Back in the USSR

The Little Green Men

2014-07-02T15:01:00.003+03:00

In my last post, I alluded to the Little Green Men, the name Ukrainians give to the suspiciously well armed pro Russian rebels that popped up both in Crimea and the east of Ukraine. They are so called because despite being a supposedly rag, tag spontaneous group of freedom fighters, they all wear perfectly matching green uniforms, carry high tech weaponry and are completely devoid of any insignia on their fatigues. Either there had been a closing down sale at the local Millets or they were in fact Russian special forces.

At the height of the tensions, with little green men sprouting up everywhere, there was a solid, business like knock at our door. Often I avoid opening the door when Tania is out, not so much through any particular fear, more the worry that despite studying Russian for a year, I might end being sold double glazing or a conservatory. The latter would be a nightmare because we live on the second floor.

Anyway I am rambling, back to the point, the knock at the door. I cautiously open the heavy Soviet portal to our apartment to be confronted by two, not so little but defiantly green men, Ukrainian military to be precise. They barked a name at me in Russian. I replied that that wasn’t me. The gist of the conversation was that this person was registered in our apartment and had been called up to fight the little green men. Fortunately my Russian in a thickly laced south London accent managed to persuade them that it wasn't me and that I had lived here for three years and they realised that a portly Englishman with a gamy knee was probably not going to make great inroads into rebel held territory. And so a long trip in the back of a truck holding a Kalashnikov was avoided, it was supplanted with a very shot trip to the toilet with a rapid bowl movement.

Times have Changed

2014-06-09T15:55:00.003+03:00

The other day, I received a comment on this blog. It simply said “More!” Of course my first assumption was that it was a dyslexic calling me a moron, but delving deeper I realised that I have not posted here in over a year. If a week is a long time in politics, then a year is a eternity in Ukraine. Things have changed and changed a lot. Some of the huge things that have happened over this past year include my parents coming to visit, the price of beer going up oh and Dobbie the House Elf “not” sending little green men into Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. There have been times when I have been close to throwing everything into the back of the X-Trail and running for the border. When the little green men started taking their extended vacation in Crimea things got pretty tense here. The car was fueled to the brim, plans were made with fellow ex-pats on which way to exit, cash was drawn from ATM’s. Eventually things calmed down in Crimea, obviously we would not be going there without a visa anytime soon but it seemed, Dobbie was happy with is new Black Sea real estate in particular, securing a place to moor the rust buckets he calls the Black Sea Fleet.

Huge events such as our parents finally meeting.
Oh and a revolution.

Then, a few weeks later, little green men started popping up in the East. A bunch of idiots, nobody had ever heard of declared they would hold a referendum on independence from Ukraine. The ballot, much like the one in Crimea was a bastion of democracy, armed guards at polling stations, loaded questions, the ability to vote at any polling station you wanted, even if you had already voted somewhere else, in fact 100,000 ballots had thoughtfully been pre marked “yes” the night before the referendum. These minor issues did not deter the idiots from proclaiming an independent state with a 95% majority. When Ukraine sent troops into the east, these supposedly local dissidents suddenly found the ability to shoot down helicopters and ambush military vehicles with ruthless efficiency, not bad for a bunch of disillusioned businessmen. Of course no little green men were used in the making of this new independent state. Stress levels here in Odessa remained low. One of the arguments of the East was that Russian speakers were being discriminated against, yet Odessa in the South remained a difficult barb in that argument. Here was a Russian speaking city, quite obviously wanting to stay Ukrainian. Time to mix it up a bit and on May 2nd they did. A peaceful Pro Ukraine march was ambushed by Pro Russians. As in all other places this has happened, the Pro Russian were, presumably, very ugly, judging by the fact that they always had masks over their faces. They also had guns and randomly shot Pro Ukrainian marchers. The one thing they hadn’t considered though was the Ultras. In most countries, Ultras would be considered football thugs and indeed in Ukraine they have a fearsome if not entirely deserved reputation for violence. However in these troubled times, the Ultras had become passionate defenders of Ukraine’s liberty. Shooting at them upset them a little bit, in fact enough for them to retaliate against the little green men. The end result as most of you are aware was the bloodbath in which over 40 people died mainly in a government building that burnt down. Needless to say, during this time my passport, important possessions and money were ready to go, my sphincter had already gone. However as bloody and violent as that day was, it seemed to send a message, this peaceful, beach loving, sun worshiping city in the south did not want this shit and would fight for it’s right to remain Ukrainian. The trouble may not be over here, but I still love this city and it’s people. I love the way Odessa takes everything in it’s stride then returns to what it does best, having fun Unless the little green men come knocking on my door, here is where I will stay. Incidentally little green men did come knocking on my door but that’s a story for another day.

Odessa will always be a peaceful city of culture and beach life

Now I realize as I reach the end of this post that it may not have quite the same humour as some of my previous ramblings. I am sure you will understand this but be aware that I am re-inspired to write again (actually I write all the time but about photography not life in the former Soviet Union) Future posts shall return to my banal and odd sense of humour. So to my dyslexic admirer, the moron has spoken again, however, if you are not dyslexic, you have your more!

Has Anyone Seen our Electricity?

2013-07-09T21:20:00.000+03:00

This afternoon, I am writing to you from a power cut. I am able to do this because, my electronic typewriter was designed in California, built in China and has a small internal power plant made up from rare earth metals, which apparently are very common in Canada.

The power has been off now for about an hour, fairly unusually for our neck of the woods but a frequent occurrence for those inhabiting the more central parts of the city. Of course the people we can blame for this are the Soviets, it is a soviet built electricity sub station that is causing central Odessa to have rolling blackouts, unfortunately nobody knows which way they are rolling, but usually you can time it down to ten seconds after I have ordered a double Latte with cinnamon topping in Kompot.

Today however I am at home, so my Krupps expresso machine is currently lacking the electrons to even gently pressurize some ground Arabica, our air conditioner is sealed up tighter than a nun’s fanny and our flat screen TV resembles and oversized, black kitchen tile with about as much function.

This of course is the problem, whilst the Soviets, were quite brilliant at producing 5 year plans for everything, crop production, Lada manufacturering and indeed electricity output, they were somewhere below useless at predicting the actual future. Two things that spring readily to mind that the Soviets failed to predict were the end of the Soviet Union and the ability of the comrades, freed from the need to queue for a bowl of cabbage soup, to buy, en mass, consumer electronics.

Here in Ukraine there are more stores selling white goods, black goods and touchscreen goods than there are working streetlights. That’s before you go online, where anything with a .com.ua prefix is likely to be hawking Samsung, LG, or Apple. The Ukrainians love consumer electronics and when they are flush they buy them. Look along the outside of any Soviet apartment block and 30-40% of the apartments will be air conditioned. Scan for wifi and everyone has it, take a trip on a trolly or tram and everyone is listening to Ukrainian pop on a touchscreen phone.

In Soviet times, the planners at the United Socialist Union of Electricity Supply Engineers, would sit down once every five years and work out how many extra 20 watt bulbs the proletariat would be using over the next 72 months, how many radio’s would be allocated to the party members and what time to switch off the street lights once everybody is at home listening to radios underneath their 20 watt bulbs. They would add this all up, build a nuclear power station out of Bakelite and bubblegum then crack open a bottle of vodka to celebrate completion of the five year plan. It is, of course this Soviet electrical infrastructure that powers, or not, Ukraine, with the notable exception of one nuclear power station in the north where the bubble gum dramatically burst in 1986.

