2011

Turkey  Tunisia  Algeria  Iran  Transnistria

This was the ‘spare day’ that I had up my sleeve in case I encountered problems arranging my visit to Transnistria within the tight time constraints I had allowed.  As it happened, I was able to complete my Transnistrian visit yesterday, which left today for a fairly relaxing exploration of Odessa, Ukraine’s (and the former Soviet Union’s) main shipping port on the Black Sea.  Fortunately, the superb weather continued and I was able to walk around Odessa’s shady tree-lined streets under clear, blue sunny skies with temperatures in the high twenties.

Unlike many ports, Odessa is a very pretty city.  The pastel neo-classical buildings are not far behind those of Kiev and L’viv in terms of beauty, and there is a relaxed vibrancy in the city that is more reminiscent of a Dutch seaside resort than a major city of the former Soviet Union.  Maybe it is the casually dressed residents (scantily dressed in Iranian terms) strolling under the trees in the green shady parklands, or maybe it is the plethora of brightly coloured sellers of kitsch souvenirs - whatever the reason, Odessa strikes me as a very relaxed city that does not take itself too seriously.

I was lucky to stumble on my hotel, the Londonskaya, which I booked in spite of some rotten reviews on TripAdvisor when my first, second and third choices of hotel were all full.  The Londonskaya was established in 1827, and it is located on Primorskiy (or Prymors’ka) Boulevard, which I found out after arriving here is the magnet that attracts every visitor to Odessa as it features the dual attractions of the Pushkin Monument and the Potemkin Steps (more about them later).  The building itself (shown in the lead photo of today’s diary) is a landmark of Odessa, and the interior has ceilings which can only be described as ‘very high indeed’.  During the Czarist and Soviet eras, many well known people stayed here, and the third floor has a gallery featuring photos of many of them, plus a display case that I can only assume contains items of lost property left behind by some of these famous guests.  It has been quite an experience staying here - good breakfasts too, by the way.

I began my explorations on foot this morning by heading north-west from the hotel to the Potemkin Steps.  These fairly unremarkable looking steps extend from Primorskiy Boulevard down the slope to the port area.  They are very famous, however, because they featured prominently in one of the most influential films of all time, Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film “Battleship Potemkin” (1925).  This black-and-white classic film’s most renowned sequence showed a massacre of innocent civilians on the Potemkin Steps, during which a baby in a pram is accidentally pushed off the top and bounces in agonisingly slow motion down the 192 stairs.

Interestingly, the stairs themselves look better from the bottom than from the top (despite the superb views from the top), because of a a deliberate optical illusion - the stairs seem higher than they are when viewed from the bottom because of a gradual narrowing from the bottom (where they are 21 metres wide) to the top (13 metres wide).

This morning, there were lots of opportunities for visitors to have their photos taken by professional photographers on the Potemkin Steps, usually including a live animal such as a monkey, snake, alligator (a small one) or squirrel (a very large one), but no photographer was offering what seemed to me to be the most obvious visual prop - a pram containing a baby.

Having descended the steps, I walked along the road lining the port area before completing a circuit, going uphill to Odessa’s beautiful Opera and Ballet Theatre - perhaps the city’s premium architectural gem - and back on to the eastern end of Primorskiy Boulevard where Odessa’s most photographed monument is found.  This is the statue to the great novelist Alexander Pushkin.  Under the plaque that reads simply ‘Pushkin – Citizen of Odessa’, there were several stone bowls filled with water from a flowing fountain, and as is therefore inevitable, lots of happy children splashing water over themselves and their parents.

A walk to the north-western end of Primorskiy Boulevard brought me to a metal footbridge known as “Tyoshchyn Most”, which means ‘Mother-in-Law’s Bridge’. Erected in a fairly plain style, it was built in the 1950s for a communist official who wanted to facilitate visits from his wife’s mother or, in the story’s more popular version, wanted to leave her no excuse to stay overnight.  The bridge provided superb views over the main part of Odessa’s port, and even more interestingly, had rows of thousands of locks attached to the rusting railing with the painted names of young lovers on them.

The bridge brought me to a small street that is regarded as Odessa’s architectural gem, Gogolya Street.  Unlike most cities in Ukraine, Odessa was not heavily damaged during World War II, and therefore many of its old buildings survived intact.  Unfortunately, lack of maintenance during much of the Soviet era has taken its toll on many of these beautiful old buildings, but they still make a wonderful sight.

Walking south on Gogolya Street brought me to Derybasivska Street, which is Odessa’s main commercial street, lined with shops and restaurants.  Among the highlights there were the recently reconstructed City Garden (Gorodskoy Sad), and at the western end, the huge Preobrazhensky Cathedral (Transfiguration Cathedral), which was Odessa’s most famous and important church until Stalin had it blown up in the 1930s.  Fortunately it has since been rebuilt.

The nearby streets gave me a chance to buy a postcard, which was fortunate because Odessa’s main post office was nearby.  I would have liked to send some postcards yesterday from Transnistria, but sadly I found neither postcards nor a post office there.  Postcards from Odessa will just have to suffice :-)

And thus the epic trip is almost at an end.  Tomorrow morning I leave for Odessa Airport to begin the long journey home to Hong Kong.

Day 29 - Odessa, Ukraine

Monday

11 July 2011

Today’s Bonus Images