Racing to the Village of the Damned

Ukraine, to the best of my knowledge, does not have a Formula One driver. If, however, they were considering an attempt on driving’s most famous championship, they could do no worse than interview the driver of the 14.25 Odessa to Kilya bus. Granted he may be a little older than the average F1 driver, and certainly many kilos heavier, but his ability to overtake on blind bends, tailgate 5cm from the rear of the car in front and to drive his vehicle to the edge of it’s envelope, would strike fear in to all of his opponents. In much the same way that it did to all of his passengers. You see the 14:25 is an 18 seat Mercedes minibus, not a 1000hp Maclaren. 

Tania and I had boarded the bus in order to journey out to a remote part of south western Ukraine to photograph a friends wedding. By the time we were half way into the journey, the birth of a baby girl by another friend at the beginning of the week, combined with the impending nuptials happening the following day, were conspiring to make my mind work overtime. It seemed the grim reaper was lurking around every bend of the not so smooth road to the west. 

To be fair, the main Odessa-Ismail road is not bad by Ukrainian standards, it’s fairly wide, has almost decipherable white lines and not overly busy. Unfortunately the last hour of the journey was not on this road. After a brief stop for absorbing and expelling fluids, we hit the road again. Literally. The road to Kilya is not so much a road as a moon simulator with free roaming cattle on it. There were craters and potholes so big that the previous users of this thoroughfare had given up with the tarmac and cut a gravel track to the side of the road along 50% of it’s length. Of course this did nothing to deter Ayrton Sennaski, who had now made the subtle change from Formula 1 to World Rally Championship. The Mercedes, unfortunately was still a mini bus and a two wheel drive one at that, its contents were now being shaken to death as well as scared to death. 

Eventually we arrived at our destination, Shevchenkovoe, a small town of 5000 inhabitants, none of whom were visible as we debarked the bus. What was visible was a strange, dusty town square and several million mosquitos. Our friend, the groom, lived in another village, even more remote than this, and was on his way to pick us up, but the news of strange, new people in town, especially one that spoke in a strange foreign tongue had reached the villagers. One by one, they began to appear, I was half expecting to hear the banjo tune from Deliverance or at least be able to order a pint in the Slaughtered Lamb. Intense, mildly threatening looks were thrown our way, before, eventually, and inevitably, we were approached by an obviously drunk old man. I looked at Tania who threw a look my way as if to say keep quiet, I will handle this. Then her phone rang. The man approached me instead, his eyes fixated on one point very close to his nose. Through his slurred words and my limited Russian, I realized he had obviously been drunk since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was asking me for one Ruble, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Gorbachev was no longer in power and that he no longer had to queue for six hours for a cabbage sandwich. Tania, who by now had finished her call, gave him one Ruble, or at least that’s what the old man thought as he walked away with ten Grivnas in his hand. 

As the old drunk retreated we saw a middle age man, on the other side of the road, trying to mount a bike. I say trying, because if you have ever seen those comedy sketches where a drunk tries to mount a bike, this is what we were seeing. Several times he threw his leg over the cross bar only for it to return to him like a boomerang. Dazed by the fact his right leg was still next to his left he would have another go, with the same results. It took him a good five minutes before he was astride the machine and another five minutes for his feet to find the pedals. When they did, he of course, headed our way. When he reached the kerb where we were standing he promptly fell off the bike, staggered around the side of a building and had a loud and somewhat smelly piss. Fortunately as this was happening our friend arrived. We loaded up our gear into his truck and set off for his village. As I looked around, the drunk was now lying, motionless, in the middle of the road, alongside his bike, forcing cars to drive through a large pothole to get around him. And this was just the start to the weekend. 

Take a look at my professional photography site, The Odessa Files

Looking for the Summer

So, it’s been a few weeks since I last wrote a post. It is of course not because I have nothing to say, it’s because I have been almost busy. Although it’s only a short time, the difference, here in Odessa is immense. Summer held a tenacious grip on the city way into late September and despite a couple of feeble attempts by autumn to gain control, the sunny skies and warm weather continued. Until two weeks ago. With all the zest of an ADHD case on cocaine, Madame autumn ripped the reins of summer from Mother Natures hands and charged Odessa headlong into the season of golden leaves, frost and condensation on the windows.

The Leaves are Falling

Whilst the weather is fine and clear, beautiful in fact, the balmy temperatures of late September have dived into single digits. Gone is the al fresco street dining, the beach goers and the tourists. The beautiful women of Odessa no longer parade in mini skirts, and crop tops, now the fashion of the day is fake fur coats and tight jeans. The six-inch stilettos fortunately are still very much in vogue, although I am not sure how their handling characteristics will cope with the uneven, often dangerous pavements, especially when they are covered in a thin veneer of ice.