Now when the temperature rises above 30C, which is basically everyday from late April until early October, the people of Odessa switch their air-con on and pop to the kitchen to make an iced latte with their Krupps. This in turn causes the local sub station to have a hissy fit and shut down in disgust.

Fortunately the rare earth minerals and lithium inside my designed in California aluminum box still have 86% power left, which means for the next five or so hours, I am will still be living in the 21st Century. After that, if engineers have not managed to placate big Betha and persuaded her to distribute electrons again, I will be sitting in a warm, dark room dreaming of a nice iced cappuccino whilst contemplating making a cabbage soup. On the gas cooker of course.

A Brief Definition of Roads in Ukraine

2013-07-03T14:34:00.000+03:00

The most amusing road signs in Ukraine are the ones suggesting an uneven road for x number of kilometres. We have them in the UK of course, although they are generally ignored. This is because an uneven road in the UK is usually just a series of gentle undulations that might send you off to slumber only to wake up embedded in a tree. In Ukraine, the best way to describe an uneven road is "road". You see the only smooth roads here are in places that the president has visited since the previous winter. You can practically follow his route through the town because suddenly the bowling green smoothness will disappear up a side street and the main road will deteriorate back to "road"

For those of you not familiar with Ukraine, let me describe "road" for you a little more explicitly. Perhaps the best way to start is to imagine a normal, newly made road. Now imagine a battalion of epileptics with jack hammers have held a conference on it, followed by a gaggle of paranoid schizophrenics with aversion to white paint, who have systematically rubbed the road markings off with their elbows. Now we are getting close. To finish your visualisation of a Ukrainian road, pop it in the deep freeze at minus 20c for four months, defrost and freeze again several times. You may now be getting close to seeing it now. However this is nothing compared to driving on them, recently on a trip out of Odessa we took a minor back road as a shortcut. Now bear in mind I have a fairly decent 4 wheel drive car that has chunky all weather tyres and good ground clearance, five miles took us thirty minutes. The road was so scarred, that in places the only way to continue was to drive into the potholes and back out the other side, stopping for a cup of tea midway.

Ukrainians have found a kind of communal solution to this problem. They don't drive on the roads anymore, the drive to the side of the roads. Here you will see entire new dirt tracks have appeared where drivers have hit one crater too many and decide, enough is enough and gone off roading. Gradually, more and more people take to the dirt, virtually cutting a new road alongside. Indeed the road that we got stuck on had an entire dirt track for five miles running on the other side of a treeline. On our return we decided to use it, following a bus up it. Actually it took us about ten seconds to realise following the bus directly was not too good an idea. This is because five meters onto the dirt and the rapidly accelerating Mercedes mini bus had disappeared into a maelstrom of dust, stones and road kill. Our decision to back off was aided by the emergence of a double articulated truck from the sand storm, the front of the truck doing around 50 miles per hour, with the rear trailer going faster and sideways directly towards us. In a remarkable feat of driving skill Anton Sennaski managed to right the entire truck without slowing down. As we reversed out of the hedge and continued on our way, the Mercedes WRC minibus was now just a rising cloud of dust on the horizon and the entire dirt track was our own. I have to say it was fun to drive, the X-Trail a sure footed companion that dispatched the five or so miles in ten minutes or so. The same could not be said for the driver of a Bulgarian 40 ton articulated lorry who had had the misfortune to be using the official road beside us. I suspect he may still be there as I write.

The irony of this story is, that if you ask people, many roads have been allocated as repaired. The problem is, that the contractors are paid to relay a road, yet in the best case scenario they merely pad a bit of loosely packed asphalt into the existing potholes and in the worse case they don't bother at all preferring to pay a percentage of the fees to the guy that inspects the roads instead.

It's a shame, because where the roads are in good condition, they are wonderful to drive on, wide enough to overtake, with enough bends to keep you alert and little traffic. Unlike the UK which has a town every three miles, in south western Ukraine you can drive thirty miles without passing a village. There are no speed cameras hidden in the sunflower fields, no traffic calming measures, no variable speed limits and fixed speed traffic cameras, in fact none of the soul destroying, over regulated and pure evil, hidden tax measures that the UK's roads are increasingly laden with. In fact to clumsily paraphrase a former Soviet leader. "remove the potholes, remove the problem"

How to Make a Drama and a Crisis out of a Few Inches of Snow

2013-01-27T14:00:00.002+02:00

There has been several inches of snow overnight. This is what the weather forecasters in the UK often say. What they actually mean is that if the wind blows the snow up against a wall, it might, after several hours, be several inches deep. As I made myself an expresso in order to write this post, I looked out of our kitchen window and could not help notice that here is several inches of snow outside. Of course what I mean by several inches is, by now about 15 inches and when I say outside, I mean everywhere, not piled up against walls. As I speak those inches are increasing.

Now here is the thing, and humour me if it gets boring, as I have mentioned this before, but Ukraine copes with it. People don't necessarily enjoy it, apart from the kids being dragged to school on sleds, by their parents or more often grandparents, but they get on with things. The snow has been so heavy that even Odessa's well equipped roads department did not manage to keep up with clearing the main roads, yet yesterday when we drove to the mall, buses, trollies and trains were running, people were going to work or shopping despite the roads and pavements having the appearance of a vertically challenged alpine ski slope. Which brings me to the UK. It seems to me that when there is several inches of snow in the UK, everything grinds to a halt. Schools are closed, offices are empty, shops sell out of the basics. Why? Firstly schools, I remember snow when I was a kid. I am pretty sure it was the same stuff the UK get's today, and yes, the buses were often very very late, because a. the council run out of grit or b. the council ignored the weather forecasts and didn't grit. As kids, we had this quite amazing solution to the problem, we walked. My school was just under three miles from my house even in the deepest snow, several inches against a wall, it took about an hour. If we were late, the teacher's understood and forgave us. Does any one recognize something odd about that statement, no not teachers forgiving, teachers went to school in the snow too. Not once, ever, in my entire school life do I remember having a day off because of snow. Here in Odessa, we live next to a Kindergarten, and every day, despite the snow, we see the kids coming to school, sometimes walking, sometimes on sled but always well wrapped up and having fun.

So lets look at the work and offices. OK, if you live in the deep in the country and work in the city you may be excused this one. But, what if you live in the suburbs? Well, even if the buses don't run the trains usually do, at least the suburban services. If there is no train service you could also walk. I remember one particularly snowy week in the early ninety where I walked to and from work three consecutive days. It must have been close I hear you cry, yes it was, I lived in Cheam, Surrey and my work was in Fulham, London, a mere eight and half miles or seventeen miles a day round trip. But here is the irony, it took about just over two hours, which was about the same time it took by public transport on a bad day, if you factored in the walk to the bus stops and trains station. Ukrainians, go to work every day, despite the weather. This is not only because most Ukrainians have a very strong work ethic but also because if they don't go they won't get paid. For some people here thats the difference between food on the table or not.

For the life of me, I will never understand how supermarkets run out of essentials. Firstly it seems odd that all these people that cannot manage to get to work or school can still manage to get to Tesco's. Secondly that once they are at Tesco's they fill their shopping bags to the brim with bread milk and Tetley tea just in case they need to hunker down for several weeks. Now, my memory of UK winters may be fading, but I cannot remember a time when the snow lasted much more than three days. Usually by the third day its just a slushy horrible mess that is easily passable by trucks bearing bread, milk and Tetleys. We went to the shopping mall yesterday, despite the one foot of snow, on the ground not against the walls. When we got there, half the car park was unusable, but only because the giant snow plough the mall had hired, had not finished the second half yet. People came, parked in the first half, bought normal amounts of bread and milk, none bought Teltly's because Silpo doesn't sell it but the point is nobody was panic buying. This is for two reasons, firstly they knew the authorities in Odessa a. did have enough grit to cover the city and b. did watch the weather forecast. And of course the delivery drivers knew they could get into the shopping mall because there was a big fuck off snow plough clearing the car par.

