Сказка про путешествие

Yes yes, it is that time. I am long over due, but I've finally found the time and the internet to write something up. I left on a trip, as you may recall, to Western Ukraine and back a few weeks ago. I've been back in Simferopol for a week since I got back, but let me talk about the trip first. Maria and I headed out fairly early on a Tuesday morning in late November and set a course for Lviv. Just outside of the town of Armyansk in the very north of Crimea, we were pulled over because Maria was going twice the speed limit (the speed limit arbitrarily goes up and down all along the highway, and we got caught in some sort of speeding trap), but we were sent on our way without a fine after Maria brilliantly pretended not to speak or understand Russian, much to the officer's frustrated chagrin. We took some pictures of a dilapidated church in some village, and had delicious Georgian food for lunch in the city of Nikolayev (that's Mikolayiv to you Ukrainians). We listened to NPR podcasts as Maria drove almost blind through the darkness and drizzle, but we made it safely to our halfway stop of Uman. We stayed in a really great, really cheap hotel right next to the city's renowned botanical gardens, but since it was dark, cold, and snowy pretty much our whole time in town, we didn't get to see them. We headed out early the next morning and drove through the picturesque snowy landscape, unfortunately bypassing the bigger towns like Vinnitsya and Khmelnitsky. We did go through the small city of Nemirov, home to one of Ukraine's most famous vodkas (written "Nemiroff"), and to the small village of Medzhibizh that the Lonely Planet recommended so highly. We really wanted to make it to Lviv before it got dark, since it had been such a pain driving in it the night before. Luckily we made good time and got to town with an hour or so of daylight to spare. Maria dropped me off downtown while she went to meet up with some family and drop of her car. I met up with my friend and fellow Fulbrighter Sarah by the Shchevchenko statue and we headed back to her apartment. She has a really nice, big place right in the center. After chatting a bit we met up with Maria again and got some dinner at what was supposedly an Armenian restaurant, then popped into a cafe so Maria could meet up with an old friend (she's got serious roots in Lviv).
The next day was Thanksgiving, and also my day to explore Lviv, as both Sarah and Maria had business to attend to. I spent the day doing what I always do when I get to new cities: wander around and take pictures. Lviv is quite conducive to this, fortunately. It's by all accounts a European city, unlike most places I've visited in the former USSR and certainly unlike Simferopol. The center is tangled with small alleys and side streets lined with colorful neoclassical and baroque buildings. Like I said, it's European. Still, there is that tinge of former-Sovietism giving its own accentuation to everything. It was much colder there than it had been in Crimea, with some snow on the ground and a freezing drizzle hanging over the city, so it wasn't the most comfortable day of wandering. I didn't really have any specific sights I set out to see, just kept going from cathedral to monument to neat facade as I came across them. I found a small book market where a guy was selling records, and bought a small pile of some great Soviet-era rock groups, including my favorite album by Akvarium. I left the records with Sarah along with some money to send them to me, as I didn't want to lug them around for the rest of my trip. That night we had our own improvised Thanksgiving feast that turned out quite well, I must say indeed. Maria and I had made a pumpkin pie at my place just before leaving SImferopol, which we had saved for Thanksgiving. At Sarah's we roasted a chicken (not a bad turkey substitute), and made mashed potatoes, steamed carrots and Brussels sprouts, and of course gravy. We spiced the potatoes up with lots of garlic, onions, and green onions, and they turned out great. The most surprising part of the meal was our faux cranberry sauce, which consisted of apple, pomegranate juice, and blackberry jam stewed together on the stove. It wasn't really our intent to try to replicate the taste of cranberry sauce, just to have something to fill its place, but the concoction actually tasted like something approaching cranberry sauce! We were blown away. Topped off with some good wine, the dinner was a real hit. I only really helped by chopping vegetables, but I was happy to have made at least a small contribution.
