Departure:
Live from New York, at 10:30 am EST, I have been awake for 5 hours. We are totally fine, and our luggage is here, we are here, and we even sort of slept. We got in last night around midnight, totally crashed, woke up around 5 am, and now we’re confused and meandering around the house and wondering if we should go back to bed. I was lying awake reminding myself to write this down, so I thought if I got it over with I would maybe be able to sleep again. So if this is delirious sounding, that’s why.
We woke up on Saturday morning and did our normal thing, went to breakfast, last minute touches on packing, getting picked up for the airport at 11:30. We were going to call some guy (Dennis) and have him arrange a car for us, but he turned out to want to drive us himself. He’s a lawyer who knows Sasha somehow. Of course, he was running late and this made me very nervous and unpleasant. Kudos to Dad for not abandoning me on the streets of Ukraine.
Then he shows up but it’s some friend driving his car because he got so trashed the night before he’s still drunk, at noon. Just the guy I want to take me to catch a plane. He continued to drink beer as we drove. We got to the airport and got our seats changed so we weren’t in the last row! Our seats recline! Went through security (or rather, an x ray machine, which wasn’t secure at all), as we brought with our carry-on’s plenty of opened bottled water, vodka, and other random stuff no one gave a damn about.
We were also picking up our tickets for both flights, to Poland and to the US. Dad and I give the airport people our passports and they immediately print out Dad’s tickets and give him his passport back. They frown at mine for a while, and some guy comes and takes it and talks on the phone for a while with a serious face. They move us to the side to wait, because they do not see records of me on any flights today. Interesting. I look up at Dad at this point, and ask him to please not leave me behind in Odessa.
They find my tickets. We easily make it to Poland on time. We get off the plane, and, hm, there is a very very long line. We think, OK, we have an hour before our next flight and this will probably move fast, this is a line to get through some sort of passport control and then to security; everyone in this line has another plane to catch. But no. It doesn’t move. We watch people in line with us miss their flights, to Zurich, Chicago.
We are halfway through the line and our plane is leaving in a half hour. From another terminal.
We elbow past a mother and four kids. I still feel really sorry about that actually. I still don’t really know what they were looking at or for in that line, but we made it to security, where we got a lot of crap for having big bottles of vodka (but Ukraine let us do it! was our excuse) and, strangely, this very laptop. Our plane is supposed to be boarding. We are running. We made it, computer, pumpkin, vodka and all. We get to the gate, the last in the building (isn’t it always?) and of course, the plane is not going anywhere. No one’s on it. We get beer and Mexican food, Polish style.
Dad and I apply two different strategies to jet lag avoidance, as an experiment. I planned to stay awake all night until we get home (and I did!) while Dad sleeps as much as possible. Unlike our flight to Poland, we saw two movies, and I watched them both, and laughed out loud a lot which I attribute to fatigue. The children in front of me ask a lot of questions, and I practice the Russian alphabet. Azbuka.
We land late, but perfectly, and customs is a breeze. My suitcase comes out first, and Dad assumes his is lost while we wait a good while for it, but it comes. The little old man doesn’t break 55 the whole way home, but what can you do?
I slap myself to stay awake, like in movies, and surprisingly it works a lot. The experiment proves fruitless; we’re all awake by 545, but happy. I can’t think very well right now, but I am comfortable at home. I look forward to having a couple more days of ignoring the real world. I miss Odessa, too. The relatives are all calling!
Sunday, August 17, 2008
last day...
Friday, Day 11:
So sad that this was our last full day! We got up and, having decided to play it by ear in the morning, chose to throw everything out the window in lieu of going to the beach again. Really, the only thing we had left to see (potentially) was the Russian literature museum, but neither of us really had no idea what was inside, and decided that exercise would be the best thing for us before sitting on a plane for 12 hours. That, and the sea felt like something we both weren’t going to see for a long time.
Actually, now writing this post-beach, I’m sorry I didn’t have a more thorough goodbye. So anyways, having had cars offered to us, we decided to take the trolley bus instead. Neither of us actually felt rushed, and it’s actually kind of enjoyable to bump along on public transit with strangers and watch them interact, snoop, etc. The metro was always good food for poetry in DC, and the trolley has already proven itself as worthy material.
I mean, after all that build up, nothing really exciting happened (I played peek-a-boo with a little baby boy sitting on his mother’s lap. I like kids I don’t have to spend more than 15 minutes with. That kind of sounds awful) but it definitely wasn’t annoying or painful in any way. We left before it got hot (skipped breakfast thanks to the dinner extravaganza of the night before) and had a nice stroll from the bus to the beach, and probably more steps than Potemkin (we think).
Oh, funny, we paid for our bus fare in the form of a 50 Grevny bill, when the trolley is 50 cents a person, thinking we had no smaller bills. The I found a 2 at the beach in my back pocket! We finally got near a sea wall going not parallel to the shore line out in the water, but adjacent to it. So it was fun to walk out on the wall until the water was deep, see the fish (some very big, or in schools!) through the clear water, and then eventually jump in. Part of it (the end) was often covered over with water, so there was seaweed and mussels and a whole bunch of growing entertaining things to look at out there.
Two old men sat on the wall and played an equally old guitar. It was like a movie set. Kids played and pushed each other in or had cannonball contests (these were locals, no tourists at this beach) and a boy, maybe 15, totally thought I was his age and followed me around thinking he was being really stealthy. After I saw a snake swimming in the water from the seawall, it took me a good 15 minutes to work up the chutzpa to jump back in, but it was always worth it. That water was awesome, so so clean. We left, climbed up all those steps (pant pant) and caught the bus again.
Stopped on the way to the street fair for lunch, o starving post-swimming and climbing and no breakfast. Thought this would be a relatively simple thing. Our waiter was clearly new, very young, and completely scared witless. Yes, I’m censoring myself. Dad thought he ordered me potatoes with bacon (my healthy Russian staple, haha) but he ordered me asparagus with bacon, which was not only not filling but really not what I wanted (Al would have been so pleased, I thought) and Dad’s order was forgotten altogether.
I decided to amuse myself by making movies of Dad which he really was thrilled about. Finally our bill and change were given to us (wrong change, ps, he was not only nervous, but a few cards short of a full deck) and we hit the market for last minute family gifts. And ice cream of course. The car coming for us tomorrow for the airport thought our flight is at 3 (its 2) and that we only needed an hour at the airport (wrong, wrong!) so I flipped out and Dad made phone calls. I actually was yelling a lot. I don’t really know what got into me. I think Dad seemed so nonplussed I wanted to light a fire under his ass to make sure things worked out.
So I’m ranting about why the driver needs to be here by 11 (he wanted to call the airport and determine when our flight was and decide on his own when to get us – like that’s his business or his right!) and Dad kept responding with, “I hear you, I hear you” and I kept saying, “Yes I know you hear me, but do you understand me?!” Whoa. Whoa. The best thing about me and Dad as a unit is that we both have the ability to get really cranky really fast, but neither of us have the desire or ability to sustain that anger for long. By the time I got out of the shower we were back to chatting as normal. Ah, well.
After a battle with the hairdryer (I lost, and am coming back to the States with just a few less hairs) we got the call from Valia’s husband’s (Leoned’s) secretary that he was ready to go home and could we go out to meet him in his car please.
Dad and I, dressed to the nines, get in the car (not a Bentley) with this teeny tiny man and his bodyguard/driver. We drive rather far (near Arcadia beach) and on the way stop at the fanciest supermarket of all time because Valia would like balsamic. The guy was over by the shrimp checking for vinegar when I go straight for it. Supermarkets are fairly standard, even in Ukraine. OK, now when I say fancy, I mean the check-out cashiers had bow ties and hats. So different from downtown, most of Odessa, and pretty much all of Ukraine.
