Friday 28 February 2014

The Missing Link: Part 2.2: Chisinau (I)

world-map chisinauGreetings!

The area through which I travelled in this travelogue is in the news again today. It seems that the Russian areas of Ukraine are in rebellion with possible talk of cessation and the involvement of Russian troops. But all that is not so new and for the policymakers and commentators of Kiev and Moscow could do worse than head to their little neighbour Moldova. Last week we looked at Gagauzia, the area that wanted to secede but didn’t and next week we’ll be heading to Transdniestra, the Russian-speaking region of Moldova that went one step further. But for today, let’s head to the capital, the Moldova Kiev, the beating heart of a Moldovan nationalism that gave so much pride to some of its citizens but so scared some of the others. Those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat the same mistakes and so, once again, please, Kiev, heed the lesson of Moldova!

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to all parts of the travelogue:

Introduction

Ukraine

1.1: Konotop

1.2: Chernobyl and Pripyat

1.3: Kiev

1.4: Kiev to Odessa

1.5: Odessa

1.6: Bolgrad

Moldova and Transdniestra

2.1: Bolgrad to Chisinau

2.2: Chisinau (I)

2.3: Tiraspol and Bender

2.4: Chisinau (II) 

Romania

3.1: Iasi (I)

3.2: Iasi (II)

3.3: Suceava

3.4: The Painted Monasteries of Bucovina

3.5: Targu Neamt, Agapia and Sihla

3.6: Suceava to Viseu de Sus

3.7: The Mocanita and Viseu de Sus

3.8: Viseu de Sus to Bucharest

3.9: Bucharest (I)

3.10: Bucharest (II)

My Flickr Album of this trip

MLM05

Chişinău (I)

If the outskirts of Chișinău that I’d passed through in the taxi had been a little different to expectations, then the Hotel Cosmos was a complete surprise. I’d chosen the establishment on one basis alone, the same factor that determines all my hotel choices: cost. I go for cheap, not nice and so rarely do I actually expect my hotels to be any good. And at twenty-storeys high with a hundred and fifty room, I’d expected the Cosmos to be naught more than an impersonal sleeping factory. However, when I arrived there the staff were not just professional – not always a guaranteed in that part of the world – they were friendly and it felt more like I was checking into a homely B&B in Llandudno to which one returns year after year than the former Inturist monolith in the state capital.

Yet part of the Cosmos’ charm was also its Inturist credentials. It had evidently been built in the 1960s as Chișinău’s top hotel: luxury, state-of-the-art, where diplomats and commissars stayed. It was so retro, it was gorgeous, the kind of establishment that James Bond when he was Sean Connery would have stayed in. If only I’d had a dapper Anthony Sinclair suit, (with a Walther PPK hidden in the jacket), a cigarette and a trilby, and I’m sure that as I stepped out a hot chick in an Aston convertible would have swung in to pick me up, closely followed by a couple of cars with blacked-out windows full of gangsters or Soviet spies taking pot-shots at Miss Moneypennescu, (she would be Moldovan after all), and I.

Not that Chișinău is short of gangsters, (more than a few of whom were no doubt once upon a time Soviet spies), cars with blacked-out windows, guns or hot chicks. After checking in I embarked on a walking tour of the centre and saw all of them in abundance, (except the guns which were, after all, hidden in either the blacked-out cars, jackets of the gangsters or handbags of the chicks). It was immediately apparent that this was no normal city, or at least, not one with a normal economy. It was a place of wealth symbolised by the enormous new shopping centre and casino next to my hotel and by the swanky and sophisticated restaurant in which I dined, (lunchtime special 120 lei - $10), next to grinding poverty represented by everything else.. The cars were either brand-new Mercedes-Benzes or BMWs, or decades-old Ladas or Moskviches, whilst every other shop was a bureau de change. In Chișinău it seems, there’s lots of money to change but very little to spend it on.

Whilst Tony Hawk’s had been technically correct about Chișinău being a typical grey and bland Soviet city, (it was completely rebuilt after the war after being subjected to an earthquake in 1940 and heavy bombardments afterwards), I think he was too harsh. Chișinău has a charm to it, I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly, but there is something. My guidebook described it as cosiness but to be honest, I’m not sure that that is the right word.

I wandered along the busy highway of Str. Albişoara and then up B-dul Renaşterii. Whilst Romanian – of Moldovan if you prefer – is clearly the main language here, (and thus I found myself in a zone of incomprehension for the first time on this trip), Russian is still quite prominent on both the signs and the tongues of the locals. Still, that doesn’t seem to be enough for some folk; on the pavement of B-dul Renaşterii some angry citizen had spray-painted a sword sticking into an unhappy face with the legend ‘РУМЫН’ (Romanians) whilst the sword itself was labelled ‘RUSSIA’. No further explanation is needed.

ML074Chișinău grafitti:nasty

I walked up to the Parcul Catedralei, a large green space with the Orthodox Cathedral plonked in the middle. Inside there was a Mass in progress and I stayed to listen to the beautiful liturgy before exiting to investigate the nearby Triumphal Arch around which a chap in a bear suit was milling, trying to entice passers-by to have a photo take with him for a few lei.

ML075

  ML076Chișinău Cathedral, Triumphal Arch and House of the Soviet

I checked out and photographed Chișinău’s other sights – the Government House, the Grădina Publică Ștefan cel Mare și Sfânt with its statue of Ştefan cel Mare on the corner, the Parliament House and the Presidential Palace.

Ştefan cel Mare (Stephen the Great) was a name that I was to see everywhere both in Moldova and across the border in the Romanian province of Moldavia. He’s the martial national hero of the mould that seems to crop up in most tiny nations. As the Prince of Moldavia, a mediaeval kingdom that encompassed both the Republic of Moldova and Romanian Moldavia, he defended his lands against Poland, Hungary but most famously, the Ottomans. In his long career he only ever lost two battles and as a result of his holding back the heathens from Europe for so long, Pope Sixtus IV awarded him the Atheta Christi (Champion of Christ) whilst the Orthodox Church went one further and declared him a saint, (despite the fact that he had fathered over twenty illegitimate children). And if all that were not enough, Ştefan has one other impressive claim to fame: Vlad Ţepeş – better known in the West as ‘Dracula’ – was his cousin.

ML077 Ştefan cel Mare statue, Chișinău

The Grădina Publică, Chișinău’s most famous park, is another pleasant green space in the heart of the city. It has a fountain in its centre and an avenue of busts of Romanian-language literary greats – I had head of none of them, but it was all rather pleasant nonetheless. Chișinău may be no competition for Rome, Paris or London as a tourist hotspot, but at the same time it is also far less pretentious and not burdened with awful eating and drinking establishments enthusiastically described as “contemporary” in the guidebooks. I at least, was happy.

