Massive Odessa photo dump
Jul. 21st, 2017 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbySorry-not-sorry, but you will be getting a load of pictures of Odessa because it is fucking magical. My intention at the moment is to retire, sell my house, buy one of the dilapidated old buildings and restore it to its former glory, learn Russian (it's another city where most people speak Russian, not Ukrainian, much to our joy), and wander around the glorious streets at night in a fashionable dress, drinking an open bottle of champagne.
Life goals, amirite?
In all seriousness, though, not for nothing is Odessa called Paris on the Black Sea. It has all the architectural splendour and literary tradition you could hope for, it is cosmopolitan and fashionable, and it is lit. I have never been to Paris, granted, but from what I understand Odessa is much cheaper and not as crowded. In Kiev and Lviv, people are pretty much the same as anywhere else, except with a penchant for wearing poorly translated English t-shirts bearing inspirational but nonsensical slogans, expressions of general hatred towards anyone viewing the shirt, or just vague weirdness (my favourite so far was a picture of a cat made out of ramen noodles sitting in a bowl with the caption "Pet Food").
Here, though, everyone looks like a model. The women are all tall and thin and wear flowing striped dresses, and the children prance around in tutus at all hours of the night. The streets are alive with music and performers and what I'm pretty sure is a unicorn (i.e., incentive to look at the pictures under the cut).
Odessa is another place where the prevailing architectural style is "all of them," except here it's mostly tasteful. Mostly.
Pushkin lived here while in exile, so there are multiple statues of him and a museum. This sycamore tree, reportedly, was one he leaned against while writing poetry in the courtyard of what is now a hotel.
Unfortunately, someone went and set up a stage at the bottom of the Potemkin Steps, so it is physically impossible to duplicate the angles in Battleship Potemkin. I did get this view while going down the weird car thing they've got to avoid the baby carriage issue, though.
Apparently there is some issue with old buildings and ownership or lack thereof, so many of the historical buildings are literally crumbling.
Eh, I just liked this one.
Gogol also lived in Odessa, in this building, which is one of the ones that's crumbling. And also full of black cats, apparently. We met one, who was very friendly. This is reportedly the place in which he burned the second book of Dead Souls, ensuring that I will never get to know how it ends, and if you think that I'm over that yet, you clearly don't know me.
(Mid-sentence, Gogol. Did you have to?)
We were disappointed to learn that a Dogma Club is just a regular nightclub and not a place philosophers go to argue.
This is another uniquely Odessa building, which is to say that it looks like a crazy birthday cake.
We had dinner in a cute little café that had pickled apples and plums and all sorts of other excellent things, and then wandered around to find a beautiful garden.
Just outside (on the same street as our hotel), there was some sort of festival going on. Everything was lit up with giant fruit (??!!), fire spinners, and music.
I did promise a unicorn. There was even more extreme a unicorn but I didn't manage to capture a picture of it. Also this is also likely animal cruelty, but I'm going to imagine that it likes being a unicorn. Apologies for the shitty image quality but it's hard to capture magic.
Life goals, amirite?
In all seriousness, though, not for nothing is Odessa called Paris on the Black Sea. It has all the architectural splendour and literary tradition you could hope for, it is cosmopolitan and fashionable, and it is lit. I have never been to Paris, granted, but from what I understand Odessa is much cheaper and not as crowded. In Kiev and Lviv, people are pretty much the same as anywhere else, except with a penchant for wearing poorly translated English t-shirts bearing inspirational but nonsensical slogans, expressions of general hatred towards anyone viewing the shirt, or just vague weirdness (my favourite so far was a picture of a cat made out of ramen noodles sitting in a bowl with the caption "Pet Food").
Here, though, everyone looks like a model. The women are all tall and thin and wear flowing striped dresses, and the children prance around in tutus at all hours of the night. The streets are alive with music and performers and what I'm pretty sure is a unicorn (i.e., incentive to look at the pictures under the cut).
Odessa is another place where the prevailing architectural style is "all of them," except here it's mostly tasteful. Mostly.
Pushkin lived here while in exile, so there are multiple statues of him and a museum. This sycamore tree, reportedly, was one he leaned against while writing poetry in the courtyard of what is now a hotel.
Unfortunately, someone went and set up a stage at the bottom of the Potemkin Steps, so it is physically impossible to duplicate the angles in Battleship Potemkin. I did get this view while going down the weird car thing they've got to avoid the baby carriage issue, though.
Apparently there is some issue with old buildings and ownership or lack thereof, so many of the historical buildings are literally crumbling.
Eh, I just liked this one.
Gogol also lived in Odessa, in this building, which is one of the ones that's crumbling. And also full of black cats, apparently. We met one, who was very friendly. This is reportedly the place in which he burned the second book of Dead Souls, ensuring that I will never get to know how it ends, and if you think that I'm over that yet, you clearly don't know me.