We come back out of the store and the car has vanished. Mini-man throws a fit worthy of any red-faced Russian, and calls the poor guy (playing with his phone with the car parked on a lawn across the street?) all sorts of names that Dad didn’t fully translate for me. Back in the car, Leoned makes some sort of comment that essentially communicates that he thinks Dad is a technician. Dad hands him his business card and explains, and though the man can’t read it, I can tell he feels better.
So, we’re almost there, and Dad comes to understand this man is the mayor of Odessa! I had dinner with the mayor of Odessa! I’ve been driving around with his wife! I think we’re even quasi-related! They were super pushy about food and after trying caviar over and over again here (and trying to learn to like it but totally hating the entire experience the whole time) I had Dad try to explain for me that I couldn’t eat it. Seriously, this was a feast that rivaled thanksgiving, and it was impossible to say no to these people.
Dad and Mr. Mayor had a lot of vodka and the guy basically fell asleep by his pool in his bathing suit. I’m pretty sure it’s a cultural thing, and isn’t exactly the same as in the US, but guests are treated really oddly. We were shown through the house and Valia really bragged about it, I mean, really expected to blow our socks off. I think she may have been a little disappointed in our reactions, though I have been practicing my oo’s and ah’s.
It was a beautiful house, for sure, and they put time and meticulous detail into every square inch of the place (a remote controlled cover for the pool?) but it’s all really not my thing. Their grandson, 18, lives with them, though I’m not sure why, and he appeared for a total of 2 minutes, played with his phone, claimed to go check something inside and never appeared again. Something about this kid really made me want to slap him, and his friend came over because they were getting ready to go to a club and I was so relieved they didn’t invite me.
Many courses later, finally we were finished (ice cream again! Am I lactose intolerant yet?) and the damn kids were supposed to drive us back to town! But actually it really wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought, though I think Dad was nervous too. They blared their circa 1999 hip hop and I laughed to myself and actually said “yay” out loud when Dad and I got out of the car.
I wanted to sit the kid down and give him the lessons of life, or at least say “in the future you will either feel bad about being an asshole in the past, or blossom into such a big asshole, you won’t ever know” but I know I don’t know much more than he does and I have no right to say such a thing to pretty much anyone. But I do know a spoiled brat when I see one.
We finished packing, are tired, and think the car is all set to come tomorrow morning. We hope to get some breakfast and check email before we leave. Too sleepy for more grandiose conclusions.
So sad that this was our last full day! We got up and, having decided to play it by ear in the morning, chose to throw everything out the window in lieu of going to the beach again. Really, the only thing we had left to see (potentially) was the Russian literature museum, but neither of us really had no idea what was inside, and decided that exercise would be the best thing for us before sitting on a plane for 12 hours. That, and the sea felt like something we both weren’t going to see for a long time.
Actually, now writing this post-beach, I’m sorry I didn’t have a more thorough goodbye. So anyways, having had cars offered to us, we decided to take the trolley bus instead. Neither of us actually felt rushed, and it’s actually kind of enjoyable to bump along on public transit with strangers and watch them interact, snoop, etc. The metro was always good food for poetry in DC, and the trolley has already proven itself as worthy material.
I mean, after all that build up, nothing really exciting happened (I played peek-a-boo with a little baby boy sitting on his mother’s lap. I like kids I don’t have to spend more than 15 minutes with. That kind of sounds awful) but it definitely wasn’t annoying or painful in any way. We left before it got hot (skipped breakfast thanks to the dinner extravaganza of the night before) and had a nice stroll from the bus to the beach, and probably more steps than Potemkin (we think).
Oh, funny, we paid for our bus fare in the form of a 50 Grevny bill, when the trolley is 50 cents a person, thinking we had no smaller bills. The I found a 2 at the beach in my back pocket! We finally got near a sea wall going not parallel to the shore line out in the water, but adjacent to it. So it was fun to walk out on the wall until the water was deep, see the fish (some very big, or in schools!) through the clear water, and then eventually jump in. Part of it (the end) was often covered over with water, so there was seaweed and mussels and a whole bunch of growing entertaining things to look at out there.
Two old men sat on the wall and played an equally old guitar. It was like a movie set. Kids played and pushed each other in or had cannonball contests (these were locals, no tourists at this beach) and a boy, maybe 15, totally thought I was his age and followed me around thinking he was being really stealthy. After I saw a snake swimming in the water from the seawall, it took me a good 15 minutes to work up the chutzpa to jump back in, but it was always worth it. That water was awesome, so so clean. We left, climbed up all those steps (pant pant) and caught the bus again.
Stopped on the way to the street fair for lunch, o starving post-swimming and climbing and no breakfast. Thought this would be a relatively simple thing. Our waiter was clearly new, very young, and completely scared witless. Yes, I’m censoring myself. Dad thought he ordered me potatoes with bacon (my healthy Russian staple, haha) but he ordered me asparagus with bacon, which was not only not filling but really not what I wanted (Al would have been so pleased, I thought) and Dad’s order was forgotten altogether.
I decided to amuse myself by making movies of Dad which he really was thrilled about. Finally our bill and change were given to us (wrong change, ps, he was not only nervous, but a few cards short of a full deck) and we hit the market for last minute family gifts. And ice cream of course. The car coming for us tomorrow for the airport thought our flight is at 3 (its 2) and that we only needed an hour at the airport (wrong, wrong!) so I flipped out and Dad made phone calls. I actually was yelling a lot. I don’t really know what got into me. I think Dad seemed so nonplussed I wanted to light a fire under his ass to make sure things worked out.
So I’m ranting about why the driver needs to be here by 11 (he wanted to call the airport and determine when our flight was and decide on his own when to get us – like that’s his business or his right!) and Dad kept responding with, “I hear you, I hear you” and I kept saying, “Yes I know you hear me, but do you understand me?!” Whoa. Whoa. The best thing about me and Dad as a unit is that we both have the ability to get really cranky really fast, but neither of us have the desire or ability to sustain that anger for long. By the time I got out of the shower we were back to chatting as normal. Ah, well.
After a battle with the hairdryer (I lost, and am coming back to the States with just a few less hairs) we got the call from Valia’s husband’s (Leoned’s) secretary that he was ready to go home and could we go out to meet him in his car please.
Dad and I, dressed to the nines, get in the car (not a Bentley) with this teeny tiny man and his bodyguard/driver. We drive rather far (near Arcadia beach) and on the way stop at the fanciest supermarket of all time because Valia would like balsamic. The guy was over by the shrimp checking for vinegar when I go straight for it. Supermarkets are fairly standard, even in Ukraine. OK, now when I say fancy, I mean the check-out cashiers had bow ties and hats. So different from downtown, most of Odessa, and pretty much all of Ukraine.
We come back out of the store and the car has vanished. Mini-man throws a fit worthy of any red-faced Russian, and calls the poor guy (playing with his phone with the car parked on a lawn across the street?) all sorts of names that Dad didn’t fully translate for me. Back in the car, Leoned makes some sort of comment that essentially communicates that he thinks Dad is a technician. Dad hands him his business card and explains, and though the man can’t read it, I can tell he feels better.
So, we’re almost there, and Dad comes to understand this man is the mayor of Odessa! I had dinner with the mayor of Odessa! I’ve been driving around with his wife! I think we’re even quasi-related! They were super pushy about food and after trying caviar over and over again here (and trying to learn to like it but totally hating the entire experience the whole time) I had Dad try to explain for me that I couldn’t eat it. Seriously, this was a feast that rivaled thanksgiving, and it was impossible to say no to these people.
