Day 2 in Odessa, Wednesday

Day 2, Wednesday:

Ok, before I launch into day 2, the end of day 1 was absolutely hilarious. Dad and I get into our beds (finally, beds!) at around 10 pm, and almost instantly, fireworks go off. We get up and look out the window (after my heart started beating again) and saw they were in the square right outside our balcony and positively filling the place with smoke and ash. If you know about my love-hate relationship with fireworks, and the Rachel-gets-blinded incident of Trumbull Day 2004, then you know I was really freaked out, but we braved the balcony to try to get pictures (which we pretty much failed to do but it was funny).

By 4 am, both Dad and I were so overtired/wide awake we started chatting through the walls and pacing the hall and finally I suggested we make tea in the kitchen bc we both were going nuts. We get into the kitchen (contacts out, glasses in NY) and I realize – where the hell is the stove? When we went to the grocery store the day before, we didn’t get a lot fo things for fear of not having proper pans. We came home, checked for pans…and felt satisfied. Just like Dad and I to not even notice we cant find the stove. Then, at 4 am, to realize we’re missing it.

Dad finds the electric kettle, is baffled, and I walk him through using that (thank you, Piper Center, for teaching me the art of the electric kettle). So we’re sitting at the kitchen table sipping our tea and I wonder, what’s that thing on top of the washing machine? And then, holy crap, that’s not a washing machine (though we have one, in the bathroom) but a stove/oven with a weird cover thing on it. We laughed so hard, though that may have mostly been from sleep deprivation. The best part: we can’t get it to light. We messed with it for a while, tea cups going cold, dawn slowly rising over the balcony, but between the lighter and the smell of gas and the fact that we both were delirious, we decided to give up for now. Nothing to cook anyhow.

We “went back to bed” (sort of) till 7, then got up, wandered around, looked for breakfast, realized the restaurants are all closed until 9 am here. Went in a new direction, saw the Opera House, Pushkin’s statue, the Potemkin steps, Bubba’s old neighborhood, Boris’s old apartment, and a lot of techno music blaring in still-unopened cafes, and my first look at the Black Sea (!! Dad so calm through all of this) all before 9 am.

A lot of wild dogs (perfectly harmless, or so they seem, just uninterested in humans) roam the opera grounds. Kind of a beautiful juxtaposition. Sat, used the computer at a café while we had giant eggs and tiny coffees. Came back for a little while before meeting with Sasha, Dad’s high school friend.

…Who picked us up in the biggest car we have yet seen in Odessa (SUV) and had a driver, no less, and took us back to his office. Here I encountered my first true experience of (not my own, that happened years ago) but my father’s open embarrassment that I am not bilingual. “Only English” with an apologetic shrug of the shoulders; hard for me to see. Sasha’s assistant, bringing us coffee, said in English, “In my opinion, that is not very good, to not know Russian.” Sasha’s children, and even his grandchild, speak Russian fluently. (And it is Russian, by the way, and not Ukrainian, that nearly everyone is speaking here.)

We three walked to the park, Shevchenko Park, which was incidentally on my father’s list of things to visit) and saw where they used to play when they were little. There were ruins of a building that used to house artillery, or more accurately, point it at incoming ships in case foreigners thought of misbehaving, and Dad said he actually used to crawl into them.

The park was sort of in a sad state, lots of weeds and stuff, which made Dad a little sad. The port had grown and there were many more ships and cargo and things of that nature where there used to be beach, swimming. Further down, much further, there was still swimming, or so we think, because a lot of people were walking in bathing suits and even had floats.

We saw the memorial for lost sailors and fallen sailors of WWII, and Sasha told me the story of when he and Dad were climbing on roofs, for kicks, and were going into an attic (then this was revised, they admitted to be causing trouble and were being chased and were fleeing into an arbitrary attic) Dad’s behind (ahem, bum, ass, etc.) literally got caught in a window frame and he was stuck. I have never felt like more of my father’s daughter!!! And to think we had been blaming my clumsiness all on Mom! Sasha pushed him through the window and the frame went with him, that’s the only way he "came detached."

Had a long, very long lunch which drained my energy and ended in more consumption of coffee, before returning to the apartment and (much to our dismay) falling asleep. Dad claims he tried to wake me after not long, but I don’t remember this at all. I apparently made a great case for sleeping more but I was totally sleep-talking. Now we’re going to dinner with Sasha and his wife, who Dad also knows. This is a lot of listening-to-Russian for me.

It is so so painful to not be able to read Cyrillic. I can’t understand much Hebrew, but I can read it, phonetically, from the Hebrew letters, and I really want to learn this alphabet. The worst is menus. Almost everything else is discernable.

Dad just whipped out a deck of George W. Bush playing cards. He said “someone thought he was republican and sent them to him, they say ‘re-elect Bush’” and he brought them as a souvenir for…anyone!

And, little known fact, Russians wear wedding rings on their right hands. When divorced, instead of removing, they move to the left hand, at least when they want to advertise.

Words of the Day:

dog: Sabaka (I think Chewbacca and go from there)
breakfast: zaftruck
good day: dobry den (same as Czech)
water: vada
coffee: coffee (hurray!)
check: schote (ss-chote, but all one syllable, very hard for me to say)
lada: really old school Russian fiat, basically. 70’s.
table: stole
chair: stool (easy!)
stool: tabulietka
car: machina
store: magazine