There was an advert for Commercial Union in the 80's that had the tagline "We won't make a drama out of a crisis" These days some people can make a drama and a crisis out of a few inches of snow but most of them live in the UK

No Really - Back in the USSR

2012-09-17T15:38:00.000+03:00

My first experience of departing from Kiev's Boryspil airport was not positive. Like much of the former Soviet Union, communist security measures were much in evidence, typically you would have to pass a x-ray security check before checking in then again after checking in and before going through passport control. All in all it was an exercise in how not to run a modern airport. That was 2008. Last year I had to pass though Boryspil international terminal once again. The difference was incredible, despite being housed in the same Soviet era building designed by a man that didn't do curves, the interior had been improved immeasurable, brighter, clearer more space, more seats. Today I am flying back to London using the new terminal F. My expectations were high, a new terminal, European security procedures, and Costa coffee.

Unfortunately it seems terminal F has been designed by the blind brother of Terminal B's architect. The layout of the check in area beggars belief, the departure boards, of which there are only one set, are positioned right above the main and only thoroughfare. In the grand tradition of most airports, people who have arrived six hours early, congregate in front of the departure boards to see which check in desk they need, despite knowing full well the information will not come up for another four hours. Trying to get past these people was like parting the Red Sea. If there had been a Ken Livingston around I am sure he would have charged for congestion, or at least clamped those blocking the way.

The reason I wanted to get through was to find a seat. When eventually the Red Sea did part, I saw the seats, all ten of them, and all complete with entire families camping on them. They appeared not so much to be waiting for flight and more to be homeless. Eventually I managed to park my bum on a narrow window ledge for a pile inducing three hours. Still at least they had free Wifi.

To be honest, the staff are very good, check in was extremely efficient, security was good and done with a smile, even immigration was painless. Things seemed to improve once into the departure lounge, it was bright and airy with plenty of seating and a Costa coffee. Of course having been on an overnight bus trip, I was by now, dying for a pee, the act of which brought the illusion crashing back to ground. There were three urinals, for the entire lounge, yes, that’s three urinals, not toilets. Fortunately us men can whip it out and do the business quickly and efficiently. The Ladies however who take longer over their ablutions, had bigger problems. The queue was out the door and around the corner. Some of the more Mediterranean looking women had grown beards whilst waiting.

Once relieved, I took it upon myself to refill at Costa, where another shock awaited me. £4 for a small coffee. As it was the only place to get liquid refreshment, and as I had had nothing in 12 hours, I bite the bullet, slightly breaking one tooth, and paid the price.

I would like to say things got better, and for once they did. The flight was uneventful and on-time but arrival in Heathrow’s terminal five was like landing on another planet. I have been through Heathrow many times and although not fantastic it’s functional. Terminal 5 however is something else. It made the Germans look like bumbling slackers. From the moment I set foot off the plane, to stepping outside the terminal was less than 10 minutes. Immigration was both courteous and rapid. When I arrived in the baggage hall, my bag was already there, a breeze through customs and into the light airy and well laid out space that is land side. Of course I had arrived in the middle of the Paralympics, I am sure once the summer’s spectacle of sport is over, terminal 5 just like most of the rest of the UK will slip back into it’s old ways. Hopefully by then though I will be driving through Germany where things are a little more predictable.

Racing to the Village of the Damned

2012-06-28T14:55:00.000+03:00

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

Krups - Wake up and smell the coffee

2012-04-05T19:32:00.000+03:00

Today I am going to go a little off topic and talk about some dreadful customer service. It has it’s roots in a purchase in Ukraine but responsibility lies solely with the parent company, which is German.

In November I bought a Krups XP5220 pump expresso machine. Several things swayed my decision, it was a pump machine at reasonable price, it was a very well respected brand and most reviews said it made excellent coffee. Many of the reviews also mentioned a flaw with the machine in that the steam wand was made of very cheap plastic and prone to breaking. Indeed Amazon’s customer reviews were full of this issue but some also said that Krups had redesigned the wand and it was fine. I weighed up the arguments and decided to to purchase.

When the machine arrived, it looked very good, sleek, stylish and it made superb coffee. There was a separate little leaflet explaining how to remove and clean the steam wand, and I took this to mean that the problem had been acknowledged and dealt with.

Fast forward and after three months of daily capuchinos, the steam wand broke. Not as many people had experienced, at the retaining tabs but actually the steam tube had snapped completely in half. Some super glue and careful position repaired the tube which worked for another three days, then one of the retaining tabs broke. So here I am, and Englishman who cannot put steamed milk in his expresso.

I am steaming over a broken steam wand

A quick bit of research tracked down the Ukraine/Russia service center and Tania made a call to them. The resultant conversation was shocking but not entirely unexpected. They claimed that the steam wand is not covered by the guarantee and they would not replace it for free. They did however give us the number of a supplier in Ukraine who would sell us a replacement. When Tania tried to get them to accept that there was a problem with the steam wand design by talking about the many reviews, there answer was perhaps, typically Russian. “If you knew, why did you buy it!”

So resigned to having to pay for a new steam wand Tania called the number. It did not exist. Getting a little pissed of with this situation, I decided to write to Krups head office in Germany. Germans I thought, understood quality design and good customer care. Germans, efficient helpful people, they will understand. So I fired of a polite mail explaining the issue and asking for help. That was two weeks ago, until now I have not received the courtesy of an acknowledgment of my email, let alone a reply.

Feeling even more upset by the lack of a reply, I fired off an email to the UK office. I explained I was an expat and I understood that it was not their problem but could they at least nudge me in the direction of someone that could. As you have probably guessed from this blog, they did not reply either.

All of us have met with bad customer service in our lives, some things get sorted some don’t, but for me when a company produces a machine that obviously has a design fault, and then tells you if you knew why did you buy, its time for a little adverse publicity.

So in recognition of the effect of social networking on world affairs, I am attempting to start a “German Dawn” Not to bring down the government of the Federal Republic of course but to stir a large German corporation into treating it’s customers with a little dignity and respect. I have set up a facebook here and I ask anyone who has suffered at the hands of bad service to like it. Lets see if people power can change corporations like it can governments.

As a footnote to this, its now three weeks since I emailed head office yet no reply. Yes I have checked the spam folder as well. Here are some of the comments I should have listened to on Amazon Reviews

Famous Last Words, Frozen for Prosperity

2012-02-10T12:19:00.000+02:00

In my last article just a couple of weeks back I wrote about the benign and forgiving winter we were having, also noting that they may be famous last words. Well they were! That very evening the mercury in the thermometer dropped quicker than the draws of a Tijuana hooker at the sight of a $100 bill. From a balmy -1C in the afternoon, to a face numbing -18C the following morning. Snow covered the grass and walkways of our block yet the roads and pavements remained clear. The antique Soviet transport system worked flawlessly, cars travelled relatively easily to and from the city, people got to work.