The next morning we all had to be out of Sarah's apartment early, since she was meeting up with our fellow Fulbrighter Christi-Anne at the train station for an early-morning train to Krakow, and Maria had to get heading to Krakow as well on unrelated business. I went with them to the train station and dropped my backpack off at the left luggage area, said goodbye, and then spent the rest of the day exploring some more before my evening train to Chernivtsi. It was still dark and cold by the time I got back to the center, so I found a cozy cafe (which Lviv is famous for) and warmed up for a while with an espresso (I think that's what it was. I still don't know anything about coffee). When I emerged it was bright and sunny, and I found a second wind for exploring. I took a walk outside the center a ways to the much-touted Lychakiv Cemetery ("don't even think about leaving town without visiting this," the Lonely Planet guide told me), which was definitely worth going out of the way for. It was huge, with graves piled on top of graves and all kinds of cool fancy headstones. Some of the graves were covered so high in flowers that I couldn't tell whose it was. I spent a good hour and a half just wandering around exploring the cemetery before heading back to the center, where I idly waited out my last few hours in town before heading back to the train station. I ate lunch at the famous Ukrainian cafeteria-style food chain, which was pretty good and made me wish there was something like it in Simferopol.
The train to Chernivtsi from Lviv takes about five hours, getting in at about 11:00 PM, but they use the typical second-class (platzkart) overnight train cars. It's sitting-room only though, and nobody sets up their beds as they would for an overnight trip. Most lower berths had three to four people sitting on it anyway, though the top bunks were generally available to those who wanted to nap. This train was full of young people, and at first I thought they were all on a field trip together or something. On the train, though, they all seemed very quite and subdued, not at all like a bunch of rowdy teens on a trip together, and as many of them began getting off at various stops along with way like Ivano-Frankivsk and Kolomiya, I realized that they were all probably out-of-town students in Lviv heading home for the weekend (this being Friday night). Not many were left by the time we got to Chernivtsi, and once we rolled into the station it was pretty late I was pretty beat, so I had already mapped out my route to the nearest hotel using my trusty Lonely Planet guide. I managed to find the Hotel Magnat, and despite the somewhat steep price, I was impressed with their rooms and just ready to crash. Since it was a little more than I had wanted to pay for a room, I headed out again the next morning for a nearby hostel, but I tracked down the right building and couldn't find anything about it outside anywhere. I rang the bell to what was supposed to be the apartment number, and called both the numbers given in the guidebook, but couldn't get a response from anyone, so I trudged back with all my stuff to the Magnat and settled back in. At least the woman at the counter was very friendly and helpful. I set out to explore Chernivtsi, not really knowing that much about it. I had decided to come check it out since it was along my route back towards Crimea, and I had heard some nice things about it. I must say that I was quite impressed with the city. I first checked out its famous University, which has a a fun and whimsical design. From there I headed to the central square, which was lined on all sides by beautiful, freshly painted Hapsburg-era buildings. The city had just celebrated it's 600th anniversary, like, a month before, so I think the whole place had really been spruced up. The main pedestrian strip was cobble-stoned and flanked by more colorful buildings, and the whole place had a very friendly atmosphere and relaxed pace. For lunch I checked out the Lonely Planet's "Our Pick," a restaurant called Reflection (spelled out in Cyrillic just like that: "Reflekshin"). I've come to really trust those LP picks (that's how I found my favorite restaurant / hookah bar in Tashkent), and Reflection was no exception. It was tastefully decorated, the waiters were very attentive and friendly, the menu had well-translated English, and the food was cheap, delicious, and well-presented. Hah! Listen to me, I'm like a food critic. I had some fantastic chicken alfredo, and continued on towards the bus station very satisfied. I went to the bus station to by tickets for my next two days' trips (which you'll find out about if you keep reading), and afterwards headed back to the center with just enough time to see the crazy "crooked" cathedral before it started getting a bit rainy. Later for dinner I checked out a place near the hotel that was really cheap, but altogether not that tasty. I guess not every restaurant can be Reflection.