I wandered back to the hotel along B-dul Ştefan cel Mare which has some fine Stalinist buildings lining its sides and stopped off at a bookshop to purchase a Romanian dictionary for my class – I have a steady stream of Romanian students and Romanian dictionaries are for some unknown reason, almost unobtainable back in Britain – as well as some cheesy Moldovan souvenirs and a guidebook to the country – there are none currently in print in the UK – that was so bad it was brilliant. Then I popped into an internet café to see what I was letting myself in for on the morrow when I headed to breakaway Transdniestria before returning to the Cosmos, chatting again to the friendly reception staff and then retiring to my room to wait with my Walther PPK under the pillow and my trilby on the side), for Miss Moneypennescu to show (she never did) passing the time by watching a Korean news channel[1] as the sun set slowly on the Moldovan capital.

ML078 Chișinău

Next part: Tiraspol and Bender

My Flickr Album of this trip


[1] One of the programmes was on the rise of K-Pop (Korean Pop Music) and how it is rapidly gaining in popularity across Asia. ‘Ho hum,’ thought I, ‘it may be popular in China and the Philippines, but songs in Korean will never break the European or American markets.’ Just over a month later the chunky Korean cheester PSY released ‘Gangnam Stayle’ which went viral on YouTube and shot to No. 1 in dozens of countries including the UK and most in Europe. By December 2012 it had become the first video to reach over a billion views on the internet making it by far the most watched music video of all time and the most successful song of 2012. How wrong was I?

Thursday 20 February 2014

The Missing Link: Part 2.1: Bolgrad to Chisinau

world-map chisinauGreetings!

This week’s posting is also slight early and for the same reasons as last week’s: I’m in Wales over the weekend. Last week I headed south, back to St. David’s which I first visited in 2012, where I stayed at Hamilton Backpackers again in Fishguard with the friendly Steve. I also checked out the Roman remains at Caerleon, rode the rails of the Heart of Wales Line and then caught up with Polly and Gabriel whom I met on that first St. David’s trip. They live in the lovely Llandeilo and I was honoured to be hosted by them, thanks!

Llandeilo bridge websizeLlandeilo

This weekend’s journeyings are far less adventurous. My brother has some free accommodation going in Conwy and, well, if you’ve ever been there, you’ll understand why I’m not refusing. If you haven’t then please, rectify that situation! It’s a beautiful place.

But away from Wales for a moment and onto another small country on the fringes of Europe, forgotten by most people but well worth a visit. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you… Moldova!

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to all parts of the travelogue:

Introduction

Ukraine

1.1: Konotop

1.2: Chernobyl and Pripyat

1.3: Kiev

1.4: Kiev to Odessa

1.5: Odessa

1.6: Bolgrad

Moldova and Transdniestra

2.1: Bolgrad to Chisinau

2.2: Chisinau (I)

2.3: Tiraspol and Bender

2.4: Chisinau (II) 

Romania

3.1: Iasi (I)

3.2: Iasi (II)

3.3: Suceava

3.4: The Painted Monasteries of Bucovina

3.5: Targu Neamt, Agapia and Sihla

3.6: Suceava to Viseu de Sus

3.7: The Mocanita and Viseu de Sus

3.8: Viseu de Sus to Bucharest

3.9: Bucharest (I)

3.10: Bucharest (II)

My Flickr Album of this trip

MLM05

PART TWO: MOLDOVA AND TRANSDNIESTRIA

FLAG MOLDOVA

FLAG Transnistria

Journey: Bolgrad - Chișinău

It is probably the greatest feeling for any traveller: a new day and a new country; virgin territory, unexplored and unknown. About ten minutes after boarding the bus in Bolgrad’s bus station, we were crossing over the border from Ukraine to Moldova.

Moldova is a country that, it is probably fair to say, most people don’t know a lot about beyond the fact that it has a football team that it’s good to get drawn against in World Cup Qualifiers as you’re virtually guaranteed six points.

Moldova is a small slither of a country, only 33,851km² in size,[1] sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania. Its main claim to fame is that it is the poorest country in Europe, a dubious honour which it wrested from the arms of Albania who had been carrying the trophy for decades. Other Moldovan facts are that it became independent in 1991, before which it was the Moldavian SSR, that during Soviet times it was the place where most of the USSR’s wine was produced and that today as we power forward into the 21st century, a considerable proportion of the population dislikes being in this new and independent Moldova so much that it has declared independence from the rest of the country and now operates as a separate state with its own borders, laws, currency, military and government.

That independent state however, appears on no map as it is unrecognised by any other country on earth. It does however, exist, and it is called Transdniestria[2] and its green and red flag flies proudly in the city of Tiraspol which it refers to as its capital but Moldova considers to be its second city. Moldova’s capital by the way, is Chișinău but the Transdniestrians, (or any other Russian-speakers), call that ‘Kishinev’. Not only that, but Transdniestria’s flag is red and green because it is the flag of the old Moldavian SSR and so it also has a hammer and sickle on it and if that was not enough, their anthem is the old anthem of the Moldavian SSR. Not only is Transdniestria a country that isn’t, but it is also still officially a socialist state, a slice of the old Soviet Union preserved in surreal obscurity.

Can there be therefore, a better stamp on earth to have embossed in your passport?

But if all of that wasn’t enough, then listen to this! The Transdniestrians aren’t the only ones to find themselves not entirely happy with being in the republic of Moldova after the upheavals of 1991. In certain areas of the south of the country, as I discussed earlier, the Gagauz are the majority population and when the Russian-speakers across the Dniester River began clamouring for their independence, then this lot too decided that they would like a bit.

The history goes as follows: Back in the dark and hazy days when the region was part of the Principality of Moldavia, that region of Southern Bessarabia was inhabited by the Turkic Nogai, a nomadic people originally from the regions north and east of the Caspian Sea. When the territory became part of the Russian Empire in 1812, the Nogai were all forced out and settled elsewhere, and the now-empty land settled with immigrants from Bulgarian Dobrudja, the Bulgarians primarily settling, as we have already seen, more to the south around their new city, Bolgrad, whilst the Gagauz further north around Comrat[3] where they formed a majority. There they lived peacefully enough until 1989 when the first cracks began to appear in the USSR and Gagauz nationalism started to stir. On the 31st August, 1989 two measures were passed by the increasingly nationalistic[4] Supreme Soviet in Chișinău. The first was that Moldovan – in essence a dialect of Romanian – became the official language in place of Russian whilst the second was that an official ‘linguistic Moldo-Romanian identity’ was proclaimed which led to the language now being written in Latin script, (as in Romania), as opposed to Cyrillic, (as it had been before). It was classic nationalism; realising that the old order was passing the Romanian majority rushed to assert their supremacy after years of being dominated by Russian language and culture. All well and good in Chișinău, but in both Gagauzia and Transdniestria it rang alarm bells for both the Gagauz and the Slavs of the East Bank of the Dniester had no cultural affiliations with the Romanians and many could not even speak this new official national language. The rumblings of discontent began.

