Odessa, Ukraine (July 19, 2013)

Opera House

Odessa, in the Ukraine, is strangely enough one of those places I have been to so many times I have run out of things to do. I have seen the Opera House, the City Gardens, the Passage, Deribasovskaya Street, the fortress, the stairs, and on and on. I have the pictures of the sites, I have sought out and found the magnets I wanted and most importantly I have the absolutely required picture of me with a hawk on the stairs. I have even posted on my favorite site in Odessa, which I have found back in 2007. 

Potemkin Stairs

So I ran ashore today, navigated the maze through the terminal, up the stairs, over the bridge above the railroad, down the stairs, through the subway, up the Potemkin Stairs, past Duke de Richelieu monument and to the main park promenade, Prymorska Bulvar. As I did this, I thought about what I was going to write. Mostly, I thought about my mastect-iversary.

Yet, as I raced across town to find a secluded place to write, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the intense ambiance Odessa radiates from its paving stones.

Odessa is all about mature lush trees, and colorful ornate neoclassical  and rococo buildings, and women.

The open green promenades, nicely planted with rows of flowers, punctuated with Soviet-style monuments, are filled with people enjoying the summer weather, though you would never know it from their stern facial expressions. 

The green spaces yield to wide tree-lined, cobble-stoned streets with old, stout, ornate rococo and neoclassical buildings of every color imaginable.

Everything is beautiful about this city with one undesirable, underlying tone, like the faintest scent of something sour or off. 

Street seen, notice the building color.

There is an austere feel that permeates everything. I am not sure if it is the solid building edifices, or hard stone streets and walkways, the metal monuments, or the chain link street dividers, the decorative but hard wrought iron window bars, or or or…

I think perhaps all of these are secondary to the real stark, cold, rigid, reality of Odessa which makes it so uninviting.

No one smiles.

Green space.

No one.

Ever.

I realize this is a cultural divergence and that in fact, all of these people are not as overwhelmingly bitter as they appear. Nonetheless, their naturally thin, chiseled features coupled with stern, harsh expressions make the entire beautiful city callously uninviting to this American. 

It is a confusing duality. The city is so visually appealing, and yet subtly not just uninviting, but nearly repelling.

After returning to the ship, I was speaking to a colleague. We tried and tried to put our finger on “it,” the source of the not-quite-right, nearly overt in-hospitality which was somehow simultaneously so subtle and vague as to be undefinable. We came up empty handed. But it is there, like a lingering odor or electricity before a storm.

No conversation of the Ukraine would be complete without a mention of the women. In general, the severe, unsmiling women are either young, tall and unattractive or short, stout, old and unattractive. However, this is punctuated by a surprisingly high number of breathtaking women all the more noticeable for their plumage. Generally tittering atop sky-scraping high-heels, these women often wear skin tight, brilliant colored clothing, showing every last inch of their incredibly long stilts (where their legs should be), emphasizing near emaciated bodies and long torsos. (I say near emaciated, but I don’t for a second think these women are all anorexic. I think it is just a different body type than chubby Americans are accustomed.) 

Notice the heels.	Bright colors.	She looks happy, doesn't she?

I tried to figure out how tall also seems to mean long legs and long torsos simultaneously, somehow each element seemingly more that 60% of body composition. These women, have no hips. Their legs and torsos both seem long as their hips are comparably very short. 

Any one of them could be on a runway in Milan, but they are so eye-catching with their flashy ornamentation and plumage. 

The unfortunate part is their carved, hard facial features, perpetually slightly disgusted or disinterested, and their slightly hunched shoulder shape, somehow wafting the “I can’t be bothered” attitude leave the observer so conflicted between visually desirable and emotionally repellent at the same time.

My biggest regret was not noticing this sooner and taking pictures. I pulled the above from the background of other pictures.

I would never choose to go to Odessa. Nonetheless, it is one of those places which is so experientially thick and rich that I am very grateful to have gone, again, and again, and again.