Our rented flat, which was an airless sweatbox in the summer, is still, oddly warm. And this is strange because the heating has not been switched on here. You see unlike most of the non-former Soviet Union, here one of the lasting legacies of communism, along with cheap transport and dodgy electricity, is that the heating is communal. Every block has a big boiler room and tall chimney somewhere near the middle. Officially October 15^th is the switch on day, when big old Soviet boilers are fired up, and steaming hot water starts coursing through the antiquated pipe systems into old radiators. The best way to describe the radiators is to imagine a school built in the 1920’s. Visualize the classrooms. See the big old wrought iron monsters underneath the windows. Exactly like that. Only smaller, much much smaller.

Now a quick check of the date reveals that it is, in fact, October 18^th. The tan painted (at least I assume its paint) radiator beside me, is colder than an eskimo’s nose, a silent, heatless monolith. Checking this with Tania, it seems that although October 15^th is the official switch on day, the unofficial switch on day is twenty-four hours after the number of complaints from the residents, consumes more time that actually firing up the boilers and if our flat is typical example, that may be some time yet.

Someone’s blown a fuse again

In 1974, in the London suburb of Carshalton, there was a power cut. I was quite young at the time but remember it being about some blokes striking because they wanted to keep their jobs digging out dirty black rocks deep underground. I think it was the same reason my mum had to queue for an hour to get a bag of sugar. Anyway the power was off several hours. The same thing happened in 1987, but was only off for about two hours. Apparently the cause this time was that some storm had annihilated most of Southern England causing hundreds of millions of pounds of damage.

The weather is pretty good here, hot sunny, barely breeze above a mouse’s fart yet so far in the last three weeks we have lost power three times. The last time was last week, whilst I was sat at my computer typing some inane and boring blog that I do to fill my days. All of a sudden the screen went blank, Duran Duran disappeared from my headphones and the fan suddenly circulated even less air than normal.

Fortunately my laptop was charged so I concluded my inane scribing on that, then watched a couple of TV programs I had downloaded (don’t mention that to anyone). 

Odessa with electricity

That took a couple of hours and the end of which the power was still down, as of course was the internet. Boredom drove me back to the laptop to watch some more TV until the battery ran down on that. Ever resourceful I picked up my iPad and started to read some books on the Kindle app. For me, time disappears when I am reading, unless of course its this blog, and when the fan suddenly started to push tiny puffs of air in my direction again, six hours had passed. An entire six hours without electricity and not for the first time.

The following day with copious amounts of electricity coursing through our Soviet wiring loom, the internet went down. This happens anywhere so at first I was not concerned. After an hour of incommunicado I had look at what was going on. No Ethernet connection. This was unusual because if it was the internet service provider, the Ethernet would generally still be connected. Tania called them and they said that the line must have been disconnected somewhere. They would send someone out to check. They didn’t say when.

So without my cyber lifeblood I decided to take a cooling bath cleanse away the sticky humidity. Relishing the cool refreshing water I turned on the tap to the sound of echoic gurgles and very little else. The tap was notable by its absence of activity at either extent of its rotation.

Better in the old days?

So in the space of two days we had lost three services, two of them essential and the water. The water was down for about two hours but it took until the following day for the internet to return.

Fortunately, its all up and running now, until the next time somebody trips a fuse, digs up a water main or cuts our internet cable. Still I wouldn’t have it any other way, it’s the unpredictability that makes living in this country so interesting.  So if this article suddenly stops you will understand exa

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Anyone know the Russian for Ark?

 After several weeks of heat, humidity and sleepless nights, last night, the heavens opened up, over Odessa. I am not talking just the Christian heavens, this downpour was far more than biblical, the Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist faiths all came along for moral support.

Shevchenka Avenue, the street where we live, had recently been taking on the appearance of a city bound Atacama, yet in the space of less than ten minutes it turned into the raging torrents of the Amazon headwaters. Being a man of leisure these days, I can more or less choose when I want to go out, except of course today, there was no choice, the customs broker we were using, called us 5 minutes before the downpour and asked us to meet her at the UPS office in town in 30 minutes.

So fully unprepared for the torrent, Tania and I waded into Shevchenka Avenue. Tania’s initial idea had been to take the bus, which duly arrived after about 5 minutes. The bus idea was quickly abolished as we realized we needed a canoe to get from the curb to the point where the bus had stopped; and so we decided to walk down the street to find a point where the road and curb were not separated by a small lake.