And as the next twelve months unfolded, those rumblings only got louder. The Berlin Wall fell and the Warsaw Pact regimes toppled like dominoes – East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and then Moldova’s big brother Romania itself in a bloody revolution. Inspired and emboldened by these events, the nationalists in the Supreme Soviet voted on the 27th April, 1990 to change the flag of the Moldavian SSR to that of the Romanian tricolour and the anthem to that of Romania as well. With the USSR visibly on its last legs talks of a full political union with Bucharest began to be bandied about and the minorities got scared. There were protests in both Gagauzia and Transdniestria calling for autonomy within Moldova but these calls were firmly rejected by the hardline Moldovan nationalists in the Supreme Soviet and so in August 1990 a Comrat Autonomous Republic was declared, separate from the Moldavian SSR, which then applied to be readmitted into the USSR as a separate entity.

Things simmered along uncomfortably until the dramatic events of August 1991 when the putsch of hard-line communists in Moscow failed and the USSR finally disintegrated. On the 27th August, 1991 Moldova declared its independence whilst pre-empting that, on the 19th August Gagauzia declared its own independence in the face of the intransigence of the Moldovan nationalists to recognise Gagauz demands for autonomy.

Eventually the Moldovan government – which had more than enough on its plate with Transdniestria also declaring independence – toned down its nationalistic stance and paid more attention to the rights of the country’s minorities. In February 1994 the Moldovan President Mircea Snegur prmised the Gagauz the autonomy that they’d been asking for although he stopped short at full independence. The Gagauz guessed that the deal on the table was the best that they were going to get so they accepted it and decided – unlike the inhabitants of Transdniestria – to remain within Moldova and thus on the 23rd December, 1994 the Law on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia was passed. That day is now the Gagauz National Holiday.

As a fan of obscure minorities and quirky political entities and semi-states, I was of course most interested and intrigued by Gagauzia and would have loved to have time to stop there and look around, but I already had a hotel booked in Chișinău  that night so instead I had to be satisfied with what I could see from my bus window.

Initially though, I must confess that there was in fact very little to see. The roads in Moldova were noticeably bumpier than across the border but aside from that it was more of the same big empty spaces that dominate Ukraine. Indeed, for the first twenty miles or so, the only points of interest were some excellent Soviet Era signs for grand collective farms that were occasionally planted by the roadside. Seeing them reminded me of reading Mikhail Sholokov’s excellent ‘Virgin Soil Upturned’ novels which describe the establishment of and life on a collective farm in the Don region. My favourite of these Moldovan collective farm signs was that for the ‘Светловскии колект’ (Svetlovskii Collective) which depicted two heroic workers, one stood tall pointing the way to a brighter future whilst the other knelt down holding the fruits of their labours – bunches of fine grapes.

ML001  This is the way comrades! The sign for the Svetlovskii Collective Farm

In the town of Congaz I noticed something else of interest. Every few hundred metres by the roadside were wooden wells, whilst less often but far more colourful, there were roadside shrines with beautiful carved crucifixes. What was obvious was that this region was both intensely religious and that they had no running water. Nowhere else in Europe have I encountered the latter.

ML070  A roadside well in Congaz

The capital of Gagauzia is Comrat and whilst on the surface it appeared much like a thousand and one other impoverished small towns east of Berlin, when I looked a little closer, I did notice some small differences. All the notices were in three languages: Moldovan, Russian and Turkish and above some of the buildings flew an unfamiliar flag. Its top half is blue with three yellow stars whilst at the bottom are horizontal red and white stripes. It is the official flag of Gagauzia.

ML071  The Flag of Gagauzia

We stopped for drinks and a toilet break at Comrat Bus Station so I alighted in order to say that I have set foot upon the territory of Gagauzia. The bus station was new and a plaque on the wall declared that it had been the gift of US Aid. Better than bombs I suppose. Signs of Gagauz identity abounded from the flag on the roof to a poster map of the territory on the wall and many signs in the Turkish language. On the train to Odessa, Genaidy had said, with a hint of envy and mistrust I suspect, that Turkey has been pouring money into Gagauzia in an effort to promote the Gagauz identity and whilst there were signs of Turkish cultural influence, the only visible signs of new money – or indeed any money– in town were a new block of apartments and the bus station itself which, of course, the Americans had coughed up for. There are a few references on the internet to Turkish investment in the region including $35 million on Gagauzia’s roads, but judging from what I saw and the bumps that I endured on my journey through the province, I suspect that most of that cash has ended up in someone’s back pocket.

ML072  Poster on the wall in Comrat bus station. Gagauzia is the white area at the bottom of the map. Although not clear from this picture, it is actually divided into four separate sections, separated by predominantly Bulgarian villages

As for the locals themselves, did they display any noticeable differences to their neighbours? Well, they didn’t look Slavic, that was for sure and they were somewhat duskier than most of the Moldovans that I saw in Chișinău. Furthermore, everyone was speaking in a language totally incomprehensible to me, but to be fair, that could just as easily have been Moldovan as Gagauz.

The remainder of the journey up to Chișinău was more of the same, although nearing the capital the awful road turned into a highway and the vast plains evolved into more intimate folds and for the first time on my trip I beheld a landscape that I would describe as ‘European’.

The bus terminated at the Southern Bus Station, some several kilometres out of the city and I had to take a taxi to my hotel. At first I thought the fare of $6 to be perhaps a little steep but I hadn’t realised just how far the journey to Hotel Cosmos would be and in the end I realised that Moldova was a country that is extremely good value.

My only previous knowledge of Chișinău came from reading Tony Hawks’ hilarious travelogue ‘Playing the Moldovans at Tennis’ in which the British funny-man is watching a football game between England and Moldova which the English win 4-0 and the Moldovans are unbelievably rubbish. This causes him and his mate to have a debate on whether the skills from one sport can be passed onto another and Hawks to declare that, since he is reasonably good at tennis and the Moldovans toss at football, he could beat all the Moldovan football players at tennis. Naturally, such boastful claims must be proven and so the two men have a bet and Hawks jets off to Chișinău. His impressions of the city however, are far from positive:

However, the place that enfolded before my eyes on that taxi journey into the centre was quite different indeed. Built on a series of hills, Chișinău is lush and green and brimming with parks. We went past the university and some fine villas as well as a mammoth memorial to the dead of World War II before finally entering the centre and pulling up before the Hotel Cosmos, an immense twenty-odd storey concrete slab in front of the bus Pl. Negruzzi.

ML073  Journey’s end: Hotel Cosmos, Chișinău

Next part: 2.2: Chisinau (I)

My Flickr Album of this trip


[1] Similar in size to Albania. As a comparison, Romania is more than seven times its size whilst Ukraine almost nine times bigger.

[2] Or as it is sometimes rendered in English, ‘Transnistria’ or ‘Trans-Dniestr’. Its Russian name is Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, (abbreviated to ‘PMR’ although often referred to as ‘Pridnestrovie’). The name literally means “Land beyond the River Dniester”.

[3] Incidentally, the city name is thought to be Nogai in origin, one of the few reminders of their presence.

[4] When I talk of Moldovan nationalism, I am referring to the nationalism of the majority Moldovan-speakers. Moldovan is essentially a dialect of Romanian and their nationalism stresses ties with their neighbour to the west, with many wishing for a full political union between the two countries.