Black Sea Babushka

In contrast, this week the UK has suffered one of its very rare, annual, snowfalls. Roads are shut, trains are not running and Heathrow cut half its schedule before a flake had hit a runway. The usual litany of excuses were trotted out, exceptional weather, wrong type of snow etc., but what always gets me, is when someone asks an official why the Eastern Europeans can keep going, the answer is nearly always “Well they are used to it.”

So what they are saying, is countries like Ukraine and Russia who have heavy snow for weeks per year and manage to keep everything running with no money and a decrepit transport system, are doing better than the UK, which has light snow, for literally hours per year and has the worlds 7^th richest economy and an advanced transport system? Doesn’t make sense to me.

Anyway, the freezing weather, it hasn’t risen above -5 since the last article, has brought with it a spectacular kind of beauty to this wonderful city. Non more so, than the relatively rare event of the Black Sea freezing over. So on Sunday with the mercury at a positively balmy -5C Tania and I donned our shorts and t-shirts, then our leggings, trousers, more t-shirts jumpers, most of our socks, hats, coats and gloves and set of to Arkadia, our nearby beach resort. It was indeed spectacular; the sea had frozen out beyond the horizon. The only tell tale sign that water was present were large container ships leaving the Port of Odessa, miles out in the distance.

See! There is sea!

Odessans walked the ice covered beaches and piers, took pictures and generally just admired this wonder of nature. Tania and I took our own pictures, strolling along listening to the occasional cracks of ice and watching the ice pack gently rise and fall as hidden waves tried to make themselves known. It was enchanting, exhilarating and beautiful and yet another reminder of why I love this city both in summer and the depths of winter.

The White, Black Sea

Eventually the cold started to penetrate our onionskin of clothing and so we turned for home and a nice cup of tea. Feet up and watching the BBC news, where, in the UK it was so cold, the sea had frozen over in Poole. They showed pictures, and it had. For nearly two feet out! Of course nobody went to see it, because the entire transport system was in a state of collapse and the Met Office had advised against all but essential travel.

Antarctica Sur Odessa

To see more of these images and many more, visit my photography site at The Odessa Files, or take a look at my book of the week about Odessa here

Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams

In the Bleak Mid Winter

2012-01-23T13:49:00.000+02:00

So here we are, fast approaching February, fresh from the trials and tribulations of celebrating two Christmases and two New Years. Before going any further, I should explain. I celebrated the traditional western Christmas of over indulgence and cringe inducing adverts that start in August. Here they celebrate the Russian Orthodox Christmas, which happens on the 7^th of January and seems to have introduced religion to the equation.

Christmas Lights on Prymorski Boulevard

It was certainly odd thing going out the day after New Year and seeing people buying Christmas trees but that’s another story. The New Year I am referring to is the new New Year, i.e. the one traditionally celebrated in major cities worldwide, by pumping obscenely large amounts of fireworks into the sky whilst spreading obscenely large amounts of vomit over public pavements. Here we celebrated with the mother in law and a bottle of Ukrainian Champagne, Chateaux Chernobyl, which oddly despite being the freezer for three weeks was still warm when poured.

Anyway as usual my mind is wandering, so back on subject; here we also have a second New Year, old New Year. Now if you aren’t entirely confused, old New Year is another religious festival, celebrating the baptism of the baby Jesus. Honestly as an agnostic, seeing all the partying going on I was wondering whether there maybe was a God after all.

The point is that we are now officially in the bleak mid winter, my first in Ukraine and guess what, it’s not bleak. Now I know as I write this these are probably famous (hopefully not) last words, but so far the winter has been benign and forgiving. One of my reasons for leaving the UK and returning to sea in 2005 was the British winter. In January 2005, I had just returned from a photographic shoot in Havana and the very next day, I remember sitting in a car on London’s North Circular on the way to shoot a property. I had not moved for about 40 minutes. The rain was not beating down on the roof; it was driving past the windows horizontally on the cold breath of a howling gale. The gently glowing dashboard of my car indicated it was 2 degrees but outside it felt more like the end of days. At this point, I said fuck it I cannot do this anymore and started on the odd and meandering path that has led to my first Ukrainian winter. Now I am sure many of you know that Ukrainian winters can be harsh. Hell if they stopped the Third Reich they can certainly put a crimp in the day of middle aged expat. But you see, here in Odessa we have a certain something that helps us. The Gulf of Odessa. The relatively warm waters of Gulf moderate the harshness of the Ukrainian winter and although it does snow here and can get cold it’s does not have the cruel bitterness that the rest of the country suffers. Nor does it have the rampaging Atlantic storms that wreak havoc and bring misery and darkness to the Sceptered Isle.

So overall and so far it’s manageable. A few days of rain, some snow, a little above freezing, a little below freezing but very little strong wind. In fact so little wind that as I look out of the window of our flat, the trees in the yard still cling desperately to their remaining leaves, and its nearly February. That said, I am still looking forward to spring in this beautiful and endlessly engaging city.

A Nation of Animal Lovers

2011-12-02T12:35:00.001+02:00

It seems to me that Ukraine gets a bad press when it comes to animal welfare and whilst undoubtedly there is an excessive amount of stray cats and dogs on the streets and that some of them will be abused, the majority of Ukrainians I have seen, care a lot about animals, both pets and feral.

When I first came here, I was struck not be the sheer number of feral cats there were but by the fact that a very high proportion of them seemed well fed and healthy. After a while, I began to notice that everywhere that the cats would congregate, there were little trays of left over food and water. One July morning whilst on our endless search for the perfect flat, Tania and I sat down in one of the suburbs to have a drink before continuing our Odyssey. There were a few stray cats around, not particularly friendly but not nervous either. Eventually an old Babushka arrived with a veritable sack full of food and systematically started dividing it into small plastic cartons and putting it down for the cats. More arrived from all over, adults, kittens, all, for the most part healthy. The Babushka spent about 25 minutes making sure the cats were fed before wandering over to a point about 25m away where three stray dogs were waiting, looking simultaneously jealous and expectant. The Babushka brought out some left overs for the dogs too, stuff more suitable for the canine genus such as bones and junks of meat. Tania and I watched this little show for about 45 minutes. It was obviously a daily occurrence yet the Babushka wanted nothing from the animals, she neither expected or wanted any friendship from them, she was just making sure that these animals had enough food to survive. Don’t think that this is an isolated incident, either, it happens in virtually every street in the city.

Another pointer towards Ukrainians love of animals is the number of pets and pet stores there are. Every morning I look out of our kitchen window I see a parade of dogs walking their owners. I am not talking about the latest nouveau rich accessory poodle that you see on the streets of central Odessa, I am talking everything from pedigree Labradors to nutty mongrels, all well looked after and obviously loved. As the dogs parade past, the local pet cats all sit half a meter from a dogs leads length away with an expression of pure scorn. Everywhere you go in Odessa there are well stock pet stores with knowledgeable staff, hell there are even pet pharmacies.

Beautiful, healthy and homeless.

So when I hear or read about animal cruelty in Ukraine, I think about the UK and other western countries, where if an animal is not “owned” it is “euthanized” to use that pretentious, politically correct term that simply means killed. So now tell me whose animals are better off?

Looking for the Summer

2011-10-18T18:14:00.001+03:00

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.

A Few Things

2011-09-10T15:41:00.000+03:00

Moving away from my trip to Moldova, I thought I might dwell on some of the subtle and not so subtle differences I have found between the UK and Ukraine. By the way, always refer to it as Ukraine. “The Ukraine” was a part of the Soviet Union and is a term most Ukrainians are trying move away from.

