Odessa, Ukraine 3 - 5 May

Odessa is the beach city on the Black Sea. Its basically the "Cancun" for Russians. Apparently, in the summer, the beaches are so packed, that it is standing room only, literally. You can't lay down, so they tan standing up. Weird. They also have a bunch of big clubs all along the beach, so it really would be fun in the summer. But...It was early may for us.

We arrived early evening looking for a place to stay. The common thing there is to get an apartment from these little old ladies outside the train station. But we decided for a hotel and hiked for about an hour into the city looking. Here we are looking for the hotel.

We found a very shady spot downtown, great location. But no hot water. Odessa City turns off the hot water from May to October. So unless the building does it itself, you're out of luck. But again, it was only like $15 a night, total! The street next ours was pedestrian only, and horses. So everyone was out on that. We found a booth selling Bad Ass Schwarma's. Basically, its their version of a hamburger. So we got those and walked to the Irish pub. Another theme of the trip was always ending up in Irish Pubs, usually a good location to meet Expats and see whats going on in the city. We went both night in Kiev too. But here, these expats were clueless. Well, everyone here was apparently. Cause its a Wednesday, and there are people everywhere. But no one know "the place" to go. So we end up at the big off-season club, Palledium. Very nice looking, but no people at all. Like before, people on the streets..but where did they all go??? Eventually we checked out a sketchy Turkish club. It was actually cool, we just sat and watch a bunch of girls having fun dancing, they looked professional.

Thursday we did the tourism thing. Lot to do here. FIsrt we grabbed a cab to the catacombs. This is really cool. Odessa has 3,000kms of limestone mine shafts running underneath the city. With entrances all over the place. So, during the Romanian Occupation during WWII (they were with the Nazi's), the Ukrainian underground based themselves from here, underground!! Apparently, they were a big problem for the Romanians, btu they were never able to find them in the tunnels. We took a tour from a cool guy who spoke very accents English and kept talking about the fascists. Here's Ben infront of a command post with a picture of Stalin on the wall.

Next, we went to the beach. It was cold and windy, but we still saw 2 old ladys going into the water. Then walking through the park back into town along the coast, we ran into a military ceremony. They were practicing for something later. So it was cool watching, because the officers were yelling when they messed up and the kids were all rolling their eyes and laughing. Reminded me of West Point. It was neat to see another military gong through the same BS.

Next we went to the Potemkin Steps. This is a big history post here because of a massacre. Back in early 1900's a battleship off the coast mutinied and the people of the city revolted with the sailors. Then the police massacred about 3,000 on these steps.

That night was basically the same story as the night before, I guess these people only have fun in the summer. We got up at about 9am the next morning to catch our train.