Dad and Mr. Mayor had a lot of vodka and the guy basically fell asleep by his pool in his bathing suit. I’m pretty sure it’s a cultural thing, and isn’t exactly the same as in the US, but guests are treated really oddly. We were shown through the house and Valia really bragged about it, I mean, really expected to blow our socks off. I think she may have been a little disappointed in our reactions, though I have been practicing my oo’s and ah’s.
It was a beautiful house, for sure, and they put time and meticulous detail into every square inch of the place (a remote controlled cover for the pool?) but it’s all really not my thing. Their grandson, 18, lives with them, though I’m not sure why, and he appeared for a total of 2 minutes, played with his phone, claimed to go check something inside and never appeared again. Something about this kid really made me want to slap him, and his friend came over because they were getting ready to go to a club and I was so relieved they didn’t invite me.
Many courses later, finally we were finished (ice cream again! Am I lactose intolerant yet?) and the damn kids were supposed to drive us back to town! But actually it really wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought, though I think Dad was nervous too. They blared their circa 1999 hip hop and I laughed to myself and actually said “yay” out loud when Dad and I got out of the car.
I wanted to sit the kid down and give him the lessons of life, or at least say “in the future you will either feel bad about being an asshole in the past, or blossom into such a big asshole, you won’t ever know” but I know I don’t know much more than he does and I have no right to say such a thing to pretty much anyone. But I do know a spoiled brat when I see one.
We finished packing, are tired, and think the car is all set to come tomorrow morning. We hope to get some breakfast and check email before we leave. Too sleepy for more grandiose conclusions.
More
…Later
So last night turned out exactly how I expected it to. After Dad made his round of phone calls, Sasha decided he wanted to have dinner with us and say goodbye today, because he has plans for Friday night. So, Dad and I got ready and met Valia and Sasha for dinner, and first we walked around Deribasovskaya, where all the shops and bars and restaurants are, on a big pedestrian sprawl.
Valia asked if I had been shopping at all, and I said no, but I was craving shoe shopping, and she immediately took me into a store (Dad with such a sour face!) and Sasha was all for it, trying on men’s shoes and just strolling around. But sadly, the shoes, like most of the girls’ outfits here, are really loud and crazy and super shiny or sparkly or 5 inches high, so I didn’t really feel in my shopping element. We left empty handed, which is for the best I guess. Sigh.
We finally stopped in at a Russian restaurant, and all the waiters and waitresses were decked out in full on traditional Russian wear. This is actually not as uncommon as you would expect, and in fact, these teenagers waiting the tables don’t seem the slightest bit sheepish or embarrassed. The menus had English translations (meaning I could at least choose my meal without having Dad pick arbitrary dishes and translated them for me to pick from, even if I couldn’t order it myself) and man, they were awful. I mean, pure poetry. One salad was described as having an “athletic taste.” Wow. Could have poured over that for hours, but the waitress took it away.
After eating a ton of food (and drinking ginger juice, which is absolutely fantastic) we walked down the street to a bakery where we stuffed tea and pastries into our bursting stomachs, which seemed like a good idea at the time. There was this brown half circle shaped dessert, called “Naomi” and I wanted to know what it was and Sasha told me it was named after Naomi Campbell’s boobs, and I actually believed him for a second there.
Then Sasha told me the story of when everyone was making fun of the music Dad chose to listen to instead of techno (The Doors, actually, I’m impressed with him) and he was totally outraged and going on and on about how these are “the Real Doors!” etc. etc. You had to be there.
It was sad to say goodbye to Sasha and Valia. I didn’t even know the existed back home, and even when we got here! Now they both really do feel like family, and I’m so grateful that they were so much fun and spent so much time with us, great company. When Dad and Sasha were saying goodbye in Russian, I kept hearing “baka, baka” (goodbye, goodbye) and realized that might have been my first Russian word, heard every time we left my grandmother’s apartment each Sunday. Sort of sad.
I’ve gotten Dad on a kick of playing Hearts on the laptop (who’s happy I brought the computer now?) and its actually hard to wrangle it away from him. Tomorrow night we have to have dinner at Valia’s and finally meet her Bentley-owning husband.
So last night turned out exactly how I expected it to. After Dad made his round of phone calls, Sasha decided he wanted to have dinner with us and say goodbye today, because he has plans for Friday night. So, Dad and I got ready and met Valia and Sasha for dinner, and first we walked around Deribasovskaya, where all the shops and bars and restaurants are, on a big pedestrian sprawl.
Valia asked if I had been shopping at all, and I said no, but I was craving shoe shopping, and she immediately took me into a store (Dad with such a sour face!) and Sasha was all for it, trying on men’s shoes and just strolling around. But sadly, the shoes, like most of the girls’ outfits here, are really loud and crazy and super shiny or sparkly or 5 inches high, so I didn’t really feel in my shopping element. We left empty handed, which is for the best I guess. Sigh.
We finally stopped in at a Russian restaurant, and all the waiters and waitresses were decked out in full on traditional Russian wear. This is actually not as uncommon as you would expect, and in fact, these teenagers waiting the tables don’t seem the slightest bit sheepish or embarrassed. The menus had English translations (meaning I could at least choose my meal without having Dad pick arbitrary dishes and translated them for me to pick from, even if I couldn’t order it myself) and man, they were awful. I mean, pure poetry. One salad was described as having an “athletic taste.” Wow. Could have poured over that for hours, but the waitress took it away.
After eating a ton of food (and drinking ginger juice, which is absolutely fantastic) we walked down the street to a bakery where we stuffed tea and pastries into our bursting stomachs, which seemed like a good idea at the time. There was this brown half circle shaped dessert, called “Naomi” and I wanted to know what it was and Sasha told me it was named after Naomi Campbell’s boobs, and I actually believed him for a second there.
Then Sasha told me the story of when everyone was making fun of the music Dad chose to listen to instead of techno (The Doors, actually, I’m impressed with him) and he was totally outraged and going on and on about how these are “the Real Doors!” etc. etc. You had to be there.
It was sad to say goodbye to Sasha and Valia. I didn’t even know the existed back home, and even when we got here! Now they both really do feel like family, and I’m so grateful that they were so much fun and spent so much time with us, great company. When Dad and Sasha were saying goodbye in Russian, I kept hearing “baka, baka” (goodbye, goodbye) and realized that might have been my first Russian word, heard every time we left my grandmother’s apartment each Sunday. Sort of sad.
I’ve gotten Dad on a kick of playing Hearts on the laptop (who’s happy I brought the computer now?) and its actually hard to wrangle it away from him. Tomorrow night we have to have dinner at Valia’s and finally meet her Bentley-owning husband.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Almost all of Day 10
Thursday, Day 10
Last night I had the worst stomach pain of all time and barely slept. I still feel super craptastic, but you know, the show must go on. Plus, it was warm by the time we went to get breakfast, and very hot the rest of the day. I guess we totally lucked out that it wasn’t like this the entire time we were here, as I had partially expected.
We had been talking about visiting the catacombs here, partially because a lot of people hid there during WWII and it was somewhat relevant to the research I have done, and partially because they’re just really creepy in a fascinating way. We thought (actually, Dad thought) we would have to go outside of the city to get to an entrance, but there are hundreds of them around the city, and it was actually Senya and his wife who told us where we could go.
The awesome thing about the place we went was that it was also a museum, and the entrance was in a mansion that had a lot of history attached to it. It was a partially-restored giant house in the center of the city, built in the 1800’s, and the owners actually created a parlor (with a little path to it, from the second underground level of the house) so that people could comfortably sit and hang out in the cold. (It was freezing in there; we picked a good hot day to go, but that meant I was standing in my t-shirt and shorts in 50 degrees, 50 feet underground!) She gave us a lot of the history of Odessa as to its relation to the catacombs.