Wednesday 12 February 2014

The Missing Link: Part 1.6: Bolgrad

world-map bolgradGreetings!

Today’s posting is a strange one for me. Although I’ve never been one for a really strict itinerary, before every trip I do my research and always have a rough idea of where I’ll be going. Ok, so some of the ideas might not be practical and other places are better than anticipated so I stick around there longer but generally, I know where I’m headed.

My trip to Bolgrad however, was not planned. Indeed, I’d never even heard of the place before I took the train down from Kiev to Odessa. It wasn’t in any guidebooks and only had a very limited internet presence. Still, after talking to Genaidy about Ukraine’s Bulgarians and their capital (Bolgrad literally means ‘Bulgar Town’), then I knew that I had to go. Copule that with my love of setting off for a day or two to a dull provincial dump and you can guess how I found it. A highlight of the trip indeed, but unlike most highlights, totally unexpected.

By the by, this week’s posting is a few days early as I’m off walking and sightseeing in South Wales for a few days on the train.

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to all parts of the travelogue:

Introduction

Ukraine

1.1: Konotop

1.2: Chernobyl and Pripyat

1.3: Kiev

1.4: Kiev to Odessa

1.5: Odessa

1.6: Bolgrad

Moldova and Transdniestra

2.1: Bolgrad to Chisinau

2.2: Chisinau (I)

2.3: Tiraspol and Bender

2.4: Chisinau (II) 

Romania

3.1: Iasi (I)

3.2: Iasi (II)

3.3: Suceava

3.4: The Painted Monasteries of Bucovina

3.5: Targu Neamt, Agapia and Sihla

3.6: Suceava to Viseu de Sus

3.7: The Mocanita and Viseu de Sus

3.8: Viseu de Sus to Bucharest

3.9: Bucharest (I)

3.10: Bucharest (II)

My Flickr Album of this trip

MLM04

Bolgrad

Getting to my bus that morning proved to be trickier than I’d anticipated. The marshrutka that I knew went to the bus station never came so I got on another which took me through a wilderness of factories and railway yards before finally, to my great relief, re-emerging back onto the main road just shy of the bus station.

It was a ride of several hours to Bolgrad, a ride through the now-familiar large, flat and fertile fields which made Ukraine the bread-basket of the USSR. Highlights were the crossing of the Dniester – one of the great rivers of Ukraine and a waterway that I’d be seeing much more of later – and then passing through a checkpoint at the place where Moldova almost touches the sea and Ukraine is only as wide as the road which connects the Bolgrad region with the rest of the country.[1]

On the way I noticed a couple of distinctive features of the local landscape. The first was that, unlike in the north, all the land here appeared to be cultivated. The second was that the local houses were all beautifully-decorated with wooden or plaster ornamentation and that each had its date of construction emblazoned across its front.

ML059 A typical house with its construction year on the front

Nearing Bolgrad we passed through the village of Zhortnevoe which is where Genaidy had told me that all the Albanians lived. I peeled my eyes for any signs of difference which may distinguish this, the only Albanian village in all of Ukraine, but there was nothing, not even a solitary black eagle hung up in a window and disappointingly, Zhortnevoe looked much like any other village in that part of the world.

We rolled into Bolgrad’s dusty bus station and the bus emptied itself. I hailed a taxi and asked him to take me to the cheapest hotel in town. As he was driving me there he enquired as to why I was visiting Bolgrad and when I told him about Genaidy on the train he declared, “Welcome to the Capital of the Bessarabian Bulgarians!”

The hotel was a brand-new establishment at the northern end of the main street. Straightaway I realised that I was not in the same Ukraine that I had left that morning for the TV in the reception area was playing chalga – Bulgarian folk-pop music – beamed in live from Sofia.

After dumping my bags I began my exploration of this Bulgaria abroad. I dined at a restaurant where the staff understood perfectly what I said and I them and then, full and happy, I wandered into the centre.

Bolgrad is evidently a new, planned city. When I say ‘new’ I mean built within the last two hundred years and when I say ‘planned’ I mean just that; it was inspired by the plan although the end result was perhaps not necessarily too much like the vision that the planner had. It is built on a strict grid system with one main street – Lenin Street – traversing the entire city from north to south and distinguishable from all the other streets by being a boulevard with a long narrow park down the centre. At the heart of the planner’s vision, (although it reality, it’s down the southern end of town since the town grew more in one direction than the other), is a large grassy park with the city’s cathedral plonked in the centre. A grand vision indeed, although, as I said already, not really one that came off.

The problem is that the plan is ideal for a city of say fifty thousand souls yet the population of Bolgrad is today less than twenty thousand. Consequently it is huge, spread out and all rather empty. From my hotel to the cathedral it was a walk of well over a kilometre and all the blocks that I passed were filled with low-level housing. It reminded me of what I imagine the small suburban towns of the USA to be like except that in Bolgrad the fences are chicken wire, not white picket, the vehicles on the roads are Ladas and horse-drawn carts rather than SUVs and away from the centre, those roads become unmetalled tracks with flocks of geese and stray dogs wandering along them. Bolgrad is the American Dream not quite fulfilled.

ML060 A Bolgrad street

And that is true in more senses than one. I went into the town museum to learn more about the fascinating Bessarabian Bulgarians that Genaidy had introduced me to on the train and I discovered many parallels with the early American settlers. Like them the Bulgarians[2] had left their homeland for the prospect of a better life and freedom to practise their faith without persecution in a new and empty land, (Orthodox Christians had to put up with many indignities in the Ottoman Empire including the detested Blood Tax in which some of their male children were taken away to be raised as Muslims and become janissaries). But also like the USA which was being settled at much the same time, this newly-conquered virgin territory was not really empty land at all, it had been inhabited for millennia by nomads, in this case the Turkic Nogai who originated from the regions north and east of the Caspian Sea and who, like so many of the American Indians, were moved off their lands (1820-46) and forced to settle in particular areas, in the case of the Nogai in the Crimea, Azov and Stavropol regions where many of their descendents live to this day.[3]

Genaidy had told me that the Bessarabian Bulgarians had all come to the region under the invitation of Catherine the Great whilst she probably did first invite them to come and settle, (Catherine reigned from 1762 to 1796 and the first recording of Bulgarians in the region was in 1769), the vast majority came much later following the Russo-Turkish Wars of 1806-12 and 1828-9. Bolgrad itself was founded in 1821 by a man whose picture was everywhere in the museum and who seems to be regarded as the No. 1 Hero and Founding Father par excellence by Bolgradians. His name was Ivan Inzov and he was a commander in the Napoleonic Wars and then made Governor of Bessarabia in 1818. Due to their physical similarities and his rapid rise despite obscure origins, rumours abounded that he was in fact the illegitimate son of Emperor Paul, (although Paul was only fourteen years his senior!), but even more famous than his possible dad was one of the men subordinate to him, one Alexander Pushkin who in fact stayed for some time in the infant city of Bolgrad.