Early the next morning I caught a taxi to the bus station. I wanted to take the trolleybus but I was running out of time, so I settled for a taxi. The driver was really chatty and happy to meet an American. I had an early bus to the nearby town of Kamyanets-Podilsky, and it took a couple hours to get there. I walked from the bus station through the new town, passed the morning church service at the central cathedral (it was Sunday, after all) and then over the bridge into the old town. The old town of Kamyanets-Podilsky is built on what is basically a cliff-flanked island surrounded on virtually all sides by a natural bend in the Smotrych River, which acts as a natural moat around the whole thing. The narrow strip of land where the bends of the river almost meat is guarded by a big, making the ancient city brilliantly fortified. It really is quite a dramatic setting. The city itself had been very cosmopolitan, with Polish, Greek, Armenian, and Jewish communities, which each had their own little district inside the old city. There really isn't a whole lot to the old city, but one thing I thought was really cool was a Catholic church which, after the cities had been conquered by Ottomans, had been turned into a Mosque and had a minaret added, but once the Poles retook the city they put a statue of the Virgin Mary on top of the minaret and incorporated it back into the church. There was also a statue of Pope John Paul II outside the church. On the way towards the fortress I ran into a big group of soldiers, who are apparently stationed nearby and spend the weekends hanging around the old town. As I was admiring the view of the fortress, they were all called to order and then marched towards the fortress, where I later ran into them again all just hanging out and exploring before they were all marched out again. I'm not really sure what the point of all their marching around was, but it sounded cool anyways. The fortress is great because almost no part of it is off limits; you're free to climb all over stuff and really check it out. There are several towers with multiple levels, and secret hidden hallways linking them. There's a pit where apparently, back in the day, they used to keep people who were behind on their debt until they could pay it off. I didn't really get how they were supposed to be able to pay off their debt while they're stuck in a pit, but I think the idea was that people would pity them and throw money down to them. They put a dummy at the bottom and it kind of creeped me out. I had lunch at a place in the old town called )New York Street Pizza," where I had disappointing lasagna. I then slowly ambled my way back to the new town and eventually back to the bus station to wait for my bus back to Chernivtsi. After hanging around for a while and having some annoying run-ins with Romany beggars, I was on my way back to Chernivtsi on an uncomfortably cramped bus, but satisfied with my day trip. I returned to Reflection for dinner, which was again a great experience. I swear, this restaurant could be big even in a town in the US. In the corner there was an older American man talking economics to a woman who I assumed was his translator / assistant for whatever business he had there, but I preferred not to let my own Americanness be known. I hit up an internet club and then settled in back in my hotel room for my last night in Chernivtsi.
I used the internet again the next morning, ate a few blini for breakfast, and did a little more walking around before collecting my things and heading once again back to the bus station for my bus out of town for good. The destination: Chisinau (that's Moldova, in case you were wondering). My ticket was for noon, but the noon bus to Chisinau didn't seem to actually exist. at about 12:15 I went up to the counter to see what was up, and they simply changed my ticket to the 2:15 bus to Chisinau, which I had already seen waiting out in the lot. Go figure. The bus was largely empty, and got emptier as we rode along and people started hoping off. The border crossing was a cinch; I didn't even get up out of my seat, and the Ukrainian border guards just handed all of our passports off to the Moldovan guys for our entry stamps, so we really only had to make one stop along the border. We made a quick pit stop just over the border, where I used what may have been the worst outhouse I've ever seen, then went barreling through the darkness towards Chisinau. We stopped briefly in Moldova's second largest city, Balti (pronounced "Balts" cause there's supposed to be a tail below the "t" that makes it a "ts" and you're not supposed to pronounce "i" at the end of words in Moldovan / Romanian [they're basically the same language {why not add a third set of parenthesis?}]). I only had enough time in Balti to learn that the exchange counter was closed. We got into Chisinau around 8:00, and I got a cab from the bus station to take me first to an exchange booth to finally get some local currency (the Moldovan Lei), then to the apartment of a Fulbrighter named Sean, from Nebraska. Sean was a Fulbrighter from the year before me, but had been one of the critical language people and was thus still in country wrapping up his grant period (he left for home a few days after my visit). I had been put in touch with him by another Moldovan Fulbrighter named Mike, who I had met in DC and again along with his brother in Sevastopol a week or so earlier, but since he spends most of his time in Transnistria, I stayed with Sean instead. I'm glad I did, because Sean was a really cool, really smart guy, and we had lots of interesting things to talk about. He's a big economics nerd (I tend to meet a lot of those these days), and it was kind of fascinating to hear about how he approaches nearly everything in life from an economic perspective. Another thing that I thought was cool was that he had basically been teaching himself to cook the whole time he was in Moldova by going through and trying every recipe from the book "Cooking for Dummies." I think I'll have to do something like that. He had a nice apartment, too, and I was very comfortable staying there for a few days.