(Mid-sentence, Gogol. Did you have to?)
We were disappointed to learn that a Dogma Club is just a regular nightclub and not a place philosophers go to argue.
This is another uniquely Odessa building, which is to say that it looks like a crazy birthday cake.
We had dinner in a cute little café that had pickled apples and plums and all sorts of other excellent things, and then wandered around to find a beautiful garden.
Just outside (on the same street as our hotel), there was some sort of festival going on. Everything was lit up with giant fruit (??!!), fire spinners, and music.
I did promise a unicorn. There was even more extreme a unicorn but I didn't manage to capture a picture of it. Also this is also likely animal cruelty, but I'm going to imagine that it likes being a unicorn. Apologies for the shitty image quality but it's hard to capture magic.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-21 08:26 pm (UTC)Can you ask one of the cats how Dead Souls is supposed to end? Or maybe the point was that the mid-sentence ending would kill readers inside, thus creating dead souls.
If it makes you feel better, I don't think those horses are necessarily being mistreated unless they're being pushed to work too much, physically punished, etc. (like horses that pull carriages for tourists at all hours of the day tend to be). Anyway, I really want a horse with a purple mane ;_;
no subject
Date: 2017-07-21 08:32 pm (UTC)I will suggest a black cat seance. I bet they know. We fed some cats across the street from Gogol's house, but not the black one we saw, as it wasn't interested in either sour cream or pâté. But that café was really good, and I feel like if we go back, maybe we can convince the cats to help.
The horses mainly seemed to be carrying small children, so hopefully they're fine? TBH I don't know anything about horses and they scare me a bit, even though they're pretty.
The other horse was initially white and had its mane and tail dyed in rainbow colours with stars painted on it. But it galloped off with a little girl too quickly for me to snap a photo.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-23 12:37 am (UTC)I love the way you think and want to subscribe to your newsletter. BLACK CAT SEANCE!
To clarify, I wasn't talking about these horses specifically :) I mean that I don't think horse riding is cruel per se, it's more about how horses are trained and their living/working conditions. Just like how I don't think training your dog to do tricks is inherently cruel, unless you're mistreating your dog in the process.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-21 09:23 pm (UTC)Are they getting Syrian refugees at all? I'm assuming it's not particularly sought out, but it is on the other side of the Black Sea after all, and Turkey is blocking the land route...
no subject
Date: 2017-07-22 01:32 am (UTC)what reads as "ambiguously ethnic" over here read as "Roma" when we were in Berlin, although she got really just got some trouble from non-ethnic Germans (Poles, Turks, etc) over that.
Wow, I'm so sorry. :( I don't think I read as Roma in Germany but the people who were the rudest to me were definitely non-ethnic Germans which... wtf
no subject
Date: 2017-07-22 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-22 12:13 pm (UTC)I don't want to gloss over the politics and culture of a country with as bitterly racist a past and present as Ukraine, but you and F would probably be fine as tourists. This is a desperately poor country and we're all loaded from the perspective of people here, who are happy to take your money regardless of what colour you are. We talked to a guy from New Delhi on the train from Kiev to Lviv and he seemed to be having a blast, besides being relieved to meet us since we spoke English (uncommon here). I asked Anya and she knew an Indian guy growing up in Donetsk who had no problem living there until the war broke out. In terms of covert, systemic racism experienced by the people who live here, that's a whole other story, of course. And Roma get shit on everywhere, including Toronto, but it's unlikely that F would be read as Roma here.
There is a language issue; I'm having little problem getting around because I'm travelling with someone who speaks Russian. I think it would be difficult to impossible on my own.
I don't know much about the Syrian refugee situation beyond what is easily Googleable, but as I understand it, they have approved all Syrians who applied for refugee status here, but that number is extremely small and consists mainly of foreign students who were living here when the war broke out. The issue is threefold: first, the country is broke and doesn't have the money for refugee camps, social supports, etc., second, Syrian refugees haven't wanted to settle here and are mainly using it as a transit point to Western Europe, and third, Ukraine has a massive internal refugee issue because of the war. I suspect that Syrians probably don't want to risk settling in a country that Putin would like to take a giant shit on, having just fled a country that Putin took a giant shit on. Politically, liberals favour taking in refugees and the far right, which is a huge presence, is opposed. But as I understand it the issue is largely academic.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-23 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-23 02:24 pm (UTC)Well you know, it's not something we thought of worrying about in Berlin until it happened. :P
Thanks for your response. I hadn't thought about the IDP and the Putin double-jeopardy part :P
Tourism-wise, I guess the language thing would be a big issue since it's further out of the Western European path than say, Turkey, which was fairly straightforward. Or maybe I need to start learning some Russian...
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