1. Going to the supermarket for a bag of milk. The first time I stayed in Ukraine, Tania and I rented a flat in the city center. I arrived late so went straight to bed. The next morning, fully refreshed, I was of course, being English, gagging for a cup of tea. Problem was no tea, no milk. So off we went to Tavreya, the Ukrainian version of Tesco’s, to stock up. The tea was simple; it was Liptons (expensive and tasteless) or an unknown brand Ahmed English Tea. Now I am not sure who Ahmed was and how long he had been in England but his tea was pretty good. The milk however was a bit of an eye opener. Sure there were plenty of brands, different types, skimmed, full fat etc, the shocking part was 90% of them were sold in bags not bottles. Tania bought a half-liter, in a cardboard bag and off we went home. These days I have worked out the milk in a bag trick, but in the early days, just getting it to stand up in the fridge was like trying to get a duvet to lean against a wall. So I poured it into a little jug and lo and behold a few hours later it had turned to cheese. Today we still buy milk in a bag but we keep it in the bag, snip a small corner off the top and lean it precariously against the fridge. Never open the fridge door quickly; you will get a milk foot bath.

A Soviet Bread Truck. Nearly as old as the bread

2. Finding decent bread. For a country that lived on bread under Soviet rule, it’s really difficult to find nice bread. In the UK there are sections of the supermarkets the size of football pitches devoted to the manufacture of yeast-based products. Here they don’t even add the yeast from what I can see. The bread is tasteless, it’s flat and un-risen and there is extraordinary lack of variety. Some of it has also been on the shelves since Lenin was thinking “I wonder what will happen if I fire that canon”

3. Another shocking thing is the Internet. Its shocking how much better it is than the UK. In the UK it can takes weeks to install, cost a small fortune, never attain the speeds advertised and if you download anything more than a dozen emails you exceed your cap limit. In Odessa, we have had internet installed in three flats. Each time it has been within two days of calling, its cheap, unlimited and best of all fast. Blinding fast both up and downloading. It is nearly always bang on the speed you paid for and sometimes even faster and nobody seems to mind what you download or look at. It’s the Internet how it should be.

4. Ring Tones. Obviously in the UK people have ringtones but as a generalization they mirror the British character, subtle, refined and conservative. I wouldn’t say that ringtones here mirror the Ukrainian character; I would just say they are bloody annoying. It would seem that despite being apparently ubiquitous, the mobile phone is used to make a statement. A loud statement. It’s most noticeable on the bus when all of a sudden the sound of Fiddly Sense or Booncey soundly erupts into the atmosphere. The fact that it comes from a speaker the size of my little finger nail and is played at a volume that would make even The Who cover their aging ears makes you want to stuff it up a certain part of the owners anatomy. Its awful in the extreme as well as bloody annoying, especially when the phones’ owner cannot remember which part of their anatomy the phone is currently occupying.

So that will do for today, there a many more differences, none of which justify a full article but which together might make a single one. In particular I am still debating with my conscience on writing about “Soviet” toilet paper. Perhaps if I give you advanced warning on that, the squeamish and those with vivid imaginations can skip it.

How the mighty have fallen

2011-09-01T17:14:00.000+03:00

When I was a kid, I went on a CND march in my town. Not as a protester you understand, but as a young teenager trying to piss the protesters off. “Maggie Maggie Maggie, Out Out Out” they would chant. “Maggie, Maggie Maggie, In, In, In” was our repost. That was until a barrage of extremely well aimed eggs burst all over our stay-press trousers.

The reason I mention this is because it reminds me of an era, the Cold War, the palatable fear of an unknown foe with unlimited power to destroy civilization, books with names like “The Third World War, A Future History” and films like “War Games”. Even Midge Ure and Ultravox invaded our psyche with Vienna, a song devoted to nuclear holocaust. Looking back the fears were no different than todays, when the cold war ended AID’s conveniently arrived on the scene, as AIDS faded from our conscience, a group of Islamic terrorists slammed aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

In our Cold War minds, the closed and highly secretive city of Sevastopol in the southern Soviet Union was the epicenter of fear. Home to the mighty Black Sea Fleet and a few miles to the south at Balaclava, in vast man made caverns carved into a mountain, the hidden menace of the Soviet Ballistic Submarine Missile Fleet lay protected from Western eyes.

A couple of years ago Tania and I disembarked a cruise ship in this once ultra secretive city. We walked past an unoccupied customs booth with nine months worth of luggage, through the main port security gate, manned by one very bored looking soldier, and into a square littered with monuments of Soviet Glory. By the side of the headquarters (still) of the Russian Black Sea Fleet we took a taxi to the central railway station and 30 minutes later boarded a utilitarian ex-Soviet train. No softly padded seats for the comrades, highly polished wooden benches were the order of the day, uncomfortable in the extreme. Doors that you opened yourself, and a train so high above the platform that I though I would require a Sherpa to get into the carriage. As the rusting locomotive slowly pulled us along the banks of the port of Sevastopol, we could see the remaining ships of the Black Sea fleet. It was May Day, one of the most important days in the Eastern European calendar, one that is still celebrated as workers day Because of this, most of the Black Sea fleet ships were in port, their bright colorful flags breaking the monotony of drab dark grey hulls.

The most striking aspect, was that there were not many ships at all, and those that were there were not in a great state of repair. Rust, and neglect had worn down these symbols of Soviet Power into nothing more than untended museum piece. Their shapes were the same from the Janes warfare books I had read as a young teenager in my local library, but that was the point. The current ships of the western navies looked nothing like my memories, technology had marched on, old tonnage replaced and updated. The once mighty Black Sea fleet, pride of the Soviet navy and harbinger of our teenage fears was still the same, only older, unkempt and well worn. It reminded me of myself!

An old rust bucket along side a Russian warship

As a footnote, the submarine base at Balaclava, the epicenter of nuclear paranoia, is now a major Ukrainian tourist destination. You can find it on any map. Just look for “top-secret base”. If you had predicted that 25 years ago they would have locked you up and thrown away the key, or at the very least thrown a barrage of eggs at you.

The Slow Bus to Moldova – The Road to Chisinau

2011-08-27T21:54:00.000+03:00

So there we were, trundling along in a 30 year old German bus along the smoothest road in Eastern Europe. The black tarmac, so svelte and un-rutted, that despite the bus’s suspension being made from wooden blocks, our ride was comfortable.

Vineyards either side of the road made the scene like an idlic French painting, our progress was now swift and smooth. For at least 7 minutes. Then the tarmac ran out.

It seems the road to from the border was being re-laid, four kilometers done, one hundred and twenty six to go! We crashed into the first pothole with such ferocity, that it’s a wonder we were not supplied with parachutes. I suspect the driver, who did this route every day did it on purpose, to wake him from the boredom. I looked at the road ahead, with some trepidation, it was like the tarmac had gingivitis, it had more or less eroded from the sides inwards. This was even more unnerving because the traffic in both directions competed for the badly diseased blacktop. On several occasions, our large and solid bus was forced into the deeper recesses of the gravel pavements to avoid an oncoming truck. Scary was not the word, and the bus did not have a toilet!

We endured two and a half hours of this, before we eventually pulled into the frenetic chaos that was Chisinau north bus station. I stepped of the bus feeling like I had had an Indonesian massage, the Indonesian being a 400lb Orangutan with a bipolar disorder. Seven hours, of wooden suspension, third world roads, inefficient immigration and air conditioning that would make the Kalahari look cool had done little for my mood.