I explored Chisinau the next day, and quickly found that there isn't a whole lot to it. There's one main street (Stefan cel Mare), and then a lot of medium-sized streets going off of it. I watched a big hoard of pigeons outside of the central cathedral, then wandered down the main drag to the edge of the center. I bought a sim card from the local state-runned telecommunications company, Moldcell. It's kind of unfortunate that their country's name starts with "mold," but they sure aren't shy about putting it at the beginning of everything. Moldova has the world's only freely-elected Communist government, by the way, which really doesn't mean much except for the fact that some of the big companies are state owned, like Moldcell. I moseyed around taking pictures, and wandered up "August 31 1989 Street ," where, in a little square outside of a church, I was approached by a TV reporter and cameraman. I told them that I was a foreigner and that they probably didn't want to ask me about anything, but they got really excited to have an American, and the reporter spoke English, so we commenced with the interview. I'll try to recreate it as best as I can remember:

Reporter: Is there anything you want to say to anybody?
Austin: To people here, or to people back home?
R: Anybody, it's going to be on TV.
A: Well, hello from America. I am enjoying my time in Moldova and Chisinau. You have a very nice country.
R: Yeah. What would you do if you were the President of the United States?
A: Uh, well, first I would end the war in Iraq, and then start rebuilding our relations with countries around the world, and this is what I hope Barack Obama will soon do once he becomes President.
R: Uh huh. Do you know who Walt Disney is?
A: Yeah... He was the creator of Disney, of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and all those characters.
R: Who is you're favorite?
A: My favorite Disney character?
R: Yeah.
A: Uh... (long pause) I guess Goofy is funny.
R: Hahaha. Who else?
A: Um, I don't know, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, they're all great, I don't know.
R: Ok, thank you very much!

They never asked for my name or anything, so I assumed it was just going to be part of some montage of people on the street. I really wish I could have seen it. I met up with Sean a bit later and we went for dinner at a delicious Greek restaurant that he frequents.
