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Published: August 19th 2010
I always wanted to go to Odessa once. And now I am there. Malev brought us there via Budapest (again). We find a nice hostel (Babuska Grand Palace) where we share our room with other travellers, specially Americans. (Why are Americans always talking two times as loud as Europeans? It was already like that when I travelled over the world 40 years ago. Maybe someone has to say it once?) Odessa has a Mediterranean atmosphere. Western tourism is coming up, but almost everything is in Cyrillic. We walk to the Potemkin steps, where once a famous scene of the movie of Dhiagelev/Eisenstein was made. You cannot see the steps when you stand at the upper side, but once you are down you see all steps. Nearby we find the statue of Catherina the Great and yes in front of her we see mr Potemkin himself, Catherina's beloved general. Not far from the steps we find the Platane of Puskin, Russian most beloved writer.
On our way back we sit down on a bench onder big trees. Nearby there is a place to play for kids. They can hire an electric car or an animal pet. There is a row of
cars and opposite a row with animal pets. The kids can choose between a racing car, a fire work car, a big motor and so on. Or they can choose a zebra, a horse, a camel and so on. We think boys will choose for the cars and girls for the pets. We wait what will happen. A mother with her little son arrives. Clearly he chooses for the racing car. Then two mothers with 3 girls arrive. And yes the first one chooses the horse, the second the zebra and the last one the camel. The girls have to move themselves to let the pets go. It costs them a lot of energy. When the boy with his electric car has made 5 rounds already, the girls are still halfway with their pets. After one round the girls have to stop. The pets get a nice hug for all the work they have done. The boy is still racing. Then a mother comes along with her little son. He choses the zebra. She is clearly upset and brings him to the cars. No, he definitely wants the zebra. Finally she gives up. It will be the zebra.
With
tramline 5 we move to the beach called Arcadia. It is a narrow beach fully crowded. Around the beach are big restaurants with names like Ibiza, Itaka, Wild West. The huge Itaka restaurant copied a complete Greek temple. Actually they created a big balloon and far too expensive.
Next day we leave Odessa. With Aesosvit (Ukraine Airlines) we fly via Kiev to Tbilisi (Georgia). Kiev is an international airport with international prices, but the quality is not international at all. It is dirty and overcrowded. People are rude, push you away. If you don not know where to go in this mess they treat you like an idiot. It is a country of macho's who learned from their mama's to choose for big cars and not for zebra's. When we enter the plane a big man pushes us away. He wears a bag in his hands. Something is written on it. I read: "Macho".
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Frits
non-member comment
he hallo hier apeldoorn
Hi reizigers, leuk en onderhoudend, al die verhalen in collumvorm. André, we hebben je antwoord ontvangen dus het werkt allema goed. Binnenkort richting Syrië? Hou de benen eronder !