Our next challenge was to find a taxi. No I rephrase that; the next challenge was for Tania to find the cheapest taxi amongst the 3500 sitting outside the station. Sensing I was about to explode she found a deal for $2.50 and of we set for the Cosmos hotel.

I won’t go into details about the hotel, it was a huge ex Soviet monolith that more than made up for in service what it lacked in looks. It was also cheap. We wandered around Chisinau for an hour or two before deciding our room was infinitely more interesting.

Moldova - Its everything you expect

We checked out early the next morning and headed for the Ukrainian Embassy. When we arrived at about 8.15 we found we were, despite the early start, not alone. In fact, there was a queue of about 10 people. A rather loud Babushka was orchestrating proceedings, she told us to put our names down on a piece of paper, where it turned out, in fact, we were actually number 21.

More and more people arrived, the babushka explaining to everyone who arrived to put their names on the list. At this point, I should make it clear that she was not embassy staff, just a busybody who was also waiting for the 9.00am opening.

At around 8.55 she began marshaling people into line, Tania, always a sucker for a fight, had decided to help. The babushka, at this stage, had positioned herself about number 7. Tania asked what her name was, and it turned out she was actually number 15 on the list, a verbal sparring match ensued, with the Babushka slagging down Ukrainian and Ukrainians. Tania retorted, if she hated Ukraine so much why was she trying to get a visa to go there. In the ensuing mêlée, nobody noticed the security guard unlocking the gate. He called the first 10 people and one by one the people on the list walked in. So did the babushka. Tania was standing for none of this. She literally grabbed her by the arms and dragged her back through the gates telling the guard not to let her in until it was her turn. The other people applauded and a certain amount of civility returned. Ironically we actually managed to jump the queue by virtue of the fact we were paying extra to have my visa processed in one day. I won’t bore you with the details other than to say the embassy were quick and efficient. When we left after about 45 minutes, the Babushka was still waiting. Tania gave her a wry smile.

So we returned to the concrete expanse of chaos called Chisinau North Bus Station, where, not without a certain amount of irony, we boarded the same bus, with the same driver. I would like to tell you the journey was the same hell on the way back, only it really wasn’t. It was much worse.

The Slow Bus to Moldova – Stuck in No Man’s Land

2011-08-22T19:57:00.001+03:00

The bus ground to a squeaking, jolting halt just outside the Ukrainian border. The engine was switched off, as was the faux aircon removing any semblance of air circulation. It was 11am, hot, humid and getting hotter. We waited… and waited… Eventually after about 45 minutes, a Ukrainian immigration official stepped onto the bus. A palatable sense of anticipation began to melt into the heady atmosphere of BO and humidity. He then stepped off again.

It was another 15 minutes before there was any further activity. Then without warning, the engine switched on, there was a light puff of air suggesting the blower was back on too and we lurched forward through the first barrier, into a big open shed. Then stopped again. Engine off.. well you know the drill. Again we sat. Tania was fidgety; worried about making sure immigration put an exit stamp in my passport.

“I will check when they come on” she said.

Then he did come on. A young man so authoritative that Tania’s voice completely dried up, in itself an event so rare, it should be broadcast live. He took her passport then mine, checking the picture with my face, he had the look that only an immigration officer can achieve. The one that says, I have control over your destiny and if you piss me off it’s 10 years in the salt mine for you. Passports collected, he departed. Tania found her voice again.

“I hope he gives you an exit stamp!”

He did, it was another hour before I knew this, because this was how long it takes Ukrainian immigration to stamp 40 passports. One every 90 seconds or so. By now, it was midday, hot as hell and people were getting agitated. Because we were in a secure border zone, no one was allowed off the bus.

The official returned, gave all the passports to the driver who then proceeded to give them out, one by one, checking and calling each name. With a certain amount of inevitability, he started with the people at the back, who then had to fight past all the other passengers, standing in the aisles gasping for extra air or trying to coax blood back into their numbed buttocks. Eventually Tania took control, grabbed the passports from his hand and started her own distribution service.

The driver fired up the mighty German engine, vaguely engaged some cogs together with an alarming crunch and off we set. We must have travelled at least another 2 minutes before the bus ground to a halt again and our oxygen supply was cut off once more. We had arrived at the Moldavian border. It was a much more modern border post than the Ukrainian side and within minutes an impeccably dressed young immigration officer stepped on the bus and explained that he would collect passports for stamping. This was all too much for a Russian babushka sat behind me, she virtually erupted in a tirade of anger aimed directly at the Moldovan. Now, I don’t speak Russian but Tania translated his very calm and considered reply for me.

“Lady, if you do not calm down, I will turn this bus around and send you all back to the Ukrainian border. You will wait there until you are calm enough to return”

The babushka’s lips had just begun to formulate a reply when with all the synchronicity of a well rehearsed orchestra, 20 other passengers yelled “Shut up woman” She did, the immigration officer collected the passports and a brief 20 minutes later we were off, rolling into Moldova on the smoothest road I have yet experienced in the former Soviet Union.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Slow Bus to Moldova – Getting to the Border

2011-08-18T18:33:00.001+03:00

I have had very good experiences on Ukrainian buses. Granted I have only used one company on one route but I have travelled that route several times. The company in question is Autolux and they run a luxury service from Kiev to Odessa, in sleek modern buses with only 25 seats, all business class standard. Its fair to say they are excellent.

It was with this in mind that I was looking forward to our trip to Moldova. Wait, I hear you scream, why Moldova? Well, its simple really, the Ukrainian immigration service bears not even a passing resemblance to Ukrainian immigration law, and so all the information we had received in Tania’s home town of Izmail, was completely wrong in here in Odessa. Therefore, I needed to depart the country, or apply for political asylum, which to be honest, despite the lawlessness of the British streets, I was unlikely to get.

So on yet another beautiful sunny Odessan morning, we found ourselves at the bus station looking for the 8.20 to Chisinau. This was not difficult, it was by far the oldest, most decrepit vehicle in the station. My sharp observational skills deducted that it was formerly a German bus, based mainly on the fact that it still wore its original livery. I suspect that this particular style of livery had been long outdated at the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is appropriate because it felt like the seats had been made from bits of the wall. The advertised air conditioning was in fact a blower system so feeble that it would struggle to ripple a feather and the windscreen was not so much glass as a varied collection of dead bugs.

So with uncannily German time keeping, at exactly 8.20 we left the bus station and headed onto the Odessa – Kiev motorway. This man made marvel of three lane perfection lasted all of ten minutes before we turned off, onto the road to Moldova. Here the true state of the Ukrainian roads soon became apparent. Single carriageway, rutted, potted, and quite frankly fuck-ed. Rural Ukraine passed us by at an agonizingly slow pace, made more agonizing by the buses shock absorbers or shall I just call them shocks because they certainly did little absorbing. At one stage we passed a convoy of Ukrainian military vehicles, which ironically made me feel better. This was due mainly to the fact that the bus was actually a lot younger than the army trucks and also because we had not broken down. In fact of the convoy of around 15 trucks, 4 of them were on the roadside with the bonnets up. The invasion of Moldova on hold until someone could find the right sized Soviet spanner.