The next day was an exciting adventure that I'm just now realizing maybe I shouldn't be writing about here, but I don't think it should be any big deal. So, one of the main reasons I wanted to go to Moldova was to visit Transnistria, one of the "de facto independent" states or "breakaway regions" that I wrote my honors thesis about. It forms the narrow eastern edge of Moldova, and, as I found out, it pretty easy to get to. I was supposed to go with Mike's brother Andrew, who was still visiting from the states, but he decided not to go at the last minute and I made the journey alone. From the central bus station there are several marshrutkas daily heading to the Transnistrian capital Tiraspol, and I hopped on one for a few bucks and we were on our way. It was a foggy day, so I couldn't see much from the window, but we soon reached the "border" and the Transnistrian check point. I had heard of foreigners being ripped of or jerked around at this border, so I was a bit nervous, but it went really smoothly for me. For Moldovans and Transnistrians they just take a look at your passport, but all foreigners need their passport scanned and then need to fill out an immigration card in another room. I filled out the form pretty quick and handed it to the agent. I had been told that if I'm just going for the day I don't need to register in Tiraspol, and he said to be sure I was out by 9:00 in order to avoid any hassle with not registering. I was in and out of there pretty quick, even quicker than the couple of Ukrainians from our marshrutka. I think the trick is to just be confident in what you're doing, speak Russian, and act like you've got nothing to worry about, cause you really don't. It's only when foreigners start acting nervous and confused that the guards start taking advantage of them. So, I was in, and after a few more minutes I was at the bus station in Tiraspol, where Mike and his Transnistrian girlfriend Tanya soon arrived to meet me. We took a trolleybus to the center and strolled the streets for a while. Tiraspol is pretty small and with not a lot going on, except for the interesting signs of their de facto independence and separatist spirit. Some of my favorite sites included: The bank where they mint the Transnistrian Ruble (yes, they have their own currency [the local cognac distillery graces the five ruble bill]), the big billboards showing the Presidents of Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia meeting, the Abkhaz / South Ossetian "consulate" (the three mutually recognize each other's independence), signs for the popular pro-Russian "Proryv" movement, and the big picture of Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow mayor / supporter of pro-Russian breakaway regions / provoker of Russian fervor in Crimea / general nationalist asshole. We walked along the Dniester River a bit (from which the territory receives its name), had lunch in a dark but fairly nice cafe, and sang some Russian songs we knew while looking at the statue of General Suvorov. We caught a marshrutka to Transnistria's second city, Bendery, which is only a few miles away. It was fairly pleasant as well, with a nice church and some nice old buildings. There was a big government building that still had bullet holes in it from the war in the early 90's. Bendery was actually where most of the violence occurred in that war, and though we tried to visit the museum of the "tragedy of Bendery," a man who looked like a satanist informed us that it was closed. Right in downtown Bendery there is a really slick cafe / night club that amazingly had wifi, though without my laptop it didn't do me any good. It's such a novelty there that they even had little leaflets explaining what wifi is. I feel like those who don't know what it is aren't really going to be able to benefit from it, though. At the supermarket I bought a small bottle of 6-year old cognac from the local Kvint Cognac distillery, then Mike and Tanya walked me to the Bendery bus station where I was able to catch a direct marshrutka back to Chisinau. They had to scan my passport again on the way out, and there was Moldovan security on the other side who took my passport inside for a few minutes, but other than that it was quite smooth leaving as well.
Back in Chisinau I ducked into a restaurant for dinner cause I saw on their sign outside that they had khachapury and khinkali (Georgian food), so I stuffed myself full of the stuff and then met up with Sean, who himself had just met up with some local girl he had met through couchsurfing. We went to a bar where the bar itself was a bus, and this girl kept complaining about how smokey it was. She was really quiet and we couldn't hear her over the noise of the bar, and she didn't seem to really understand anything we were saying or think any of our many jokes were funny, even though she spoke English pretty well. I guess joking about how we should get into a fight with the big group of guys at the next table requires a certain sense of humor to appreciate, and while Sean and I certainly could, it just didn't click with what's her name. It was super awkward, and so we parted ways with her after the bar and headed back to Sean's apartment. Sean made brownies and explained supply and demand while we got drunk on cognac. He told me stories about the economics class he teaches at a local university, and how the students either don't ever show up, don't really understand English when they are supposed to, or just outright cheat and plagiarize. For her oral exam, one student of his actually read back to him an essay he had written and given them earlier in the term, as if he wouldn't realize she was reading his own words.