ML061 ML062

A sketch of Ivan Inzov by Pushkin and a painting depicting his funeral, (he is buried in Bolgrad)

Beyond the fascinating story of its foundation, there was lots more to learn in Bolgrad’s little museum, and the museum’s two curators – middle-aged ladies who were proud yet surprised to have a foreign, (and one that spoke Bulgarian to boot!), visit their establishment went into great detail over it all. There was a lengthy section on the Holodomor which I had been reading all about in ‘Bloodlands’ although I suspect that this was more because of its inclusion on a nationalist school history curriculum than any other reason for during the 1930s Bolgrad and the entire region around it were part of the Kingdom of Romania and so thankfully, that particular tragedy passed the city by completely.

One tragedy that did affect the city though was the Holocaust. Like in Odessa, Bolgrad had had a Jewish community and like in Odessa they had been rounded up and murdered, not by the Germans but the Romanians. Unlike in Odessa though, none remained today although the curators informed me that the synagogue building still stands, now used as a Baptist church.

Moving onto religion there was a section on Bolgrad’s two Orthodox churches including the cathedral with an icon from Sliven in Bulgaria which was brought by the migrants when the city was founded. There were also examples of Bulgarian and Gagauz costume and plaques celebrating the participation of Bolgrad’s Bulgarians in a folk festival in General Toshevo[4] which I remember Genaidy saying he attended in his youth.

ML063Mementoes of their Dobrudjan homeland, Bolgrad Museum

Once I’d seen all that there was to see in the museum, I hd a wander around the town itself. It was a pleasant, low-key kind of place, this Capital of the Bessarabian Bulgarians. In the centre of the street which bears his name was a statue of Lenin arm outstretched, whilst further down that street was an obligatory memorial to those who had died in the Great Patriotic War. I walked up to the magnificent Cathedral of the Transfiguration in its central park but found to my disappointment that it was closed, the cause being all too obvious: there had been a fire recently and its grand dome was now but a charred shell.[5]

ML064 The charred remains of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration, Bolgrad

In the grounds of the cathedral was another war memorial, this time dedicated to those who fell in the USSR’s and Ukraine’s foreign wars. All the names that I had read about in that museum by Kiev’s Rodnya Mat were there as well as a couple of newer ones: Yugoslavia 1992-2000 and Iraq 2003-6.

I went up to the post office to post a card to Bulgaria from its foreign colony and then bought an ice cream. As I ambled back towards Lenin St. I came across the former synagogue, a fine building which is now a church and looks as if it had been designed for that purpose, the only clue to its former incarnation as the temple of a much older religion – and the only memorial to a felled community – being a small plaque on the wall inscribed with a Star of David, a menorah and the words:

Здесь, в здании бывшей синагоги, в годы фашистской оккупации, были зверски замучены сотни безвинных евреев.

Вечная им память.

Here, in a building of a former synagogue, during the fascist occupation, hundreds innocent Jews were brutally murdered.

Eternal be their memory.

The story is a tragic one, as tragic as the thousands of other Holocaust stories which litter central and eastern Europe. The synagogue itself was only built in 1938, the pride of the Jewish community, but when it was but a few years old most of Bolgrad’s Jews were herded into it, the doors barricaded and the building set alight. None survived.

ML065 Bolgrad’s former synagogue: the setting for an unimaginable horror

The weather was hot so I had a drink of kvass by the Lenin statue and then wandered back to my hotel passing a fire station, an overgrown park and lots of houses on my way. I then retreated into an internet café to research on what I had been told in the museum and also watch the highlights of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in London before going back to my room for a lie down. Then, when things had cooled somewhat but the day was still light, I re-emerged and strolled to the edge of town to survey the view across the valley, (I’d seen it on a postcard earlier and it looked nice but in reality it wasn’t that impressive), before heading into the centre to celebrate my last night in Ukraine with a taste of the local nightlife.

Now Capital of the Bessarabian Bulgarians Bolgrad may be, but unfortunately for me, party capital of anywhere, anyone or anything it ain’t and my night on the town didn’t really pan out as I’d hoped. I headed first to the Lenin statue where I’d spied a bar earlier, but it was shutting so I then went for a drink and a snack at an awful soulless place near to the synagogue. That too was closing so I retreated back to the hotel, my walk transforming into a sprint as a spectacular electric storm broke with forks of lightning and rain lashing down. I dived into the eatery where I’d had lunch and there I wiled the night away drinking Chernigivske whilst reflecting on Bolgrad in particular and Ukraine as a whole, the country I would be leaving on the morrow.

To be fair, I’d found Ukraine interesting. I’d not fallen in love with the country as the author of my guidebook clearly had[6] but I liked it. Not everything about it mind, after all, the Ukrainians locked me up for no bloody reason once which is enough to put a dampener on any country, but even taking that little episode out of the equation one has to admit that even the most fervent Ukrainophile would struggle to deny that, scenically-speaking, Ukraine is rather dull. Whilst large, flat – or at best, undulating – fields do have a sort-of attraction to them in a vast and empty kind of way, it’s not that much of an attraction and unfortunately they seem to dominate most of the country. Ok, so there are the Carpathian Mountains in the north west which I didn’t visit and which are meant to be nice, but even with these, they are a very small proportion of the total and most experts reckon that Romania got all the best bits of the Carpathians. No, I’m sorry to say this, but if you’re looking for scenery, then don’t come to Ukraine.

Or at least, if you’re looking for that kind of scenery, don’t head there. However, if you seek scenery in the sense of “I’m a straight male who loves to look at really beautiful views all day long” then do go to Ukraine, please God, go there! Nowhere on earth and I mean nowhere has women as beautiful to behold as those on display in Kiev. Period. Ukrainian girls are stunningly, brain-curdlingly fit. I have long proclaimed Bulgarian ladies to be the hottest on the planet but I I was wrong, I admit it brothers, I was wrong. Not very wrong mind, because Bulgarian ladies are stunning and indeed, not all that dissimilar to their Ukrainian sisters in appearance – the Slavic body shape is distinctive and heavenly – but those Kiev cuties take the title. They have more variety I think, they are dark and light, blonde and brunette, (Bulgarian babes tend to the dark eyes, dark hair end of the spectrum). Ukrainian girls are elegant, they are feminine, they have eyes which you could dive straight into and buttocks which, well… you get the picture.

Which is probably why Ukraine is the top destination in Europe for ‘romance tourists’; single men seeking a hot, young bride. The only other travellers that I came across during my entire trip, (save for my fellow day-trippers to Chernobyl), fell into that category, and one can certainly understand the fantasy of having a Kiev cutie sharing your bed until death do you part. Except that in most cases, alas, it is but a fantasy; economic factors rather than true love are behind most unions and, if you think about it, a lot of romance tourism is not all that different to prostitution which does not sound so mystically beautiful. Still, standing behind a pretty young thing on the escalator of the Kiev Metro and you can still dream…

But aside from the women, Ukraine is not really a country of ‘sights’. There are no world-class attractions and so it does not attract many tourists. But for me, that is all good. Despite arriving at the start of the summer and only a week before the kick-off of Euro 2012, I had the country to myself and getting off the beaten track was not only possible, it was unavoidable. And that made for a fascinating trip.