I guess I naively thought that there just happened to be tunnels under the city? Or maybe that people dug the tunnels to have an alternative means of getting around, but really, people just started digging the stone out of the ground in order to build the city. So, she said, you can’t have catacombs without the city of Odessa, and vise versa. Pretty cool. So the city sits, sort of scarily, on lots of nothing, in a way.
It was a full on cave, with very high ceilings and stalagmites and stalactites, with a winding path that slowly descended to the center. Then there were the typical tunnels, and forks in the tunnels. The one to the right led to the center of the city, and the one to the left led straight to the sea, and the owners of the house and their guests (if they weren’t too drunk) would go through the tunnel to the sea to take a boat out on the water if they so chose. These, of course, were closed off to us, because I guess tours used to go through and people would get lost, etc.
There was even a trap door in the floor that the home owners used to use to capture the thieves that would use their tunnels to escape either to or from the sea. It was a 9 meter drop from the trap door to the bottom, also stone, and I can’t imagine that fall, in the pitch black, and how silent, maybe minus some water dripping, it would be to survive that fall and be straining your ears waiting for someone to come and either rescue you or finish you off.
Our guide let me take pictures, even though there were a million signs that said no photography allowed, and I think this was because it was just me and Dad. He (cautious as always) said he was from Odessa but I was visiting and only knew very little Russian, so he translated for me, and she was very patient throughout that process.
We weren’t exactly expecting a private tour, but it was really personal and interesting, and Dad and the guide (maybe 5 or 10 years older than him?) traded stories about how they used to find openings to the catacombs when they were little, and trail string or clothesline behind them and explore, usually finding a furious (and relieved) parent at the end of the tunnel when they finally came back out. What a giant, awesome, terrifying playground. My pictures don’t really do it justice, and man the flash from the camera was bright down there, but I’m grateful she let me break the rules.
We were going to go straight to the Jewish museum after the tour, but it wasn’t opened yet, so we went to the opera house again to see if we could at least get into a gift shop. How ironic and sad that they happen to be off and closed for the three weeks encompassing the time around when we are here. We trekked over there, but there was only a box office open for future shows (the ballet!) and the woman looked very pissed that we even dare ask questions about the inside. I tried all the adjacent doors, just in case we could sneak in, but they are all locked. We can say we tried.
By this point I hadn’t eaten anything yet and was super hot and maybe not too well tempered, so we came back to the apartment to have a break. Then, the Jewish museum, which was super weird because there were all these mannequins set up all over the place (behind curtains and stuff) and it kind of just seemed like someone’s hobby of collecting WWII relics turned into a way to ask for an entrance fee (informally called a “donation”).
We did find the book that my great-grandfather is in, but it really was more like a log of all the Jews in Odessa pre-WWII, so we didn’t buy it. He tried though. It was a pretty strange little experience. It’s located in the middle of this residential square, like Dad used to live in, so there were all these cats and little kids playing in the yard, laundry on lines, etc.
After, we walked through the street fair to buy a little something for Nastia, my little shadow, and finally were successful. On the way to the apartment again, we passed gelato, and I don’t really know how I managed to even find it appetizing, but we piled one cone high with the flavors we couldn’t recognize/have in the states. It was all beautiful shades of pink, but there was bubblegum right in the middle of all these berry flavors. That’s what we get for an ice cream obsession.
Finally the Olympics are on again, and we’ve got some quality wrestling going on. Neither of us understand the sport (Dad claims he “does not remember”) so we keep wondering why people are getting points, utter confusion. We have no plans for tonight, and secretly I would love to drink tea in my sweats and watch more dubbed movies, but Dad’s making his afternoon social calls, which could mean anything. Mr. Popularity. Tomorrow’s our last full day! How did this happen?
Last night I had the worst stomach pain of all time and barely slept. I still feel super craptastic, but you know, the show must go on. Plus, it was warm by the time we went to get breakfast, and very hot the rest of the day. I guess we totally lucked out that it wasn’t like this the entire time we were here, as I had partially expected.
We had been talking about visiting the catacombs here, partially because a lot of people hid there during WWII and it was somewhat relevant to the research I have done, and partially because they’re just really creepy in a fascinating way. We thought (actually, Dad thought) we would have to go outside of the city to get to an entrance, but there are hundreds of them around the city, and it was actually Senya and his wife who told us where we could go.
The awesome thing about the place we went was that it was also a museum, and the entrance was in a mansion that had a lot of history attached to it. It was a partially-restored giant house in the center of the city, built in the 1800’s, and the owners actually created a parlor (with a little path to it, from the second underground level of the house) so that people could comfortably sit and hang out in the cold. (It was freezing in there; we picked a good hot day to go, but that meant I was standing in my t-shirt and shorts in 50 degrees, 50 feet underground!) She gave us a lot of the history of Odessa as to its relation to the catacombs.
I guess I naively thought that there just happened to be tunnels under the city? Or maybe that people dug the tunnels to have an alternative means of getting around, but really, people just started digging the stone out of the ground in order to build the city. So, she said, you can’t have catacombs without the city of Odessa, and vise versa. Pretty cool. So the city sits, sort of scarily, on lots of nothing, in a way.
It was a full on cave, with very high ceilings and stalagmites and stalactites, with a winding path that slowly descended to the center. Then there were the typical tunnels, and forks in the tunnels. The one to the right led to the center of the city, and the one to the left led straight to the sea, and the owners of the house and their guests (if they weren’t too drunk) would go through the tunnel to the sea to take a boat out on the water if they so chose. These, of course, were closed off to us, because I guess tours used to go through and people would get lost, etc.
There was even a trap door in the floor that the home owners used to use to capture the thieves that would use their tunnels to escape either to or from the sea. It was a 9 meter drop from the trap door to the bottom, also stone, and I can’t imagine that fall, in the pitch black, and how silent, maybe minus some water dripping, it would be to survive that fall and be straining your ears waiting for someone to come and either rescue you or finish you off.
Our guide let me take pictures, even though there were a million signs that said no photography allowed, and I think this was because it was just me and Dad. He (cautious as always) said he was from Odessa but I was visiting and only knew very little Russian, so he translated for me, and she was very patient throughout that process.
We weren’t exactly expecting a private tour, but it was really personal and interesting, and Dad and the guide (maybe 5 or 10 years older than him?) traded stories about how they used to find openings to the catacombs when they were little, and trail string or clothesline behind them and explore, usually finding a furious (and relieved) parent at the end of the tunnel when they finally came back out. What a giant, awesome, terrifying playground. My pictures don’t really do it justice, and man the flash from the camera was bright down there, but I’m grateful she let me break the rules.
We were going to go straight to the Jewish museum after the tour, but it wasn’t opened yet, so we went to the opera house again to see if we could at least get into a gift shop. How ironic and sad that they happen to be off and closed for the three weeks encompassing the time around when we are here. We trekked over there, but there was only a box office open for future shows (the ballet!) and the woman looked very pissed that we even dare ask questions about the inside. I tried all the adjacent doors, just in case we could sneak in, but they are all locked. We can say we tried.
By this point I hadn’t eaten anything yet and was super hot and maybe not too well tempered, so we came back to the apartment to have a break. Then, the Jewish museum, which was super weird because there were all these mannequins set up all over the place (behind curtains and stuff) and it kind of just seemed like someone’s hobby of collecting WWII relics turned into a way to ask for an entrance fee (informally called a “donation”).
We did find the book that my great-grandfather is in, but it really was more like a log of all the Jews in Odessa pre-WWII, so we didn’t buy it. He tried though. It was a pretty strange little experience. It’s located in the middle of this residential square, like Dad used to live in, so there were all these cats and little kids playing in the yard, laundry on lines, etc.