There is an autonomous area in southern Moldova called Gagauzia, where the Gagauz people live of course, and although I knew it would be a pretty big waste of time going there, I felt like I had to just to say that I had been there and seen it. So, my last full day in Moldova I found my way out the the edge of Chisinau where the bus station is for buses headed south, and caught the bus to the Gagauz capital, Comrat. The Gagauz are decedents of the Turks, and speak a Turkic language very similar to Turkish, but they're a Christian people. They have autonomy over an area of non-contiguous land in southern Moldova, though Comrat is really the only city of any size (that size being about 30,000). Upon seeing the town once I stepped of the bus, my suspicion that it was going to be a waste of time was confirmed, but I set off anyways to see what, if anything, Comrat had to offer. The streets were dirty and he buildings where dilapidated, and I felt more like an outsider than in any other place I've been in in a while. I felt like everybody was looking at me, and it made me uncomfortable. There was a fire truck that looked like it had come from the US, and they were using its ladder to set up lights on a building. There was a decent-looking church, but it was closed and they wouldn't let me in. I took some pictures of some government guildings with the Gaguz flag, and walked up and down the main street. I found the local university, which the Lonely Planet guide was sure to point out is the "world's only Gagauz university," which is like saying it's the world's only university located in this specific town. I took a picture of a disgusting outhouse and a bunch of taxi drivers standing around nearby dropped all conversation and just stared at me. There were a lot of donkey-drawn carts around. After about an hour and a half of underwhelming exploration, I decided it was time to head back to the station and back to Chisinau. They have Mountain Dew in Moldova, which I found somewhat novel so I had a bottle at the station (a glass bottle [doubly novel]) before rolling out. Unless you're a geography nerd like me, there's absolutely no reason to visit Comrat or Gagauzia, so just in case you were considering it, please reconsider.
On the bus back I got a call from Andrew, who was meeting up with some local girls for dinner and wanted me to come along. I invited Sean along too, and though he sounded interested at first, he never ended up meeting us. I met up with them outside of the McDonalds, and then we headed to a Romanian restaurant for dinner. Mike and Andrew had met some woman when they were in Yalta, who had a niece in Chisinau named Nadya, who they had met up with a few nights before and now Andrew was meeting up with her again while Mike was in Tiraspol. Nadya brought along a friend of hers, and both of them spoke pretty good English. Dinner was pretty good, and I'm glad I got to try the traditional Romanian / Moldovan dish known as Mamaliga, which is like mashed corn meal. Mike's Romanian roommate showed up at one point but only stayed for about five minutes before leaving to go place Soccer (Europeans, go figure). Nadya's friend also left after a while to pick up her five-year-old son from school, and so Andrew, Nadya, and I were left. It was all kind of weird. Nadya was very secretive about herself. When I asked her what she does she said she's starting a business, but she couldn't tell me what it was. She had Dollars and Euros in her wallet that she would show us, but when I asked why she had them and carried them around she couldn't tell me that either. She kept saying that she was tired because she had a really busy day, but of course she couldn't tell us what she was doing. It was all very suspicious to me. She kept talking about how Andrew thinks too much, and that it's not healthy to do that. She said she used to think a lot but now she doesn't. Apparently a few days before Andrew had mentioned that he "over-thinks things" or something like that, and she just really latched onto this idea and made a big deal out of it. It was pretty obvious that she was trying to get Andrew to come home with her too, either because she genuinely liked him or she was trying to take advantage somehow (cause she just seemed so shady), and she invited us to some bar/restaurant near her apartment where we ordered a hookah and chilled out for a bit. Afterwards she made us walk her back to her apartment, about which she had already been really ambiguous, saying she had her own place outside of the center, but that her parents lived in the center and she stayed there sometimes, but it was all very hard to follow. She didn't push for Andrew to come up once we got to her building though. I don't know, the whole evening was pretty weird to me.