Part of that fascination is what I term “car crash tourism” born of the same impulse that causes everyone going in the opposite direction to slow down and take a look when there’s an accident on the motorway. I’ve always sought out those places with some association to the darker episodes in human history, from Hiroshima to Auschwitz, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields to Stalin’s Birthplace. I don’t even know why it is that I do such things but I do. Perhaps it’s because life has taught me that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes?

Or perhaps it’s because I’m a bit of a sick guy?

And no country knows misery and misfortune quite like Ukraine. Invaded and ravished by everyone from Genghis Khan to the British Empire, it is today an impoverished, corrupt country with an Orange Revolution that failed to deliver and a pissed off big brother to the north who regularly switches off the power supply. Yet all that is pretty positive compared to her woes seven decades ago. Historians agree that the two worst things to hit your land during the 20th century were Hitler and Stalin. Ukraine got both of them and it got them both at their nastiest. Along with Poland it suffered more than any other country during World War II and most of the fighting and dying done by Soviets in what they call the great Patriotic War was done in Ukraine by Ukrainians. The awful catalogue of tales that I read in ‘Bloodlands’ of Nazi actions and atrocities within her borders beggars belief, yet prior to that great conflict she’d also suffered the Purges and the horrific Holodomor, an entirely human-engineered famine which killed over three million. I dislike nationalism with a passion and the Ukrainian brand leaves me as cold as all the others but d’you know what?

I can understand why they don’t like the Russians.

And perhaps the ultimate car crash tourism site on earth is Chernobyl. After all, it’s a veritable theme park of how screwed-up man can make things. Where else can you wander through a landscape laid waste by a nuclear holocaust, a landscape which, over twenty-five years after the event, is still uninhabitable and eerily unusable. No other day trip on earth can compare with it from feeding the monster mutant fish to visiting the Ferris wheel that never worked to wandering through a deserted nursery with freaky dolls on wire beds and children’s books lying on the floor to ogling a hot chick bend over with a buzzing Geiger counter. Sorry guys, but Disneyworld just doesn’t come close!

But Ukraine’s fascination is not all car crash and curvaceous cuties, there is far more than that. I found her little community of Bulgarians tucked away in her far south-western corner to be intriguing, Kiev’s station buffet amazing and Konotop’s Lenin statue and grumbling trams charming. That if anything, is why I liked Ukraine. In 1998 I first travelled to the Eastern Bloc, to Romania and Bulgaria, and I fell in love with it. However, years of economic prosperity and EU membership have took their toll and transformed most of the former Warsaw Pact countries into slightly-cheaper slightly-different copies of Western European states. Good for their citizens maybe, but for me a bit of a bummer. Back then I was the only Westerner to be seen; nowadays everybody’s uncle has a holiday home there.

But in Ukraine no one has a holiday home and no one save those seeking a gorgeous new life partner ever ventures near. And so it is like Bulgaria, but not the Bulgaria of today, but the Bulgaria of the bad old days, twenty years before. And I liked that. As I said, I’m a bit of a sick guy.

ML066 Ukraine: not that scenic

Next part: Bolgrad to Chisinau

My Flickr Album of this trip


[1] Not entirely true since at the far end of the Dniester Estuary there’s a dam and a bridge over which another road and a railway line run.

[2] And when I say this, I include also the Gagauz and the Albanians since all three groups had previously lived in Bulgarian Dobrudja, an ethnically-mixed area of the country which I discuss at length in my travelogue ‘Balkania’.

[3] The name of the Nogai tribe in the area was Budjak which today is the name of the region in which Bolgrad is situated.

[4] Now named ‘Dobrich’ this city is seen as the ‘capital’ of Bulgarian Dobrudja, the region from which the Bessarabian Bulgarians are said to originate from.

[5] The fire I later learnt occurred on the 26th Jan, some five months or so before my visit.

[6] Andrew Evans, Bradt Ukraine

Friday 7 February 2014

The Missing Link: Part 1.5: Odessa

world-map odessa

Greetings!

One of the most famous films of the 20th century is Sergei Eisenstein’s classic silent tale of revolution ‘Battleship Potemkin’ and the most famous scene from that film is undoubtedly when the pram with the baby in it goes bouncing down Odessa’s Potemkin Steps. After seeing that back in my university days I always knew that, one day, I would visit Odessa. And we reach today’s destination, the multi-cultural city of Ukraine that’s still more Russian than Ukrainian but also more than a bit Jewish, Greek, Turkish, Bulgarian… you name it.

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

battleship-potemkin

Links to all parts of the travelogue:

Introduction

Ukraine

1.1: Konotop

1.2: Chernobyl and Pripyat

1.3: Kiev

1.4: Kiev to Odessa

1.5: Odessa

1.6: Bolgrad

Moldova and Transdniestra

2.1: Bolgrad to Chisinau

2.2: Chisinau (I)

2.3: Tiraspol and Bender

2.4: Chisinau (II) 

Romania

3.1: Iasi (I)

3.2: Iasi (II)

3.3: Suceava

3.4: The Painted Monasteries of Bucovina

3.5: Targu Neamt, Agapia and Sihla

3.6: Suceava to Viseu de Sus

3.7: The Mocanita and Viseu de Sus

3.8: Viseu de Sus to Bucharest

3.9: Bucharest (I)

3.10: Bucharest (II)

My Flickr Album of this trip

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Odessa_map_english

Odessa

It was early in the morning when we pulled into Odessa’s grand terminal. As I alighted I thought how it looked like a super-sized version of Varna’s railway station but then well it might for the two cities share much in common. Whilst Varna is Bulgaria’s main city on the Black Sea, Odessa was the USSR’s, both cosmopolitan and both dominated by the ocean. Odessa however, is much newer than Varna. Although it appears aged, it is in fact younger than most Ukrainian cities. Only two hundred years old, it was founded by Catherine the Great who decided to give it Classical credentials by naming it after Odessos, an Ancient Greek colony on the Black Sea coast. And Odessos today, why there’s a city built on the same site; it’s in Bulgaria and called Varna. So, yes indeed, one can say that the two cities share much in common.

On the platform I apprehended a woman offering “DOM”, (literally ‘a room’). The exorbitant hotel prices in Kiev had scared me somewhat and in the past in Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Georgia, I’ve had great experiences with such doms, so I got on a marshrutka with her and headed off to her place.

That place turned out to be a small house in Luzanivka, near to the Central Beach but considerably further from the centre of Odessa than I’d have liked, (some six miles give or take). The dom in question was an outhouse, hardly fit for human habitation, and whilst she was smiley and helpful, her husband possibly the most miserable and ignorant fellow in all Ukraine. However, it was cheap and I was tired so I took it and then settled down to sleep, eventually arising just before noon ready to explore a new city.

