day of Dec. 27 in Kiev, we boarded another night train to Odessa. Tickets on Ukrainian trains are very cheap, and so we decided to upgrade and travel kupe instead of our normal platskart. The ticket for the 9-hour trip only cost about $40. Kupe is basically second class (although I've never heard of anyone traveling first class), and it is a sleeper compartment with four beds--two lower beds and two upper beds. The beds are longer than in platskart, and you get a door that shuts, so you have some semblance of privacy--and your feet don't get bumped by every person walking by all throughout the night (#tallpersonstroubles).
Our compartment mates were two classy Ukrainian ladies, and one was a very conversational professor of pedagogy at a Kiev university. She told us all about her work, her kids (one of whom lived in Detroit for a while), and Ukraine. She didn't immediately ask us where we were from, and she later told me that it was only because we didn't get a political anecdote she told that she decided that we must not be Russian. She said that at first she assumed we were Russian, then figured that we were Russians who studied abroad for a while and picked up a little accent, and then finally decided to ask who were really were. It was rewarding to know that I could, at least for a little bit, fool an educated native speaker of Russian. That Russian degree wasn't gotten in vain!
Anyway, we arrived in Odessa at around 7am, and the whole city was totally fogged in. We found our hostel, which was close to the train station, and dropped our stuff off. We stayed at a really nice hostel (a shameless plug: It's called the Babushka Grand) that was in a gorgeous old apartment that used to belong to some very rich person. Summer is the big tourist season in Odessa, so we were the only guests there, and the staff--a chill young guy from California and a cool Ukrainian girl--was happy to accommodate us early.
We then set off to explore the city. The guy at the hostel gave us some recommendations and a map, so we were actually a lot more prepared for our time in Odessa than we were for any of the other cities. We got breakfast and walked to the Potemkin steps. Odessa is a major port and has long been a hub of commerce--and crime. The city has a beat-up grandeur that the guy in the hostel compared to San Francisco. My traveling companion said that it felt like we were walking around in a Grand Theft Auto game. You definitely get the feeling that there is a lot of shady business going on.
One of the coolest things in Odessa was the giant market, called Privoz. I'm not stranger to the Russian-style market, filled with old women and Central Asian and Caucasian men selling fruits, meat, fish, and all sorts of cheap Chinese-made clothes and shoes, but this market took the cake. It went on for more than a city block and even had a four-story building dedicated to all those Chinese clothes. At these markets, it's perfectly acceptable to haggle to get things cheaper, and the sellers can be very aggressive; I had a guy in a Moscow market try to sell me a belt with a giant, rhinestone encrusted dollar-sign buckle that a 90s rapper would think was gaudy, and I nearly had to push him to get away--he wouldn't take no for an answer. This time, I bought some eggs, oranges, and sausage for the train trip.
We explored a lot of the city and saw many of the highlights, but unfortunately the fog stayed around all day, so it was hard to even see across the street sometimes. I went to the shore of the Black Sea and dipped my hand in the water, but I could only see a few hundred yards out. Also, the city was pretty quiet; summer is the tourist season when all the clubs along the Black Sea coast are bumping and the city is full of people from all over Europe. We couldn't even find a decent bar that was open. And, as luck would have it, the fog lifted on Saturday, which was our last day, but our train left at 2:00pm, so we didn't have time to do much.
We then had a big train trip home--23 hours from Odessa to Moscow. The train was packed and was very hot and stuffy, and I was separated from my traveling companion. I had a top bed in platskart, which means that you can sit on the lower bunk until the person who has the bed wants to unroll their bedding and go to sleep. The old ladies in the bottom beds went to sleep at about 6:00pm and didn't get up until about 2:00pm the next day, so I was stuck in my bed all that time; there is a rack about two feet above the top bunk, so you can't sit up. It got to be oppressivly hot and humid on that train car, and everybody was sweaty and grumpy, and there was a baby who cried for about the first 14 hours of the trip. Despite all those things, it was actually kind of nice to just have completely free time and nowhere to go. I laid in my bed and read Master and Margarita (I'm slowly making my way though the book in Russian).