The sunny morning had predictably turned into a humid august day, the vent above my head was a little strange in that instead of a big hole blowing air, there was a big hole with loads of cardboard stuffed in it. Curiosity did not get the better of me, and while Tania wasn’t looking I directed her nozzle at my head. It made no difference at all. At this stage and with a certain amount of inevitability, the rather large Babuska in front of me decided to recline her seat. Now I am tall, and if I were female and blonde, I would be called leggy and these legs were now wedged dangerously close to one of my chins. Her husband tried to do the same in front of Tania but with all the authority of a sergeant major who had just found his wife in bed with the general, she shouted “Niet” The man in front froze for a second, before his seat slowly almost imperceptibly moved back upright. I swung my legs in front of Tania’s and a modicum of comfort was restored, at least for a while. After around 90 minutes, the bus started to slow down from its already sedate pace. We were approaching the border.

TO BE CONTINUED

Times are a changing!

2011-08-14T19:54:00.000+03:00

In 1993 I visited the Black Sea port of Odessa for the first time. It was not only a new country for me but a new country period. Ukraine had re-formed from the dissolution of the USSR only three years previous, it was to all intents and purposes still a Soviet ghost state. It was autumn when I arrived, the trees had already shed their leaves and a gloomy mist added to the general air of neglect that prevailed. I walked up the long Potemkin steps made famous by the Eisenstein film battleship Potemkin onto a small square. On the sides of the steps were hawkers selling old Soviet medals, military uniforms, Russian dolls, religious icons and whatever else they could find. Walking through the faded elegance of the streets I came to the main center of the town on Deribasovskaya Street. Imposing yet uninviting Victorian buildings lined both sides of the cobble-stoned thoroughfare. There were no shops as such, kiosks here and there sold cigarettes and vodka, and old soviet style restaurants that seemed as inviting as a dose of swine flu on a jumbo jet.

Down a set of steps I spied some old cameras in a window. I ventured into what was an Aladdin’s cave of religious icons, soviet history and old Russian cameras. I fell in love and bought a 1920′s Russian medium format camera from the young guy in shop. After handing over $20, I hurried back to the ship with my new purchase. Fifteen minutes later, chilly but pleased with myself, I was at the port entrance. I was stopped by a Ukrainian customs officer in an unfeasible large hat, who informed me he needed to search my bag. No problem I thought, it wasn’t as if I was smuggling out any important Soviet historical items. Only apparently I was! According to Comrade Hat, the barely working 70-year-old camera was a vital connection with Ukraine’s communist history and as such had to be confiscated. Of course being young(er) naive(er) and above all stupid, I handed the camera to him, instead of the $5 he really wanted.

What would have Pushkin made of it all?

Fast-forward 18 years to Odessa today. Deribasovskaya Street is still the center of the city, but today it’s where the Ukrainian nouveau riche go to exhibit their faux leopard skin stilettos with 8 inch heels, Armani suits and latest accessory dog. The less wealthy (the vast majority) are chomping on almost beef-burgers in McDonalds or swigging half-liter beers at 40p a bottle. The streets from Potemkin to the center have been lavishly but tastefully refurbished. Designer shops, attractive restaurants and bars fill the Victorian buildings, the cars are BMW’s and Porches nearly always the 4 wheel drive variety, although this is mainly because although huge money has been spent on the buildings, the roads still exhibit some startling Soviet tendencies, such as three foot pot holes.

Overall the misty faded post Soviet old city has developed into a beautiful, wealthy metropolis, albeit with poor roads. I have to say, I like it, I like it a lot. But then I live here.

Someone’s blown a fuse again

2011-08-10T18:22:00.002+03:00

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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Getting Around Soviet Style

2011-08-05T19:10:00.001+03:00

Back in June, I made a short visit to the UK, to tie up some odds and ends in preparation for my life in Ukraine. I flew into Gatwick, took a train to Croydon, where, as I was travelling light, I decided to save money and get the bus. It was a short walk to the stop and the bus was already waiting. I hopped on the gleaming 2 year old vehicle and marveled at its airiness, cleanness and at how modern it was.

“Single to Sutton please” I politely asked

“Sure, that’s £2.20 please” an equally polite driver replied

“Sorry, that’s Sutton in Surrey not Sutton Coldfield”

I nearly dropped the pound coin I had prepared and suddenly realized where all the £2.20’s had been spent. Buying the bloody bus.

Now you can call me Mr. Cynical, and you would be right, but to me, the bus is supposed to be transport for the masses, a cheap economical way to get about for those on low incomes or those in some rash misjudgment, feel that today, they will save the planet by not driving. The longest I am going to spend on the bus, traffic permitting is about 45 minutes. I don’t need comfy seats, air conditioning or spacious modern surroundings. I want cheap.

Air conditioning Ukrainian style

Here in Ukraine, they have got it right. The transport system had probably seen better days under Khrushchev, by Brezhnev it was antiquated and under Gorbachov it was derelict. Gorbachov gently handed the reins of the stampeding horse of communism over to democracy some 20 years ago, but still the same transport system exists. But that is not a bad thing. Yesterday, I got on one of the multitude of trolley routes that pass our flat. It was ancient; in fact I am sure somebody had carved druid runes into the paintwork. The seats were made of solid Bakelite, the disabled access bore startling similarities to the abled access and as this was a “bendy trolley” it had a big rubber bellows in the middle. This had a hole in it that you could, erm, drive a bus through. The pun was intended. Being a trolley, it was electric so you would expect whisper quiet. Not a word of it, in fact you couldn’t hear any words, there was the screech of metal upon metal, bumps, crashes and of course the sound of car horns beeping because the driver just cut them up.

Granted, the seats are uncomfortable

I had the misfortune of sitting behind an elderly gentleman whose personal aroma could only be described as a subtle infusion of garlic with b.o. The passengers were a cross section of Ukrainian life, Babushka’s, students, mothers and children, in fact exactly the same as on any bus in the UK. Except it wasn’t the same, sure the journey took exactly the same time for the same distance but it cost me 10p. No not a misprint, 10p. Yes it was old, uncomfortable and had I been in a wheel chair, impossible, but I wasn’t and so it suited me perfectly. I had to make a relatively short journey across town, the trolley stopped outside my flat and it cost next to nothing.

Of course there wasn’t much choice, I don’t have a car so it was the trolley or Shankys’ pony, but if I did have a car, I feel confident I would still use public transport. Now, where did I put my Ukrainian AutoTrader?

The State of Soviet Housing Stock

2011-08-02T14:51:00.002+03:00

Unlike the UK, where most towns and cities display an infinite variety of housing styles, the Ukraine is stuck predominantly with two. Soviet Social and Russian Renaissance. The latter, is generally a 15 stories plus, modern jerry built structure, often with rounded corners and topped out with orthodox inspired domes.

The Soviet stock seems to have been inspired by Lego; both the shape and building materials. There seems to be about 3 basic designs, 5 story, 9 story and 12 story all of which are rectangular and utterly uniform. We are house hunting for Soviet stock based on two factors, firstly it’s cheaper and secondly its less likely to fall down.

When I first started to look at flats with Tania, it was somewhat of a culture shock. Many of the buildings look like prison blocks, some of them after a riot. From grey breezeblock to cheap and unevenly laid bricks, the exteriors are beyond depressing.

Usually it doesn’t get any better when you enter, the impression of a prison continues at the entrance doors. Heavy, steel and windowless they look as inviting as a cup of tea with Dr Crippen. The more upmarket ones are locked and have either a code to enter or a little magnetic key. In the down-market versions, the doors are open wider than jaws of a nun in a sex shop.