I took a marshrutka into town as my landlady had instructed me to, (there were trams as well, but she said that these were much slower), but I got on the wrong one and instead of taking me to the city centre it skirted the town to the east and deposited me on a duel-carriageway by the city’s bus station. Still, every cloud has a silver lining and as it happened I needed to go to the bus station anyhow. After talking to Genaidy on the train I’d decided, if it was feasible, to alter my plans and instead of travelling direct to Chişinău, take a detour via Bolgrad. It all depended on whether there was a border crossing into Moldova in the far south near Bolgrad and, if there was such a crossing, whether it was open to international travellers. I made a few enquiries and discovered that there was a crossing and a bus to Chişinău from Bolgrad so I decided to risk it and booked myself on a bus out to the land of Ukraine’s Bulgarians for the morning after next.

That done I walked into town ready to explore Ukraine’s fifth-largest city. As I walked I came across an enormous street market, a car boot without the cars with bric-a-brac and other goods laid out on wallpaper tables or blankets by the side of the road. There was everything there from car engines to stamps, vases to military uniforms and I was in my element. An incurable hoarder of junk and an avid collector of world banknotes, I browsed around and picked up some old Ukrainian banknotes, some NEP[1] coupons, some English grammar books in Russian for my students back in England and an adaptor so that I could charge up my camera which had died that morning.

On into the centre itself and Odessa reminded me more and more of an oversized Varna. Like its Bulgarian sister, it too has an enormous cathedral in a square just next to the main shopping district. Odessa’s however, is not in traditional Orthodox style but is instead a Baroque edifice which looks more suited to Roman Catholic than Orthodox worship. Inside it is empty, airy and white, quite unlike the majority of Orthodox churches which are famously dark and smoky. When I visited there were flowers everywhere and straw strewn across the floor in honour of some unknown celebration and the priests were busy blessing the faithful. I queued up with them but despite getting sprinkled with holy water and kissing the icon, in Odessa I found that, like with the Lavra, “Sweet Orthodoxy” was not quite entering my soul.[2]

ML052 Odessa Cathedral

I popped into an internet café to research a little on my next stop, Bolgrad, and discovered that the town has two hotels, and also to book a room in Chişinău, (the prices of Kiev were still playing on my mind and I had no guidebook for Moldova), before then heading out into the open again and dining on a shwarma and kvass.

Kvass is available on every street corner in Ukraine, sold from little mobile carts just like ice cream and doughnuts often are. It’s the national soft drink, (although slightly alcoholic), and is made from old black bread and sugar. I’d tried it once before – either in Russia or Latvia, I can’t remember which – and found it quite disgusting, but here I liked it and found myself regularly stopping off for a glass.

I walked down Odessa’s main drag Deribasovskaya, full of beautiful people parading in their summer best or simply lounging about in cafés. Again I was reminded of Varna but I did not like this newer and larger copy of Odessos so much; the charm of Varna to me is her historic heart with its ancient churches and Roman remains,[3] but this Odessos, like all new towns, was lacking such areas.

I continued down towards the Potemkin steps and near to the opera house I came across a beggar. She was a middle-aged lady who approached me respectfully and informed me that her son needed expensive hospital treatment but that she was no beggar, oh no, not her, and instead she was prepared to work for any money I may care to donate her way at which point she then broke out into full operatic song. Standing on a street corner with a screeching and wailing woman before me I didn’t really know where to put myself, so I took a few grivna out of my pocket and placed them in her collecting cup. She began to suggest that my donation was perhaps a little meagre given that she is a professionally-trained singer and working for the money not begging at all when a fat Roman lady came up, hand outstretched and enquired whether I might wish to bestow a similar blessing upon her. At this point the operatic beggar who wasn’t a beggar at all forgot all about me and my grivna and instead started laying into the gypsy and telling her to find somewhere else to scrounge. I quickly made my escape as cries of “I am working not begging! Get away with you, you lazy beggar!” interspersed with segments of opera classics drifted across the air.

Many cities have landmarks that are known beyond the national borders; Marrakesh the Djemaa-el-Fna, Milan the Domo, and Odessa too has one landmark which is known far afield. And uniquely, that landmark is not a building or a natural feature but instead a flight of steps, the Potemkin Steps.

They were built in 1841 and led from the town down to the water’s edge, (nowadays there’s a port in the way and they terminate by a road). They are large and they are impressive but nonetheless they are still only a flight of steps when all is said and done and so perhaps not really deserving of global fame. That fame though is due less to the glory of the steps themselves and more to the starring role that they play in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1921 film ‘Battleship Potemkin’ (hence the name) which details the story of a 1905 socialist mutiny on board the battleship which was then parked in Odessa harbour. The film was regarded then and still today as a cinematic classic and its most famous and immortal scene is of a pram with a baby inside bouncing down the steps, the mother killed by the reactionary Tsarist troops.

When I visited there was a party going on at the head of the steps with pretty girls belly dancing on a stage whilst a crowd watched on appreciatively, (myself included I may add). After viewing several performances of bottom-wiggling beauty I went for a walk along the Primorski Boulevard and wished my son were there with me for there were entertainers there with every kind of exotic animal imaginable – white doves, a mini pony, a peacock, a monkey, an eagle, chinchillas and a baby crocodile – all for people to hold and take photos with. He would have loved it! I bought another kvass and sat on a wall overlooking arguably the most famous flight of steps on earth and then once finished, descended those immortal slabs of stone before taking a marshrutka at the bottom back to my room.

ML053 The Potemkin Steps

On my second day of Odessan explorations, I took the safe – if slower – option of the tram into town. There was little that I really wanted to see now, so I decided to take things slow and potter about at a relaxed pace.

My first port-of-call was the city’s Archaeological Museum but this was shut so I tried the Literacy Museum which also turned out to be closed but at least had a garden dotted with statues depicting Odessa’s literary greats.

Realising that all state-run museums are shut on Mondays, I instead tried the private sector, traipsing across the city to the Jewish Quarter. Odessa was renowned as one of the most multi-cultural of the USSR’s cities and despite the ravages of the Holocaust and the equally devastating effects of migration to Israel and the West which have reduced the city’s Jewish population from around 70% of the whole population to a little under 3% today, there is still a distinctive Hebrew feel to the neighbourhood.

And nowhere is this more pronounced than in the city’s privately-run (and thus open) Jewish Museum. Situated inside a couple of former apartments it was without doubt the best museum that I visited during my entire trip and an exquisite window onto an almost-disappeared world.

When I entered I was offered a guided tour although the curator warned me in advance about her poor English skills. She needn’t have bothered mind, since she turned out to be virtually fluent and her talk was most enlightening indeed. The museum recreated typical Jewish apartments from the community’s heyday but also told the wider story of the city’s Jewish history. I learnt that during the war a quarter of a million Jews were murdered in Odessa and that all were killed by the Romanians and not the Germans. Furthermore, they were all shot or starved in labour camps, not one of them was gassed in a death camp. The night before I’d read about this in ‘Bloodlands’, that the so-called Holocaust was in fact more like two very different holocausts. The one which we hear so much about in the West, the Holocaust of the trains to Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka all happened to the west of the line drawn by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 where German rule was settled, strong and long-term. East of that line though was another Holocaust which we hear far less about. When they invaded Soviet territory, the Nazis and their allies simply shot all the Jews that they could find. They didn’t have the time or infrastructure to set up death camps and schedule trains to take the Jews to their doom and they knew that their stay in those regions could be far more temporary so instead the moment they got hold of them, they killed them. In those regions Baba Yar not Birkenau was the norm.

