Friends and Folly in Odessa

Escaping out of Lugansk here in Eastern Ukraine usually involves some sort of complicated bus or train (or both) excursion; for my jaunt down to southwestern coastal city of Odessa last weekend, this came in the form of a 20-hour overnight train!

But, oh!, what a weekend of fun and friends and...NO SIGHTSEEING! I think that Mark Twain, in his travel memoir, The Innocents Abroad, best summed up the atmosphere of Odessa:

"We consulted the guidebooks and were rejoiced to know that there were no sights in Odessa to see...nothing to do but idle about the city and enjoy ourselves."

All 192 of the famous Potemkin Steps:

Walking along the lazy boulevards of Odessa, it's easy to miss some of its most striking features: it's architecture. Coming out of WWII with only a few minor wounds, the collection of pre-Soviet structures (mostly neo-renaissance and art nouveau styles) is unlike that of any other city in Ukraine:

The most beautiful and well-known of all of Odessa's structures is her lovely opera house:

The citizens of Odessa are known all throughout the former U.S.S.R. for their humor and love of a good prank. Funny matters are serious business here, and that's why on April Fool's Day, the city celebrates with a huge festival (Carnival Humorina) followed by a day off! I couldn't have planned for a better time to be in the city:

However, the main reason I even traveled to Odessa in the first place was to meet up with my fun British friend, Alistair (a fellow English teacher we met while living in Japan), who is traveling the world on the Japanese Peace Boat (check out their amazing voyages and what all they do here). As a part of their journey, they were scheduled to dock in Odessa for two days before sailing onward to Egypt:

Besides meeting and hanging out with Alistair's other international friends volunteering on the Peace Boat (from the Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, and the Philippines), I got to speak a little Japanese as well (it's been awhile)! Around 900 Japanese passengers from the boat joined in the Carnival Humorina, and even sang some songs and danced a little Yosakoi on the main stage! It was definitely nostalgic:

A few early morning and lovely evening wanderings around Odessa...

...and it was back aboard our Soviet box-car-mobile to Lugansk, with a renewed fondness for folly and friends to help pass the time away! спасибо, одесса!

A Hard Day's Night in Donetsk

It was supposed to be fairly straightforward: hop on a plane in Lviv, take a two-hour flight to Donetsk (with a stop-over in Kiev), and then ride a 2 hour bus back to my city of Lugansk. Upon arriving for our 8:00am flight and being told that the flight was probably cancelled however, we knew we were in for a much longer day. That's just how things roll here in the former U.S.S.R.

After 7 hours (!!!) in the Lviv airport terminal (which looks like it's no more than a converted winger shed with a bunch of homeless dogs sniffing about), and all incoming and outgoing flights cancelled due to fog and a runway that's too short, we were finally told that they would bus us to the next closest airport city two hours away for a flight to Kiev. We got to Kiev at 9:00pm, waited in line for TWO HOURS at the "service" center for them to sort things out, had to spend the night in a hotel, and then took the first morning flight into Donetsk, a mere 16 hours after we were supposed to have arrived in Lugansk.

Since Jacob's international flight was out of Donetsk the next day, we decided not to make our way to Lugansk, and instead decided to spend the day and the night in Donetsk. Although I was super disappointed not to have Jacob experience my apartment, city, and co-workers, things quickly seemed to turn around for us when we spotted this:

Behind those grey, Soviet apartment walls was this:

And then this:

A Beatles-themed hotel complex out in the plains of Eastern Ukraine? Yes, please!

Not only did this hotel have a cool cafeteria-style food market, it also had a huge bar (featuring the longest bar in Eastern Europe), karaoke lounge, and super gaudy restaurant with speakers built into each booth-back:

As gray of a day as it was, Donetsk turned out to be a nice relaxing stop on our forced layover. We even found a pretty decent American-style brewery with taps going directly to each table!

Needless to say, this was as close as Jacob got to my city of Lugansk (bottom city listed on the blue), which was super sad as my co-workers and I had a fabulous lunch and get-together planned for him. Major bummer.

After one major bummer came another: Jacob's return to the States and my return back to Lugansk. The end of our amazing vacation and reunion was a little tougher since we're going to be apart for six more months, but I'm so thankful to have these opportunities to travel and work abroad, and to hopefully apply that to our future dreams together.

Thanks for the greatness, hubby! You are superiorly missed.