So, the next morning was my last one in Moldova, so Sean and I went for lunch at the local fast food chain "Andy's Pizza" before I left for the station to find a bus to Odessa. My taxi driver was a friendly guy who had been in the army in Turkenbashi, Turkmenistan (back when it was called Krasnovodsk), and was interested in hearing what it was like now once he heard that I have been there. I caught my bus to Odessa, and sat next to a friendly guy a little younger than me who was heading to Odessa to visit his girlfriend. There was a really annoying drunk guy sitting across the aisle from me, who kept propping himself up with the back of my seat and then dragging his hand across my back whenever he pulled it towards himself. Otherwise the ride was uneventful, and the border crossing was a breeze again. I rolled into town and called up my next Fulbright host, Christi-Anne, and we arranged to meet in the center right by her apartment. She showed up with her friend Boris, who apparently was really protective of Christi-Anne and suspicious of me upon first meeting me. He took off, then I dropped my stuff off in Christie-Anne's tiny apartment and we headed out for some pizza down the street. Back in her apartment, she was kind enough to offer me her bed while she slept on a pad on the floor. I felt pretty uncomfortable about it, but she insisted. Her apartment is really just a single room with a nice couch that folds out in a really fancy way into a bed.
Next morning we met up with Christi-Anne's Russian tutor and her friend to check out a flea market. This place was great. It was like a huge garage sale spread out over several blocks, with people selling all kind of crazy old junk. These are my favorite kinds of markets. Of course I was on the prowl for records, and tough I found a lot, there was nothing that really interested me. I did buy a few tapes and CDs though, including an MP3 CD of Spark's later albums and a real, legitimate copy of their latest album, "Exoctic Creatures of the Deep." What a place to find it. I talked about Sparks briefly with the vendor, and realized it was my first time talking music like that in Russian. I mainly just took a lot of pictures of people's junk. There were some cool musical instruments including accordions (sorry, Cielle), and even some old gramophones with the big bell-speaker. I even found some Twin Peaks books in Russian, and almost bought them, but realized that I'll never really read them and that they would just be a waste of space. It was quite exciting to find, though. Another cool think was a huge painting of Stalin that was just the canvas, without a frame, draped over a car hood and for sale. After the market, Christi-Anne had some stuff to do, so I set out exploring on my own. I first headed down the main pedestrian drag, Deribasavskaya, past the opera house and down to Primorskaya Boulevard, right to the top of the famous Potemkin Steps. This is where the super famous scene from Eisenstein's film "The Battleship Potemkin" was filmed. You know, where the baby carriage rolls down the steps. I was really excited about finally seeing these steps, but they were a bit disappointing. The main disappointment is that they end not on a rand promenade or anything, but rather on a fairly busy street across from a car dealership. Beyond that, though, is the main port of Odessa, so I descended the steps and found my way through the weird building and up onto the big dock jutting out into the harbor. There's a seaport here, along with a big shiny new hotel. The dock was line with bit cruise and shipping vessels, and at the end there were a lot of private yachts from places as far away as the Comoros islands (look it up). I sat and looked out at the sea and the port for a while, then headed back down the dock, up the steps and back into town. Next stop was the "Mother-in-Law" footbridge, where it's a nuptial tradition to attach a padlock with your names written on it to the railings, and there are thousands of them lining the whole thing. Apparently, they have to remove them about once a year because they start to weigh down the bridge and it gets to be dangerous. I then wandered every which way around the central part of the city, finally ending up at the train station where I hoped to by a ticket back to Simferopol. Turns out all the lower spots were already taken in both platzkart and kupe for the next day's train, and I really can't fit myself into the upper bunks, so I decided to catch a cab back to the bus station to buy a bus ticket home instead. This was Saturday, and I bought a ticket home for Monday morning, giving me one more day to explore Odessa. I met up with Christi-Anne back at her apartment, and we then went for a walk to check out Odessa by night. Back on Primorskaya, the trees were all strung with christmas lights and it looked amazing. After a little nighttime sight seeing, we checked out another one of Lonely Planet's "our picks," a great Turkish restaurant called Turkuaz. Christi-Anne had never tried Turkish food, but I think she liked it. We split a cheese pide, which tasted just like khachapuri, and I had the iskander kebab while she had the beity kebab. Good stuff!
