Day 9

Wednesday, Day 9

The dubbed Russian movie of the day is Mission Impossible. The voice over is so bad we can’t stop laughing. Dad’s quoting it in English.

We woke up and checked on baby and momma bird, and then went for breakfast at our new favorite spot. Yesterday, they heard me speaking English (probably to myself, at the computer) and we were charged about 30 bucks for breakfast. Today, I kept my mouth shut around the waitress, and our total was 10 bucks for the same big beautiful meal. Funny.

We heard American tourists from a cruise ship in town four about 5 hours before they left the port, and they were so confused and oblivious they annoyed us until we were finished. We ran a couple errands, wasted some time before going back to the apartment to call Valia, who had offered to drive us to the beach. I bought a new matrioshka keychain to replace my broken Praha one, at a street fair, and we contemplated buying paintings of Odessa scenes, but haven’t yet.

After a quick supermarket run (I love the market here, city underground markets like what I knew in DC) we called Valia and eventually got in her car. Her grandson was in there! He’s around 19 or so, and apparently speaks very good English, but either was embarrassed to speak English in front of an American, or I am super intimidating. He got out after a quick few blocks, and I was super excited to be on our way. After so much walking yesterday, I was super excited to sit and swim and read.

But Valia had something else in mind. She desperately wanted to get us into this private thingy, and Dad didn’t really know what she was talking about and humored her and said sure whatever, and we ended up at some five star hotel near the beach, meeting the owner of the place (there is a picture of me in front of it, at their insistence). There are only two 5 star hotels in Odessa, and this one was insane, I can’t even explain it.

Spas and saunas and a pool (with displayed pH balance, etc.) which was all fine and good and impressive, but what the hell were we doing there? Plus the staff, at the sight of the hotel’s owner (and man was she decked out in designer) were visibly startled, snapping into high alert, and wondering who these two bedraggled people with her were. After opening a lot of doors and a lot of bragging and explaining in Russian, we finally left. Home free.

Or so I thought. Valia wanted us to be at the beach’s club house, rather than on the sand, as she does not like the sea or the crowds much herself. In retrospect, and even then, I know this is really thoughtful and sweet, and only her way of being very nice, but at this point I was ready to jump out of the moving car and head for the water. Dad handled all of this very well, and later her told me that we got away only because he blamed it all on me, I was very tired, I just wanted to sit by the sea, etc. The thought of sitting by a pool just a few meters from a beautiful beach is insane to me. Plus, if I see another chlorinated pool after this summer in Arizona I will freak out.

So the beach, of course, was wonderful. The water was so clear, and the drop was so very gradual, you could walk for a long time before not being able to stand above water. There was the same sea wall as at the first beach we went to (this goes all around the water in Odessa) and this time I actually had the guts (and the energy) to swim all the way to it. When I got there it was covered in seaweed (the top is underwater, by about a foot) mussels, fish, etc, which was cool but creeped me out and I swam back after a brief rest.

Surprising how many people go to the beach alone here. It’s very normal, for the very young and old alike. I really enjoy that. Dad saw people putting their beer in the wet sand where the water just barely reaches, and suddenly he remembered doing that, to keep the beer cold, because the water was so much colder than the air.

(Almost no one drinks water. It’s a little weird, or I am maladjusted, coming from Arizona. Beer is essentially like soda, they walk down the street drinking it and will have it for breakfast, too. The elixir of life.) I lent Dad a book (can you believe he didn’t bring one? I have 5!) I even got him to sit down for a while and read it.

Valia had wanted to send a car for us around 2, but by the time we finally got to the water it was almost 1 and I flat out refused. I was completely willing to walk back to the apartment (wherever the hell it was) if it meant getting more than an hour of beach time). In the end, we did have to walk far, but eventually got to a bus stop. Dad knew exactly where it was, and it came so regularly, public transit is so reliable I can forgive the lack of AC.

The one stereotype about Russians that I would perpetuate is their quick temper. In one of the two seater benches behind us, a man and a woman, two strangers, were side by side, and apparently his hand went where it didn’t belong(?). She, unafraid, totally gave him a verbal thrashing, and he was so angry I really thought some one was going to punch him or that he was going to hit someone else. But other passengers were laughing; this was quasi normal. And though he ranted, loudly, for a long time, he didn’t even change his seat.

Dad asked the man in front of us where to get off the bus, which stop, and it turned out he was going to the square right by where we live. He offered that he is an avid chess player, and was going to meet other chess related friends to play. Very open and friendly and kind. Some little old lady got on the bus before letting anyone exit, blocking the door and almost making people miss the stop, and she got a big loud lecture too.

After a great shower, we went to dinner with Sasha and other Valia, his wife, and they took us essentially back to the same beach, with a restaurant so close to the water, we had to take a special shuttle to get to it. It was a very nice classic Ukrainian fare restaurant, and I ate Ukrainian dumplings (yum!) and more ice cream (is it sad that I’ve been eating ice cream here twice a day on a regular basis? They’re going to have to roll me onto the plane) and a berry juice we could not identify in English, and lots of other delicious things.

I befriended an orange cat (under the table) with one eye, which is good luck. The orange part, not the eyeless part. Also funny, they made me ask the waitress for the check. I find s-chut, as one syllable, very hard to say, and I am embarrassed to mess it up, but Sasha said we would stay at the restaurant until I asked for the check. Finally I did, and I remembered to add “please,” so I’m very proud of myself.

On the way to the restaurant, in the car, Sasha joked about how “special agent Malis” is on a top secret mission from the CIA or FBI to discover Ukrainian secrets. After our fears of secret police here in Ukraine, this is absolutely hilarious.

I forgot to mention earlier that there is a well known location of some KGB-like organization here, and they are actually located on a street that translates to “Jewish Street”! They, unhappy about this, use the adjacent street as their actual address. The President of Ukraine, Jewish, is changing the name of that adjacent street to be something as equally offensive to the organization!

I cannot explain to you how wonderful it is to be in a city without chains, like Starbucks and the Gap and CVS, stuff like that. Even in Paris and London, full of their own charm, these things sort of bothered me, seemed unauthentic. This city is much more like Oxford in that way, but even Oxford had its chains, American included. Of course you can get away from them in the country, flagstaff, etc, but it’s so much nicer to get to enjoy all the pleasures of a city without that commercial, global stuff. This is definitely one of my favorite parts. That, and the fact that all these Russia smells remind me a lot of my grandmother. There’s a smell just outside the elevator for this apartment building, and I swear, it’s just like her old apartment used to smell, no joke.

PS they call George Bush, Georgia Busha, which I find really funny and not at all inappropriate. This also happens to mean “the Georgian from the Bush” which is how I may or may not think of him from now on.

Words:
tac: so
miss (like as in ma’am, but younger): dyevooshka
miss (like, to miss a target): meema
wounded: ranyan
killed/sunk: obite (this is battleship language that I am remembering now)
goodbye/until next time: dasvedanya
good girl: malodyetz
our: nasha
hot: zsharco
cold: holodno
sand: pyesoke
moon: luna
ugly face: morda