After, we walked through the street fair to buy a little something for Nastia, my little shadow, and finally were successful. On the way to the apartment again, we passed gelato, and I don’t really know how I managed to even find it appetizing, but we piled one cone high with the flavors we couldn’t recognize/have in the states. It was all beautiful shades of pink, but there was bubblegum right in the middle of all these berry flavors. That’s what we get for an ice cream obsession.
Finally the Olympics are on again, and we’ve got some quality wrestling going on. Neither of us understand the sport (Dad claims he “does not remember”) so we keep wondering why people are getting points, utter confusion. We have no plans for tonight, and secretly I would love to drink tea in my sweats and watch more dubbed movies, but Dad’s making his afternoon social calls, which could mean anything. Mr. Popularity. Tomorrow’s our last full day! How did this happen?
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
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
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Day 8
Tuesday, Day 8
Here’s the thing about Baltic amber. Let me explain the thing. The thing is that it’s all over the Baltic countries, and Ukraine is not one of them. So, finding amber here has been a challenge. Luckily, we are surrounded by jewelry stores. Unfortunately, they are all pretty much lost causes. So most of the day was devoted to finding the aforementioned amber in the proper shape and size.
We first started out having breakfast at a new place, which was so much better than our usual spot (aka, no loud techno music and croissants!!) hurray. The eggs here are phenomenal, amazing to eat eggs from chickens that are actually on farms. We decided to have a day to do some shopping and exploring for little things we wanted to get and last things we wanted to see.
We went over to Dad’s elementary school, which was really cute. There was another school we passed on the way from his old apt to the school he went to, and I asked why he didn’t go to the closer school, and he said it was for gifted children only. (Poor Dad, not gifted enough.) It’s under renovation now, but there was an open door so we got to see the yard where he played, the fence he sat on, etc. Kind of cool, but he didn’t dwell on it much.
We then went to the post office again and the bazaar, which was awesome. Such a fun amazing thing (much like Eastern Market in DC, but maybe 6 times as big, at least in the food and flower department.) We saw berries and melons that I’ve never seen before, and more kielbasa and cheese (Brinza) than you could ever imagine.
There were loads of cheap shoes, but Dad was not willing to indulge my need to shoe shop. I’m having withdrawals. Plus I can nearly see the pavement through these flip flops. And, if I can quasi-whine for one moment, my ankle is still so fat it’s just funny now. And, honestly, it doesn’t even hurt but has gone sort of numb, which I took to be a good sign but Dad pointed out that maybe losing the feeling in one’s extremities is perhaps taking a turn for the worse. But now I stomp on it and watch it grow, sort of like a chia pet.
We bought an alphabet book for me! It’s for, you know, five year old Russian children learning how to write and spell, but I’m so excited about it. I’m learning to read all over again, and this time I can actually appreciate the process. I keep sounding out words and probably sound really special (I can tell Dad is fighting his embarrassment, good man) and I’m so thrilled. Love reading!
Oh, and we also got a giant Odessa map that I want to frame and hang in my Arizona apt. We started to search for amber (unsuccessfully, and already getting tired) when we returned to drink water in the apartment since we were super dehydrated. We called Senya (Boris’ brother) and he let us know that he was home and that we should come on over. He, supposedly, was only a few blocks from our apartment so we bought a bottle of wine at the grocery and started out. We soon realized that it was not a few blocks away – it was more like two miles.
It was about 90 degrees, 2 pm, and neither of us were particularly happy campers. (The numbers on the buildings here move very slowly. You can walk an entire city block and only move a few numbers. So when we came out on the right street at 70 and need 25, we knew we were in trouble.) We got there and sat down, and noticed his apartment was much like Olga’s, which is to say, beautiful high and decorative ceilings, but monochromatic shades of brown otherwise.
Senya and his wife immediately cracked open the red wine, which neither of us expected, so now we’re sweating in an apartment with no AC and drinking red wine and politely eating the chocolates in front of us on empty stomachs. We had a really good time actually; visiting these strange and distant people seems too impossible to imagine at first, then there’s that weird awkward moment of, oh crap, I’m in your living room, do you even know my name? And then we’re all laughing and talking like it is nothing.
Dad explained his situation in the states when he first got there, which either I didn’t know or had forgotten: he got a job 18 days after arriving in the US, thanks to his uncle, who we called Pop. He worked as a toolmaker, and didn’t need English at all (though he did have to adjust to taking three different buses to go about 15 miles in Connecticut) because he was working only with his hands, and then the company closed two weeks later. He was interviewed (with Pop as interpreter) for an engineering job, one that actually paid less than his tool making job, 8 bucks an hour. He turned to Pop, mid-interview, and asked in Russian “why do I want this job that pays less?” and Pop turned to the employer and said, “He loves the job; he’ll take it.”
I had to come to Odessa to get this story. Senya said later to my dad, “you know, you really haven’t changed.” Dad said that was very nice to hear.
Leaving, and armed with more amber suggestions from the family (and I got to meet Senya’s daughter, 24 years old, only speaking Russian, and we both sat and had our conversations translated by our fathers) we dragged our tipsy, aching asses back into the heat.
We decided to forgo lunch for amber hunt, plus it was already 4 pm. We found a place with all this real fur and leather for ridiculously cheap, but again, Dad would not let me shop, and I’m starting to think he’s fishing for a fight.
(Weird, on the way there, I saw some graffiti I recognized from another walk, and it said “Fuck NATO”. Now, after talking about Georgia so much, I know Ukraine is a part of NATO, so why the graffiti, I asked Dad. Russians, apparently, wrote this. Another line: “NATO, we don’t need you.”)
So we made our way back to the center of the city, and found this tiny hole in the wall where there was amber aplenty. Thank goodness. I bought a ring for myself, a giant stone, Rachel style, for practically nothing. By this point, we were hungry and sunburned and possibly seconds from strangling each other, so we stopped and had dinner and beer and lots of water before heading back to our apartment.
(On the menu, a joke: “Are you Jewish?” surveyed one Odessa man. The answers: No, 10%. Almost, 10.4%. Da, 34%, and “Why do you ask?” 45.6%. This is classic Odessa humor, answering a question with a question.) We ordered and the waitress said to Dad, “It’ll take a while, we’re not a McDonalds” in Russian, what a bitch.
I fed a cat some of my dinner (I’m a sucker) and he tried to climb my chair. We were going to go on a tour of Odessa as related to Jewish history, but this entailed renting a car and Dad translating everything the guide was saying, and after getting so many tours and history lessons by the people we’ve hung out with here, we decided it wasn’t necessary after all.
Dad went outside to use a pay phone to call up our guide and cancel our tour, and I sat in the park and answered a few more emails in the dusk, the wild dogs reclining at my feet, the park warm but finally cooling after a hot day. Just gorgeous.
Tomorrow, instead of the tour (sorry, Jewish Studies Dept.) we’re going to Otrada, Dad’s favorite beach in Odessa. Then dinner with Sasha and Valia. Hopefully, Thursday, horseback riding with the other Sasha, which got shuffled around for the dacha, etc. We’re sitting and drinking Baltika (Brick-goers will remember my fondness, and sadly no, it is not the elusive Baltika 8, but it’s about a dollar here!) and eating those chocolate unidentifiable thingies I picked out in the supermarket, which are completely amazing. I’ll switch back to cheese (“sir” with the damn rolled “r”) in a moment.
And now, a dedication to Kvas. In Russian, the Cyrillic looks like KVAC, and I have a picture of me drinking it in a plastic cup in the street (thanks, Dad) that I’ll have to make available to everyone. This is, undoubtedly, the most amazing beverage of all time.