The next obstacle was deceiving. A side road needed crossing and at first glance the waters gushing down it into Shevchenka Avenue were about an inch deep. Two girls standing on the side were not convinced, but with all the bravado of an Amazon explorer, I grabbed Tania’s hand and stepped onto the road and right up to my ankles. My trainers, which had seen betters days, a long time ago had large holes in them and filled quicker than the Titanic. The water seemed just as frigid. The two girls, convinced by my bravado received a similar fate, although being young Ukrainians; it was only the front of their feet that got wet courtesy of 6-inch stilettos.

Eventually we found some dry land and proceeded to find a car to take us to town. By now, Odessa’s transport infrastructure had virtually collapsed, the sudden deluge of rain had turn the roads into the tarmac equivalent of pulped banana skins and the combination of wealthy locals in 4X4’s going to fast and the less wealthy in Lada’s with banana skins for brake pads had led to absolute carnage. There were accidents everywhere and any semblance of traffic flow had disappeared entirely.

Eventually we got to UPS, I picked up my Mac computer and we called for a taxi to take us home. Now anyone that has tried to get a taxi in London when one spot of rain falls serenely out of the sky, will have sympathy for our predicament and our requirement for a large car (Mac Pro computers are not small) restricted us even more. After several calls we found a company who said they would be there in ten minutes.

We waited, ten minutes came and went, lightning was now flying over our heads and thunder rumbling so long you wondered if God had stuck it in loop mode. Rain was beating not so gently on our heads and my trainers were still leaking the water from Shevchenka Avenue.

Twenty minutes and Tania walked to the main road and started to flag down passing cars. Thirty minutes and she had persuaded some poor sod on his way home to divert round the corner and pick up a drenched Englishman with two large boxes and aquatic trainers. As we pulled away, I snook a glance in the rear view mirror to see a large car pull up outside the UPS office. On the top it said taxi. Tradition dictates that I suggest the rest of the journey back was uneventful but it wasn’t. Amongst the increasing destruction was a three-way pile up on a busy corner, involving two cars and a trolley bus completely blocking the southbound direction. One enterprising bus driver had driven his entire vehicle and passengers onto the pavement to get past the accident. Pedestrians scattered everywhere and the looks on the passengers faces as the bus dropped off an usually high curbside suggest that Ukrainian bikes sales may be on the increase in the near future.

Today the sun is shining and not a cloud in the sky. Of course I don’t have to go out!

A Strange Way to Arrive

It had been pretty uneventful, the flight from London to Kiev. The plane arrived early, immigration in Kiev’s Borispyl Airport were unusually efficient and my bag popped onto the carousel fairly quickly. I had been a little stressed, my turn around in Kiev was only 90 minutes and this being the former Soviet Union, nothing was ever easy. And so it proved.

I left Terminal B on a hot and humid evening and headed for the Domestic Terminal a short walk away. On entering, the thing that struck me the most, apart from the huge queue, was the air conditioning. There wasn’t any. A closer inspection of the queue revealed the vast majority of the passenger’s clothes were manufactured from a mixture of fabric and sweat, with associated smells.

I joined the line that seemed most associated with my destination, Odessa and spent the next 30 minutes slowly creeping towards the check-in desks, the boredom only briefly alleviated by the occasional trickle of sweat down my back. With all the charm of a female prison warden on her period, I was checked in and some 15 minutes later on a bus out to the plane.

The Kiev – Odessa route is normally a fairly quiet business commuter route but this being a busy summer’s Sunday evening, it was packed and inevitably, we left a little late. After a long taxi we eventually lined up on the runway, and waited. And waited. After about three minutes the captain announced there was a technical problem, we would have to return. This was done in Russian but you don’t need to be a cunning linguist the work out what he had said, the reaction of the captive audience told the whole story.

And so we taxied back. The problem it seemed, was minor and could be fixed whilst we waited on the plane, which of course, now that the AC was switched off, made the domestic terminal seem like an eskimo’s pantry. We sat there for about an hour, the blue leather seats getting slipperier by the minute before the captain announced we were almost ready to go. Followed shortly by a further announcement that we were ready to go but had to wait for permission from the Ukrainian department of transport. Assuming they could find someone working at 10.30 in the evening on a Sunday.

Eventually they did and off we set, with a certain amount of trepidation concerning our newly repaired aircraft.

We arrived in Odessa about 2 hours late. The workers in the Odessa domestic terminal had given up waiting for us and gone home. We were bussed from the plane to the main gates of this “international airport” where a huge crowd of friends, family and lovers pressed against the wrought iron fence. Our baggage arrived a few minutes later, the entire contents of a Boeing’s belly on the top of a tractor driven cart, cueing a mad bun fight the find your own suitcase.

So it was an inglorious, and odd arrival to the country that will be my home. My wife was amongst those pressed up against the fence awaiting us eagerly. Fortunately unlike many westerners joining their Ukrainian wives, I had met her before. Quite a few times in fact.