What I loved so much about Odessa’s Jewish Museum was how amateur and personal it all was with home-made mannequins, family heirlooms on the shelves and little titbits or quirky items that brought the story to life in a human way such as some banknotes produced by the Soviets with Yiddish script on them or a sketch of a German soldier by a Jew unfortunate enough to be serving him. It was not experiential like the Chernobyl Museum in Kiev or “hands-on” like so many museums at home; it was simply a museum built on love and personal dedication.

ML054 ML055

Soviet banknotes in Yiddish and a sketch of a German soldier by a Jew

My curator told me about her family who had luckily escaped all the death and destruction. They had all been evacuated – voluntarily she stressed, not deported like so many minorities – to Kazakhstan where they lived for the duration of the war. All of them that is except for her father who fought on the front line for a full five years. These days though, she’s the only one left in the city. Her daughter now lives in Canada having initially moved to Israel but finding an even better life across the Atlantic. I mused on how ironic it is that Israel, a state founded by European Jews as a haven for European Jews from persecution, is now found to be too Oriental in character for many of those same European Hebrews who these days prefer to emigrate to Canada or the USA.

After the Jewish Museum I popped into the nearby synagogue. It was strange inside since whilst it was set out very much like a church, the atmosphere was more akin to a mosque with men chatting and socialising on the pews in a way that wouldn’t happen in a church. I reflected on the very Christian perception of the church as a temple, sacred as a house of worship and not to be defiled by everyday activities as opposed to the more Islamic concept of the House of God being more like a community centre where people chat, take a nap or simply shield themselves from the midday sun.

Near to the synagogue I dined in a rather pleasant Uzbeki restaurant and after reminding myself of my trek across Central Asia a decade before which this trip was completing, I continued onwards to the Panteleimonsky Monastery. En route I passed a large white mosque with a green dome which looked as if a giant had sat on it and squashed it. There has been an Islamic community in multicultural Odessa for centuries but this mosque was brand-new (built with Arab money); the original was blown up by Stalin in 1936.

ML056 Odessa’s Mosque

The Panteleimonsky Monastery was atmospheric and had its floor strewn with straw in honour of the same festival as had caused there to be flowers and straw everywhere in the cathedral the previous day, but ultimately it was disappointing since only the entrance hall was open. However, as I was leaving I was accosted by an extremely friendly lady who’d heard me asking in my very Bulgarian Russian for a candle and who wanted to know if I was a Bulgarian. I explained the situation and she explained to me that she had worked for many years in Plovdiv and very much liked the place and its people. She then decided to help me in my religious quest by leading me round the corner to another church[4] which she promised was “far better” than the last. And it was for although only 19th century, it was an evocative building teeming with icons and much-venerated relics of nameless saints. I thanked her profusely for directing me to this gem which wasn’t in any guidebook and after venerating what was there to be venerated, I stepped outside and enjoyed a cup of the monks’ homemade kvass which, unlike the standard stuff on offer, was not brown but cloudy white and with a far more potent and satisfying taste.

I ambled back through the streets to the bus station, passing an incredible little tank displayed on a plinth at a road junction. It really was the strangest little contraption, a square green box with the tiniest of guns pointing out of the front, and would have hated to have been in one and pitted against the invincible German Panzers. The plaque underneath announced it to be an ‘NI’ (Na Izpug, literally, ‘to bluff into retreat’), tank that had fought in the defence of Odessa during 1941. Outgunned and outnumbered, the Soviets were desperate for ways to slow down the enemy and so the January Uprising Tractor Factory started producing these machines, improvised armoured tractors which they hoped would scare the attackers into believing that they were the real thing. On occasions the ploy worked, in one memorable episode, the tanks entered a village occupied by German troops and while under fire were able to tow away twenty-four German guns.

ML057 Na Izpug Tank, Odessa

Back at the apartment I did as I had done the previous evening and went to the beach. The Central Beach was busy with Ukrainians enjoying the summer air and sea breeze. I settled down, sand between my toes, to read and then think about Odessa, the city which I could see on the skyline to my right across the bay.

Although my guidebook promised “Visitors fall in love with Odessa in about five minutes”[5] this had not been my experience. I’d liked the place, don’t get me wrong; it was pleasant and rather quirky but not somewhere that I loved. Perhaps one needs a longer acquaintance with such cities – it took me several months to grow to love its little sister Varna – I don’t know, but I’m sorry to say that on my fleeting visit it did not really send my pulse racing.

Nonetheless, it has character and that character is distinctly different from that of the capital. Whereas in Kiev pride in Ukraine and Ukrainianness was evident wherever you turned, down by the Black Sea one could have easily missed the fact that you were in Ukraine at all. Russian is the lingua franca and Odessa is orientated towards the wider world, not the hinterland. Perhaps because of that it seems to have missed out on any post-independence boom. Odessa is noticeably tatty and rundown as if all the money has left town. But then in many ways, that is only understandable; Odessa is a Russian city founded by Russia for Russia as one of the Russian Empire’s windows on the world. But take that empire away and all of a sudden, Odessa becomes, well, a bit purposeless.

If anything summed Odessa up for me, it was a little flyer that I was handed in the street. Obviously printed one someone’s home printer, it was a cheaply-produced political rant against the local mafia who, it alleged, ran the city and cut corners with water purification so that the drinking water was in fact, undrinkable. But what was most telling of all was that it was written solely in Russian, it employed no nationalist rhetoric or symbols whatsoever and it talked about Odessa as if she were some separate city state, totally divorced from the wider country. And the name of the organisation that had produced it? Rosski Gorod – ‘Russian Town’. That told me all that I needed to know about the city founded by Russia in the 18th century and unhappily marooned in Ukraine in the 21st.

ML058 Odessa from the Central Beach

Next part: Bolgrad

My Flickr Album of this trip


[1] The New Economic Policy (NEP) was an economic policy proposed by Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small businesses to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade, and large industries. It was promulgated by decree on 21 March 1921, The New Economic Policy was replaced by Stalin's First Five-Year Plan in 1928. The coupons served as an alternative to money for certain products.

[2] Perhaps one reason why the Odessa Cathedral was so devoid of atmosphere was that it was brand-new. The original structure had been built in 1794, designed by a famous Italian architect, (hence the Catholic feel to it), but then destroyed during Stalin’s orgy of religious destruction in 1936. It was rebuilt to exactly the same design between 1999 and 2003. The festival was most probably Pentecost which ranks only behind Easter in the Orthodox calendar.

[3] See my travelogue ‘Balkania’.

[4] St. Ilya’s

[5] Bradt Ukraine, p.265