A Once Grand Staircase

It doesn’t even get better with the lobbies. Because nobody owns or generally cares about the lobby areas, they are dark, unkempt, musty and dirty. Some owners have installed nice lights outside the doors to their flats but many haven’t. Negotiating the lobby stairs at night is best done with a Labrador in tow and without touching the handrails. Buildings over 5 stories will usually have lifts. These generally look like the lobbies only a lot smaller. They are dark dank and small, with the ability to turn a career Agoraphobe, Claustrophobic. Rather than rise smoothly up inside the building, they clang and clank, bashing into god knows what jutting into the lift’s shaft. I am not sure if the buttons inside represent the floor you require or your chances of survival.

As dark and depressing as this sounds, its not all bad. When you go through the doors to a Ukrainian apartment its like crossing some sort of mythical border between the third world and the first. Most apartments are well decorated, often double glazed with high ceilings and thick walls. In fact better than most new builds in the UK. The Soviet touches are still there; the central heating will be communal and switched on only outside the summer, a modern boiler is need if you want hot water in July. Unless renovated the pipework will have been fitted with all the finesse of surgeon wearing boxing gloves and the electrical circuits may require you to earth yourself before switching on a light. In general though the apartments are nice. We haven’t really seen a very bad one, apart from the one we are renting at the moment and there have been a few which have been interested in buying. It’s just a shame about the estate agents!

All Estate Agents are Equal

2011-07-29T20:39:00.001+03:00

Lying, cheating, swindling. These are all words that spring to mind when describing estate agents. In the UK they are renown for their high-pressure sales, ruthless behavior, pinstripe suits and BMW’s. Its exactly the same in the Ukraine, with the exception that the pin stripe suit has been replaced by jeans and a leather jacket and the BMW is replaced by … err, well nothing. Of the several agents we have met here in the last few weeks, the most striking feature has been the lack of wheels. Not a Lada between them, nary a Trabant in sight.

Fortunately, the money grabbing ruthlessness is still much in evidence. One of the agents we were using continuously allowed Tania to pay his bus fare when travelling between properties. When we put in an offer on a flat, it turned out his fee would be in the region of $2000. And for that, we would be sorting out most of the documents on our own. To put that in perspective, $2000 will get you a very good Lada with low profile tires and an almost matching spoiler.

The Ukrainian property market is not unlike the Klondike gold rush. An unregulated and tangled madness, with everyone digging for gold but quite often getting stung when the mine collapses.

Let me explain a little. In Soviet times, life was pretty simple. You lived in a flat. The flat was owned by the state. You paid a little rent. Easy. When communism collapsed, in many cases ownership of the property went to the occupants, either for free, or for a stupidly small fee. Overnight a country of tenants became a country of owners. This was all very nice until some owners starting getting knocks at the door from complete strangers clutching fistfuls of documents. These documents, it turned out were the ownership papers from before 1917. They had been handed down generation-to-generation and now the pre-bolshevist ancestors were laying claim on their properties from beyond the grave. Except in many cases they weren’t. Sensing some easy money, some enterprising people set about forging papers and trying to evict people from their own homes on the basis of a 1917 document printed on an Epsom inkjet and aged with weak tea. It was a mess.

Adding further to this mess is the tax regime. If you sell a house within 3 years of buying, the seller has to pay 5% tax, the buyer 2%. Now, the wonderful estate agents, explain to the sellers that although the house will sell for say $40000, we will declare its value at only $10000. Wonderful, thinks the seller, I will save a huge tax bill. Whilst this is all very nice for the seller, the buyer moves in to his $40000 flat, and finds his insurance company will only insure it for $10000 and six months down the line, there is a knock at the door from the tax man trying to work our why your lovely home has devalued $30000 in the last 18 months and presenting you with the previous owners tax bill.

The estate agents know all of these problems but being silver tongued wankers, they manage to explain away all these problems with all the easy charm of a conman cheating his own grandmother. The problem is, most people fall for it and as such, the mess just gets bigger and bigger. We however are boxing clever. We are using a solicitor to advice us on these situations, and they are good solicitors. They must be, they drive BMW’s

A Pint with Pushkin’s Brother

2011-07-25T18:10:00.003+03:00

Last night, I was temporarily evicted from the flat as Tania, my gorgeous wife, awaited our landlady. The reason for the eviction was simple, I am foreign which means I am money. Tania did not want the rent to suddenly double when the landlady hears me speak pidgin Russian with a broad Surrey accent.

So I went for a beer. There is a little bar at the end of our block that sells a quite palatable Ukrainian beer called Avalon for 10 Grivna a pint, about 85p or $1.20. Seeing as my pidgin Russian does extend to “Good evening one large beer please”, I found myself with aforementioned beverage on a comfy seat in the Dolce Vita bar on Shevchenka Avenue.

I had barely put hops to tongue when a late mid aged guy came in, bought a pint, and carefully avoiding the thirty or so spare seats in the café, plonked himself down next to me. Very next to me. It didn’t take a rocket scientist, and I am not one incidentally, to work out that he was drunk, exceedingly drunk.

He started chatting to me in Russian despite my valiant efforts in Russian to tell him I was English. Eventually the penny dropped and he started to talk to me in pidgin English, the pidgin being the identical twin to its Russian Surrey counterpart. He was a writer, he told me, brother of Pushkin and Chekov he added. I was surprised at this, as although I would never win Mastermind using 19^th Century Russian authors as my specialist subject, I did know that a. Pushkin and Chekov were not related and b. they died a long long time ago.

He continued, mainly in Russian swapping into English to say something derogatory about the lady owner of Dolce Vita before whipping out a book. It was his book he told me. He was going to write a dedication in it and give it to me, he declared. So he got out his pen, which oddly had no refill in it. Did I want the dedication in English or Russian he asked, I dodged the question fearing that this gift would require some for of payback, either monetary or alcoholic.

It took some moments for him to realize that despite his frenetic scribbles inside the book cover, nothing was happening. He looked over at the young waitress and asked her for a pen. Whether she saw the pain in my eyes, or whether she was just the world’s most inefficient waitress, I don’ know, but the fact was, she did not have one. I breathed a sigh of relief, gulped the last 200 mls of Avalon, made my excuses both in Russian and English and bolted for the door.

The Babuski and the Nimbus 3000

2011-07-24T16:13:00.001+03:00

For those of you that have never inhabited the Pottersphere, the Nimbus 3000 is Harry Potters, high end flying broomstick. It is the sort of broomstick that only exists in films about witches and wizards as well as a sort of mythical throwback to the golden days of general sanitization.

It is however standard issue to Ukrainian householders and more importantly to the Babushki that clean the streets here in Odessa. Babushka literally means grandmother, and if you are (un)lucky enough to be occupying the tree lined avenues of Odessa at 6 in the morning you will come across teams of Babushki, all armed with Nimbus 3000 replicas. Oddly enough, they are not flying up and down the Ulitsa’s practicing their Quidditch techniques; they are in fact sweeping the streets. In an age where Western Europe cleans its streets (if at all) by transformersque monster machines here in the Ukraine its done by an army of the elderly, a sort of mum’s army of broomstick wielding greytops.

Oddly for us in the west it is a system that works. Each person has their designated block and it seems to me each person has a pride in their work. The streets of this beautiful but dilapidated city are spotless, nary a MacDonald’s box or coke can to be seen. Be warned though, if you here a constant toot toot of a horn and see the Babushki stepping well back from the road, follow their lead. On more than one occasion, I have seen some poor unfortunate early riser, get and unexpected cold shower from the street washing truck as it sprays its load more or less indiscriminately along the avenues.

Anyone know the Russian for Ark?

2011-07-22T11:52:00.003+03:00

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!