It’s not in the states, and Dad and I have a plan to figure out how to brew it and market it to Americans, who are so addicted to both cola and beer that we’d be rich within seconds (Kvas is a surprisingly pleasant blend of the two, I promise.) Its not too sweet, not too bitter, and not at all like a Snakebite or hard cider. If beer could taste like non-obnoxious soda, it would be Kvas. We bought three litres for about a dollar. We bought the cup on the street from a little babushka with a keg on the side of the road.
I miss my glasses so much. Did I write already that I left them in the states? I spend my evenings and early mornings blind and squinting at a book or the computer. I brought the case (genius) but the glasses weren’t inside it (typical). Oh, and baby bird is fine.
Words:
corn: cucuruzu (love it!)
come to me: poidi suda
owl: sava
amber: yentari
necklace: boussi
alphabet: azbuka
egg: yaitso
leg: noshka
Here’s the thing about Baltic amber. Let me explain the thing. The thing is that it’s all over the Baltic countries, and Ukraine is not one of them. So, finding amber here has been a challenge. Luckily, we are surrounded by jewelry stores. Unfortunately, they are all pretty much lost causes. So most of the day was devoted to finding the aforementioned amber in the proper shape and size.
We first started out having breakfast at a new place, which was so much better than our usual spot (aka, no loud techno music and croissants!!) hurray. The eggs here are phenomenal, amazing to eat eggs from chickens that are actually on farms. We decided to have a day to do some shopping and exploring for little things we wanted to get and last things we wanted to see.
We went over to Dad’s elementary school, which was really cute. There was another school we passed on the way from his old apt to the school he went to, and I asked why he didn’t go to the closer school, and he said it was for gifted children only. (Poor Dad, not gifted enough.) It’s under renovation now, but there was an open door so we got to see the yard where he played, the fence he sat on, etc. Kind of cool, but he didn’t dwell on it much.
We then went to the post office again and the bazaar, which was awesome. Such a fun amazing thing (much like Eastern Market in DC, but maybe 6 times as big, at least in the food and flower department.) We saw berries and melons that I’ve never seen before, and more kielbasa and cheese (Brinza) than you could ever imagine.
There were loads of cheap shoes, but Dad was not willing to indulge my need to shoe shop. I’m having withdrawals. Plus I can nearly see the pavement through these flip flops. And, if I can quasi-whine for one moment, my ankle is still so fat it’s just funny now. And, honestly, it doesn’t even hurt but has gone sort of numb, which I took to be a good sign but Dad pointed out that maybe losing the feeling in one’s extremities is perhaps taking a turn for the worse. But now I stomp on it and watch it grow, sort of like a chia pet.
We bought an alphabet book for me! It’s for, you know, five year old Russian children learning how to write and spell, but I’m so excited about it. I’m learning to read all over again, and this time I can actually appreciate the process. I keep sounding out words and probably sound really special (I can tell Dad is fighting his embarrassment, good man) and I’m so thrilled. Love reading!
Oh, and we also got a giant Odessa map that I want to frame and hang in my Arizona apt. We started to search for amber (unsuccessfully, and already getting tired) when we returned to drink water in the apartment since we were super dehydrated. We called Senya (Boris’ brother) and he let us know that he was home and that we should come on over. He, supposedly, was only a few blocks from our apartment so we bought a bottle of wine at the grocery and started out. We soon realized that it was not a few blocks away – it was more like two miles.
It was about 90 degrees, 2 pm, and neither of us were particularly happy campers. (The numbers on the buildings here move very slowly. You can walk an entire city block and only move a few numbers. So when we came out on the right street at 70 and need 25, we knew we were in trouble.) We got there and sat down, and noticed his apartment was much like Olga’s, which is to say, beautiful high and decorative ceilings, but monochromatic shades of brown otherwise.
Senya and his wife immediately cracked open the red wine, which neither of us expected, so now we’re sweating in an apartment with no AC and drinking red wine and politely eating the chocolates in front of us on empty stomachs. We had a really good time actually; visiting these strange and distant people seems too impossible to imagine at first, then there’s that weird awkward moment of, oh crap, I’m in your living room, do you even know my name? And then we’re all laughing and talking like it is nothing.
Dad explained his situation in the states when he first got there, which either I didn’t know or had forgotten: he got a job 18 days after arriving in the US, thanks to his uncle, who we called Pop. He worked as a toolmaker, and didn’t need English at all (though he did have to adjust to taking three different buses to go about 15 miles in Connecticut) because he was working only with his hands, and then the company closed two weeks later. He was interviewed (with Pop as interpreter) for an engineering job, one that actually paid less than his tool making job, 8 bucks an hour. He turned to Pop, mid-interview, and asked in Russian “why do I want this job that pays less?” and Pop turned to the employer and said, “He loves the job; he’ll take it.”
I had to come to Odessa to get this story. Senya said later to my dad, “you know, you really haven’t changed.” Dad said that was very nice to hear.
Leaving, and armed with more amber suggestions from the family (and I got to meet Senya’s daughter, 24 years old, only speaking Russian, and we both sat and had our conversations translated by our fathers) we dragged our tipsy, aching asses back into the heat.
We decided to forgo lunch for amber hunt, plus it was already 4 pm. We found a place with all this real fur and leather for ridiculously cheap, but again, Dad would not let me shop, and I’m starting to think he’s fishing for a fight.
(Weird, on the way there, I saw some graffiti I recognized from another walk, and it said “Fuck NATO”. Now, after talking about Georgia so much, I know Ukraine is a part of NATO, so why the graffiti, I asked Dad. Russians, apparently, wrote this. Another line: “NATO, we don’t need you.”)
So we made our way back to the center of the city, and found this tiny hole in the wall where there was amber aplenty. Thank goodness. I bought a ring for myself, a giant stone, Rachel style, for practically nothing. By this point, we were hungry and sunburned and possibly seconds from strangling each other, so we stopped and had dinner and beer and lots of water before heading back to our apartment.
(On the menu, a joke: “Are you Jewish?” surveyed one Odessa man. The answers: No, 10%. Almost, 10.4%. Da, 34%, and “Why do you ask?” 45.6%. This is classic Odessa humor, answering a question with a question.) We ordered and the waitress said to Dad, “It’ll take a while, we’re not a McDonalds” in Russian, what a bitch.
I fed a cat some of my dinner (I’m a sucker) and he tried to climb my chair. We were going to go on a tour of Odessa as related to Jewish history, but this entailed renting a car and Dad translating everything the guide was saying, and after getting so many tours and history lessons by the people we’ve hung out with here, we decided it wasn’t necessary after all.
Dad went outside to use a pay phone to call up our guide and cancel our tour, and I sat in the park and answered a few more emails in the dusk, the wild dogs reclining at my feet, the park warm but finally cooling after a hot day. Just gorgeous.
Tomorrow, instead of the tour (sorry, Jewish Studies Dept.) we’re going to Otrada, Dad’s favorite beach in Odessa. Then dinner with Sasha and Valia. Hopefully, Thursday, horseback riding with the other Sasha, which got shuffled around for the dacha, etc. We’re sitting and drinking Baltika (Brick-goers will remember my fondness, and sadly no, it is not the elusive Baltika 8, but it’s about a dollar here!) and eating those chocolate unidentifiable thingies I picked out in the supermarket, which are completely amazing. I’ll switch back to cheese (“sir” with the damn rolled “r”) in a moment.
And now, a dedication to Kvas. In Russian, the Cyrillic looks like KVAC, and I have a picture of me drinking it in a plastic cup in the street (thanks, Dad) that I’ll have to make available to everyone. This is, undoubtedly, the most amazing beverage of all time.