We got back to Moscow in the afternoon the next day and took a bus back to Vladimir. It was a great trip, and I would definitely go back to Ukraine. Here are some pictures of Odessa:
Our compartment mates were two classy Ukrainian ladies, and one was a very conversational professor of pedagogy at a Kiev university. She told us all about her work, her kids (one of whom lived in Detroit for a while), and Ukraine. She didn't immediately ask us where we were from, and she later told me that it was only because we didn't get a political anecdote she told that she decided that we must not be Russian. She said that at first she assumed we were Russian, then figured that we were Russians who studied abroad for a while and picked up a little accent, and then finally decided to ask who were really were. It was rewarding to know that I could, at least for a little bit, fool an educated native speaker of Russian. That Russian degree wasn't gotten in vain!
Anyway, we arrived in Odessa at around 7am, and the whole city was totally fogged in. We found our hostel, which was close to the train station, and dropped our stuff off. We stayed at a really nice hostel (a shameless plug: It's called the Babushka Grand) that was in a gorgeous old apartment that used to belong to some very rich person. Summer is the big tourist season in Odessa, so we were the only guests there, and the staff--a chill young guy from California and a cool Ukrainian girl--was happy to accommodate us early.
We then set off to explore the city. The guy at the hostel gave us some recommendations and a map, so we were actually a lot more prepared for our time in Odessa than we were for any of the other cities. We got breakfast and walked to the Potemkin steps. Odessa is a major port and has long been a hub of commerce--and crime. The city has a beat-up grandeur that the guy in the hostel compared to San Francisco. My traveling companion said that it felt like we were walking around in a Grand Theft Auto game. You definitely get the feeling that there is a lot of shady business going on.
One of the coolest things in Odessa was the giant market, called Privoz. I'm not stranger to the Russian-style market, filled with old women and Central Asian and Caucasian men selling fruits, meat, fish, and all sorts of cheap Chinese-made clothes and shoes, but this market took the cake. It went on for more than a city block and even had a four-story building dedicated to all those Chinese clothes. At these markets, it's perfectly acceptable to haggle to get things cheaper, and the sellers can be very aggressive; I had a guy in a Moscow market try to sell me a belt with a giant, rhinestone encrusted dollar-sign buckle that a 90s rapper would think was gaudy, and I nearly had to push him to get away--he wouldn't take no for an answer. This time, I bought some eggs, oranges, and sausage for the train trip.
We explored a lot of the city and saw many of the highlights, but unfortunately the fog stayed around all day, so it was hard to even see across the street sometimes. I went to the shore of the Black Sea and dipped my hand in the water, but I could only see a few hundred yards out. Also, the city was pretty quiet; summer is the tourist season when all the clubs along the Black Sea coast are bumping and the city is full of people from all over Europe. We couldn't even find a decent bar that was open. And, as luck would have it, the fog lifted on Saturday, which was our last day, but our train left at 2:00pm, so we didn't have time to do much.
We then had a big train trip home--23 hours from Odessa to Moscow. The train was packed and was very hot and stuffy, and I was separated from my traveling companion. I had a top bed in platskart, which means that you can sit on the lower bunk until the person who has the bed wants to unroll their bedding and go to sleep. The old ladies in the bottom beds went to sleep at about 6:00pm and didn't get up until about 2:00pm the next day, so I was stuck in my bed all that time; there is a rack about two feet above the top bunk, so you can't sit up. It got to be oppressivly hot and humid on that train car, and everybody was sweaty and grumpy, and there was a baby who cried for about the first 14 hours of the trip. Despite all those things, it was actually kind of nice to just have completely free time and nowhere to go. I laid in my bed and read Master and Margarita (I'm slowly making my way though the book in Russian).
We got back to Moscow in the afternoon the next day and took a bus back to Vladimir. It was a great trip, and I would definitely go back to Ukraine. Here are some pictures of Odessa:
No comments:
Post a Comment