While the weather had been very nice my first day in Odessa, the next day it was really cold, grey, and rainy. Still, I headed out to see some more of the town. I found a book / dvd market near the apartment, and bought an official Ukrainian copy of "The Goonies" just for the hell of it. I say under an awning for a while to wait out the rain before checking out the Privoz Market, supposedly the largest outdoor farmer's market in the former USSR. It was pretty gross and muddy in the rain, but I enjoyed walking through the fish section and seeing all the disgusting looking fish chunks everywhere. I stopped by "Mister Sendvich" for a snack and to get out of the rain, then continued back towards the center to meet up with Christi-Anne for a proper lunch. We checked out an Irish Pub that seemed to do a fairly good job recreating the experience. I had some chicken fingers and a smoothie, which seemed like a strange thing to order in a pub like that, especially since for some reason there were some rough and tumble Brits at the next table who really seemed like they'd fit in at a real place like this in the UK. It was a late lunch and it was already getting dark by the time we finished up, so we swung by a grocery store to pick up some stuff for the dinner party that Christi-Anne was having at her place in a few hours. She was going to make spaghetti, so again I did what I could by chopping vegetables and helping prepare the table, etc. The guests included Lena, a translator that Christi-Anne had worked with and who spoke impeccable English, her two friends Yulia and Yulia, and Christi-Anne's friends Boris and Vlad. Everyone was very nice and spoke decent English, which they always do with Christi-Anne because she's a beginner at Russian, but I would slip back and forth between English and Russian with them all night. Dinner turned out really well, then we spent the rest of the night playing Uno, which Boris and Vlad had recently been introduced to and were totally obsessed with. The girls all seemed to like it too, and we played several rounds. When it came my turn to deal, all the guests were amazed at my ability to shuffle the deck using the traditional American method, and it made Vlad very nervous to me bend the cards of his prized and difficult-to-obtain deck. They were all impressed with my knowledge of Soviet and Russian music and pop culture, and Vlad was particularly happy that I had some music on my ipod by his favorite band, Aria (Russian metal / rock). They were all rock fans, and we even drank a toast to the "destruction of rap." Boris plays guitar, and was happy to learn that I was a fellow musician and music guy. He later told Christi-Anne that he thought I was a good guy and that he was no longer suspicious of me. All of them were pretty cool, and I wished that I could have had more time in Odessa to get to know them. I was a bit drunk by the time they left and we hit the hay, but I had to be up early to catch my bus the next morning.
The bus ride home was pretty uneventful, though I did enjoy stopping in some of the towns along the way. The bus was rather empty, and I had plenty of space to myself. We stopped in Nikolayev, Kherson, Nova Kakhovka, Armyansk, Krasnoperekopsk, and some other villages I don't remember the names of. We would usually wait for up to a half hour in most of the towns, giving me a bit of time to walk around the station, grab a snack, whatever. The bus went to the central bus station in Simferopol, which meant I had just a short walk back to my apartment, and my excitin two-week journey had finally come to an end!
I've moved into this new apartment, which I don't think I've talked about here yet. I like it a lot, and now that I got the internet set up here it's got almost everything I need (the one exception being a washing machine, but I may be taking care of that soon). This past week since I've been back has been fun, and once again I have met some new friends, but once again it happens to be right before they leave. In fact, they're already gone. I'll save this last week for the next post, because this one is already ridiculous. I hope everyone is doing well and getting ready for Christmas, New Years, etc. Christmas here will likely be very boring and sad, but New Years may make up for it. I'll let you know more when I know more. By now.

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Yes, I'm back from my trip and with stories to tell, but my new apartment isn't set up for internet yet and I haven't found the time yet to sit and write about everything. Something is forthcoming though, I promise. Stay tuned.