It’s not in the states, and Dad and I have a plan to figure out how to brew it and market it to Americans, who are so addicted to both cola and beer that we’d be rich within seconds (Kvas is a surprisingly pleasant blend of the two, I promise.) Its not too sweet, not too bitter, and not at all like a Snakebite or hard cider. If beer could taste like non-obnoxious soda, it would be Kvas. We bought three litres for about a dollar. We bought the cup on the street from a little babushka with a keg on the side of the road.
I miss my glasses so much. Did I write already that I left them in the states? I spend my evenings and early mornings blind and squinting at a book or the computer. I brought the case (genius) but the glasses weren’t inside it (typical). Oh, and baby bird is fine.
Words:
corn: cucuruzu (love it!)
come to me: poidi suda
owl: sava
amber: yentari
necklace: boussi
alphabet: azbuka
egg: yaitso
leg: noshka
Day 7
Monday, Day 7
This morning, we awoke to find that our pigeon has had a baby! Happy birthday, you little ugly gray thing! We thought it was earlier than it was because it was actually drizzling and chilly! (OK, I interrupt myself to say that Dad just made a gesture towards to the TV and said “we must capture the sounds of the time” before turning it on. OK Dad.
Note, later: we are watching a very old dubbed over Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. But he just read this over my shoulder and promptly changed the channel.)
So we decided to go to this restaurant where the service was utter crap (but they had a breakfast menu) because it was closer to our apt, and then we both got really pissed an impatient because the service sucked again. But the food was awesome. I had Leneeveyeh Vareaneekee, which is really doughy and rich and terrible for you, and you dip it in honey and then feel yourself start to get diabetes but it’s worth it.
They bragged about wireless availability in the window, (our justification for going back) and after being at the dacha for two days, we missed our email, but then it didn’t work and that only made us crankier. So we trekked back to the apt in the rain and took a bus to meet Boris to go to my grandfather’s cemetery as we had planned for this morning.
We could have gone with Valia, in her car, which would have been very easy and convenient and comfortable, but Boris has been making sure that Dad’s father’s grave is looked after and cleaned (I didn’t understand this until we got there, bc this is very different from cemetery care in the states) so it felt much more appropriate to go with him. Plus he knew him, unlike Valia, I believe.
So we caught the bus to a corner, and waited there for a while, and then realized we were on the wrong corner, and found Boris somewhere else. I think we are cursed to look like flakes around Boris, poor guy. So then we walked to a different stop and got on a different bus, out of the city. The sun came out and it got hot. We got to the cemetery, which had all these women selling flowers (mostly fake) outside of it, which seemed weird. Especially since this was an all Jewish cemetery and it is not the tradition to use flowers on graves.
As soon as we were inside I understood this cemetery was different from any I had ever been to. It was really big and had a map at the entrance, and you literally had to use the map to figure out where to go, and the path was very very long, and spread far right and left. There were about 5 crazy looking dogs at the entrance, each sleeping on a different grave. Dad and Boris knew which way to go, so we headed out.
It was pretty deep into the cemetery, which I have a picture of, but you would have to say it was essentially forest. Each grave has a fence around it, very clear markings of territory. But, like American cemeteries, graves are right next to each other, so its very hard to walk between. Sometimes the path between is less than one foot. There is a bigger more general path that branches off, and it costs much more to buy a plot there.
Ours is deep somewhere in the back to the left, and it was very well maintained, to my father’s relief. It was incredible to see the disrepair of the grave on either side of it though, very sad and unexpected for me. Some of the stone had cracked (there’s like a marble/stone floor, for each plot) and some were completely invisible because of ivy and other growth. Others were just buried in tree branches and fallen leaves. This is no rolling grassy hill like in the states. If you don’t come and take care of it, no one will. Now I understand.
I thought this would be a very emotional thing for my father, but then I came to realize (the date on the headstone is what hit me) that this has been a death he has been dealing with for nearly 40 years now. It is hard to remember that my father lost his father at such a young age. All he said about it today was, “I was in the army” which is especially sad because he definitely didn’t want to be in the USSR’s army.
He didn’t want another picture with the grave, he said he likes remembering the one of him there with his mother and didn’t want to replace it. It was most striking to me that my grandmother is buried on the other side of the Atlantic from her husband. Perhaps she always thought about that since she came to the US, but how would we know? Such a sad thing.
After a long, hot bus ride later, Boris walked us to a synagogue in the heart of the city. Dad hadn’t remembered a synagogue here, and that’s because it used to be a building for the university. It’s actually really beautiful and looks very well cared for, but you’d never know it was a synagogue except for the orthodox restaurant in front of it, which is much more prominent than anything related to worship. I wonder if this relates to any sentiment here in the town still.
We went home to grab the computer and take it to the place where we first had dinner here; it was nice to check email. The news about Georgia hit over the weekend, and at the dacha, completely cut off from society, even we had not heard much about it. There is no big fear here that Russia would want to attack Ukraine, too, but Georgia is like Ukraine’s brother, and though their army isn’t much, they have lots of natural resources and oil that of course Russia wants. Almost everything in the news here is about how Ukraine would support Georgia in a war because they are neighbors. Sadly, the common belief here is that Georgia doesn’t stand a chance.
They are not shy about showing footage of dead bodies. It’s a few hours away, but its really sad and scary. The thing that’s bothering people here is that the Ukrainian boats in the Black Sea are right near the Russian boats. Ukraine is quick to say they disagree with Russia right now, but want to maintain neutrality to protect the port. A Russian news report came on just now as I type this: amazing perspective. They are only reporting that Russians caught Georgian’s spying on them and are taking action against them for it. Russia also politely reminded Ukraine that Sevastopol is a Russian port (though it is considered to be on Ukrainian land.)
The other big news is a flood that really damaged western Ukraine, which we knew about because one of the few roads in the country by the dacha was completely impassable, and there was tremendous traffic and cars driving off the road in order to pass in the dirt shoulders, going around the standing cars on the pavement.
OK. So after lunch we went around the city and took a lot of pictures of things we have been passing and liking but not making pictures of. TAKING pictures. Ag!
We walked the Potemkin steps this time (with ice cream) and it was very crowded with tourists, Primorsky (trans: Near Sea) Blvd. Lions are very big here, they have always been here and are kind of a staple of Odessa (statues, not the real thing). There are a lot of new and rather stupid looking statues around Odessa that tourists love to pose with, and this annoys Dad and makes me laugh. Instead I posed with Richelieu and the lions.
We walked across the mother-in-law bridge, and we had never noticed before that all the little bars have big locks on them, and all the locks have names engraved, and dates; we’re assuming wedding dates. Some have really sweet messages like, “my heart is in your hands,” and “we have love, you can stick the rest up your ass” and other translations I am thankful Dad shared with me. (What happens to these locks if they divorce, we wonder.)
We walked a lot today, and then went to the supermarket to buy more food for our mini-breakfasts and some stuff to go with our tortellini. (I have been trying to sound out the Russian words now, especially the ones I know, when I can remember enough Cyrillic letters. But it takes me so long to say one word; I’m like a bumbling 5 year old going letter by letter.) We figured out how to light the stove (matches) and I offered to make dinner since zavtruk is mostly Dad’s domain; aka, he slices cheese and bread.
But Dad, with perhaps more justification than I would willingly admit, hovered over me like I was going to burn the place down, and I finally had to remind him that I have my very own kitchen in Arizona and no one’s died yet so let me boil freaking water on the stove. Having no butter, salt, or pepper, we put flavored cream cheese on the pasta and it was really delicious and I highly recommend it.
We ended up watching “From Russia with Love” in dubbed Russian. Still working our connections to get into the opera house. Penciling people in for the rest of our week. Interesting thing that just happened: one of Dad’s contacts has been skirting his calls, we thought, and he actually is relatively peeved that he didn’t hear from Dad for so long and now he wants to meet up. Tricky.
