Odessa

These days I’m in Ukraine because of a congress. As is not the usual place you travel I have taken some days of holidays to visit a little bit the country, the first two days I’ve been in Odessa, in the north coast of the black sea, famous for the scene in the stairs of the Potemkin movie.

It is difficult to explain which are my impressions of this city, it has really differentiated zones, big contrasts in a small distance. The city center has incredible buildings from the end of 19th century most of them falling in pieces, only a few being restored and used as hotels, restaurants or fashion boutiques. In the other side of the city, there is the massive tourism zone. Huge horrible buildings, surrounded of touristic restaurants and really kitsch night clubs in front of small and dirty beaches, it seems Spain in the 70’s, and the worst, a lot of new buildings under construction. Between this two parts there is a really nice park in front of the sea, where people goes to walk and have barbecues and a big residential zone with the characteristic buildings of the communist regime.

Looking at the people it was difficult for me to know where they come from, Russia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria. Odessa is the most touristic city in this region but in my opinion there were not too much tourists these days. So I will suppose that the people in the streets were in the majority Ukrainian people. I have not had too much interaction, as I don’t speak Ukrainian or Russian, but everybody is friendly and in any moment I had feeling of insecurity, even I’ve been walking without defined direction all around the city.

In the way get dress you cannot notice difference with the East Europe I know, at least for the men, for the women it surprise how well dress they are. Always with makeup, painted nails and massive use of high heels, even the army women in the airport. No comment about how the girls are dressed at night.

Now I’m in the night train back to Kiev, going to the conference, three days of work, and three more days visiting the city after it. I hope you will enjoy the pictures, as usual clicking access to the whole album.