Words:
Awesome drink: kvas
garden: saad
pigeon: goloobe
cemetery: cladbesheh
bus: aftoboos
I know: ya znahyoo
map: carta
fool: durak
queen: dama
jack: valyet
king: coroll
ace: toose
witch: vyeddma
grain: psheneetsa
This morning, we awoke to find that our pigeon has had a baby! Happy birthday, you little ugly gray thing! We thought it was earlier than it was because it was actually drizzling and chilly! (OK, I interrupt myself to say that Dad just made a gesture towards to the TV and said “we must capture the sounds of the time” before turning it on. OK Dad.
Note, later: we are watching a very old dubbed over Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. But he just read this over my shoulder and promptly changed the channel.)
So we decided to go to this restaurant where the service was utter crap (but they had a breakfast menu) because it was closer to our apt, and then we both got really pissed an impatient because the service sucked again. But the food was awesome. I had Leneeveyeh Vareaneekee, which is really doughy and rich and terrible for you, and you dip it in honey and then feel yourself start to get diabetes but it’s worth it.
They bragged about wireless availability in the window, (our justification for going back) and after being at the dacha for two days, we missed our email, but then it didn’t work and that only made us crankier. So we trekked back to the apt in the rain and took a bus to meet Boris to go to my grandfather’s cemetery as we had planned for this morning.
We could have gone with Valia, in her car, which would have been very easy and convenient and comfortable, but Boris has been making sure that Dad’s father’s grave is looked after and cleaned (I didn’t understand this until we got there, bc this is very different from cemetery care in the states) so it felt much more appropriate to go with him. Plus he knew him, unlike Valia, I believe.
So we caught the bus to a corner, and waited there for a while, and then realized we were on the wrong corner, and found Boris somewhere else. I think we are cursed to look like flakes around Boris, poor guy. So then we walked to a different stop and got on a different bus, out of the city. The sun came out and it got hot. We got to the cemetery, which had all these women selling flowers (mostly fake) outside of it, which seemed weird. Especially since this was an all Jewish cemetery and it is not the tradition to use flowers on graves.
As soon as we were inside I understood this cemetery was different from any I had ever been to. It was really big and had a map at the entrance, and you literally had to use the map to figure out where to go, and the path was very very long, and spread far right and left. There were about 5 crazy looking dogs at the entrance, each sleeping on a different grave. Dad and Boris knew which way to go, so we headed out.
It was pretty deep into the cemetery, which I have a picture of, but you would have to say it was essentially forest. Each grave has a fence around it, very clear markings of territory. But, like American cemeteries, graves are right next to each other, so its very hard to walk between. Sometimes the path between is less than one foot. There is a bigger more general path that branches off, and it costs much more to buy a plot there.
Ours is deep somewhere in the back to the left, and it was very well maintained, to my father’s relief. It was incredible to see the disrepair of the grave on either side of it though, very sad and unexpected for me. Some of the stone had cracked (there’s like a marble/stone floor, for each plot) and some were completely invisible because of ivy and other growth. Others were just buried in tree branches and fallen leaves. This is no rolling grassy hill like in the states. If you don’t come and take care of it, no one will. Now I understand.
I thought this would be a very emotional thing for my father, but then I came to realize (the date on the headstone is what hit me) that this has been a death he has been dealing with for nearly 40 years now. It is hard to remember that my father lost his father at such a young age. All he said about it today was, “I was in the army” which is especially sad because he definitely didn’t want to be in the USSR’s army.
He didn’t want another picture with the grave, he said he likes remembering the one of him there with his mother and didn’t want to replace it. It was most striking to me that my grandmother is buried on the other side of the Atlantic from her husband. Perhaps she always thought about that since she came to the US, but how would we know? Such a sad thing.
After a long, hot bus ride later, Boris walked us to a synagogue in the heart of the city. Dad hadn’t remembered a synagogue here, and that’s because it used to be a building for the university. It’s actually really beautiful and looks very well cared for, but you’d never know it was a synagogue except for the orthodox restaurant in front of it, which is much more prominent than anything related to worship. I wonder if this relates to any sentiment here in the town still.
We went home to grab the computer and take it to the place where we first had dinner here; it was nice to check email. The news about Georgia hit over the weekend, and at the dacha, completely cut off from society, even we had not heard much about it. There is no big fear here that Russia would want to attack Ukraine, too, but Georgia is like Ukraine’s brother, and though their army isn’t much, they have lots of natural resources and oil that of course Russia wants. Almost everything in the news here is about how Ukraine would support Georgia in a war because they are neighbors. Sadly, the common belief here is that Georgia doesn’t stand a chance.
They are not shy about showing footage of dead bodies. It’s a few hours away, but its really sad and scary. The thing that’s bothering people here is that the Ukrainian boats in the Black Sea are right near the Russian boats. Ukraine is quick to say they disagree with Russia right now, but want to maintain neutrality to protect the port. A Russian news report came on just now as I type this: amazing perspective. They are only reporting that Russians caught Georgian’s spying on them and are taking action against them for it. Russia also politely reminded Ukraine that Sevastopol is a Russian port (though it is considered to be on Ukrainian land.)
The other big news is a flood that really damaged western Ukraine, which we knew about because one of the few roads in the country by the dacha was completely impassable, and there was tremendous traffic and cars driving off the road in order to pass in the dirt shoulders, going around the standing cars on the pavement.
OK. So after lunch we went around the city and took a lot of pictures of things we have been passing and liking but not making pictures of. TAKING pictures. Ag!
We walked the Potemkin steps this time (with ice cream) and it was very crowded with tourists, Primorsky (trans: Near Sea) Blvd. Lions are very big here, they have always been here and are kind of a staple of Odessa (statues, not the real thing). There are a lot of new and rather stupid looking statues around Odessa that tourists love to pose with, and this annoys Dad and makes me laugh. Instead I posed with Richelieu and the lions.
We walked across the mother-in-law bridge, and we had never noticed before that all the little bars have big locks on them, and all the locks have names engraved, and dates; we’re assuming wedding dates. Some have really sweet messages like, “my heart is in your hands,” and “we have love, you can stick the rest up your ass” and other translations I am thankful Dad shared with me. (What happens to these locks if they divorce, we wonder.)
We walked a lot today, and then went to the supermarket to buy more food for our mini-breakfasts and some stuff to go with our tortellini. (I have been trying to sound out the Russian words now, especially the ones I know, when I can remember enough Cyrillic letters. But it takes me so long to say one word; I’m like a bumbling 5 year old going letter by letter.) We figured out how to light the stove (matches) and I offered to make dinner since zavtruk is mostly Dad’s domain; aka, he slices cheese and bread.
But Dad, with perhaps more justification than I would willingly admit, hovered over me like I was going to burn the place down, and I finally had to remind him that I have my very own kitchen in Arizona and no one’s died yet so let me boil freaking water on the stove. Having no butter, salt, or pepper, we put flavored cream cheese on the pasta and it was really delicious and I highly recommend it.
We ended up watching “From Russia with Love” in dubbed Russian. Still working our connections to get into the opera house. Penciling people in for the rest of our week. Interesting thing that just happened: one of Dad’s contacts has been skirting his calls, we thought, and he actually is relatively peeved that he didn’t hear from Dad for so long and now he wants to meet up. Tricky.
Words:
Awesome drink: kvas
garden: saad
pigeon: goloobe
cemetery: cladbesheh
bus: aftoboos
I know: ya znahyoo
map: carta
fool: durak
queen: dama
jack: valyet
king: coroll
ace: toose
witch: vyeddma
grain: psheneetsa
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