Savoury Dreams
Grand Hotel Moscow
One of the more famous buildings in Odesa, when this storied hotel eventually reopens, it will most definitely do so under a new name - as it was previously known as the Grand Hotel Moscow....
A Simple Meal
Reading almost all of Murakami's books has ruined the phrase ‘simple meal’, but if that weren't the case, it'd definitely be apt to describe this breakfast: Two kinds of fresh bread, young cheese with honey, a heavenly slice of cheesecake made by the same babushka who sells the young cheese at the market, and the platonic ideal of a watermelon. Mmmm mmmm....
NB: The apartment is actually on the 4th floor of a building with 4-metre ceilings, which means those trees in the courtyard are quite huge.
Saturday evening on Vulytsia Derybasivska
Ukrainian Post Box Art
French Hot Dogs Redux
Here's a couple more of those fancy French hot dogs that Odesa is rightfully famous for....
Raccoon Riot
They say don't judge a book by its cover, but this laundry-hanging raccoon sure has a guilty look on its face....
Ремонт одежды
When there's a super cool 'underground' clothing repair shop just around the corner, but you don't have any clothes that really need repairing....
NB: In a lot of the ex-Soviet states (or at least Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, if memory serves) having restaurants, bars, shops and other businesses in basements and half-basements is very common.
BoJo Strikes Again
By all (anecdotal) accounts, the Ukrainian craft beer scene is currently thriving - at least when it comes to label designs. A bit suspicious of this cheeky clown-themed milk stout though. Seems like it might have already turned sour....
You can't always get what you want
When you go to a fancy supermarket at 8.30 in the morning to pick up a big tub of smoked pork fat with garlic (for later, of course!), and they're disappointingly all out of that particular variety. BUT, they do have something perhaps even better....
Seems those chaps from that one band really knew what they were talking about....
🎶 You can't always get what you want 🎶
🎶 But if you try sometime 🎶
🎶 Well, you might find 🎶
🎶 You get what you need 🎶
Khachapuri Surprise!
When dinner ends with an unexpected bang*, but you can't let that distract you from the piping hot, first-rate Georgian khachapuri sitting in front of you - or the various meats, salads and other side dishes covering the table. Mmmm mmmm!
*Literally, as a missile hit the port last night and gave the whole city centre quite a strong shake just as we were finishing up....
Full Disclosure: This khachapuri was a friend's, not mine, so I only got a taste. Meanwhile, my shashlyk zi svynyny (grilled pork skewers) was also excellent (the marinade, wow!), but not nearly as photogenic.
Don't look back
Last night it was belly-pleasing khachapuri and a ground-shaking missile strike, tonight it was a rousing performance of Gluck's 'Orfeo ed Euridice' in a private box just left of centre at the city's famed opera house.
You never know what you're gonna get in Odesa....
Pro-Tip: If you purchase a few cheap seats for the equivalent of €6 apiece and no one else shows up in your section, congratulations! You've now got a private box at the famed Odesa opera house for under €20. Great deals still exist if you're willing to travel far enough and have got a bit of luck....
Bags by Baginskiy
As one of the world's foremost amateur researchers of glitches in the Matrix - or glitchologist, as we refer to each other at our various conferences, symposiums and other meetups - this doesn't quite rise to that level, but a fashion designer named Baginskiy hawking bags was still an amusing thing to spot in the wild earlier this morning....
NB: The item pictured here is actually a 'bag hat', and retails for $336 on Mr Baginskiy's website, which you should definitely visit, if only to see the summer season intro video that's playing on loop. It's probably not meant to be satire, but it's still amazing satire.
Savoury Dreams
Not sure what this guy is dreaming of, but in a perfect world it would be these exact dishes of hearty homecooked traditional Ukrainian fare....
Extravaganza on Ice
Posters for this ice show extravaganza at the Odesa Circus have been plastered all over the city centre for at least a month. How many of them can one person see before breaking down and finally buying tickets? Impossible to say, but feels like we're getting very close to an answer....
Update: Never did make it to the circus. Next time!
Potato and cherry and cheese varenyky, oh my!
NB: Varenyky are Ukrainian dumplings, very similar to Polish pierogi.
A Quiet Conversation Piece
Some words of wisdom (?) written in the late '60s by a notoriously nasty old drunk? Sure, it's Monday morning, why not. And like most critiques of our broken by design system written over the years, the sentiment still seems (sadly even more) applicable some six decades later....
“you talk like a good American”
“I don't have any politics. I'm an observer.”
“it's a good thing everybody isn't an observer, or we would never get anywhere.”
“have we gotten somewhere?”
“I don't know”
“neither do I. but i do know that a lot of revolutionaries are real pricks, and DULL, very dull to top it off...”
“listen, Rabbi, I'm trying to see the thing from all sides, not just my side. the Establishment is very cool. you've got to give them that. I'll talk with the Establishment any time. I know that I'm dealing with a tough boy. look at what they did to Spock. both Kennedys. King. Malcolm X. you make your list. it's a long one. you can’t move too fast on the big boys or you'll find yourself whistling Dixie through a cardboard toiletpaper holder at Forest Lawn. but things are changing. the young are thinking better than the old used to think and the old are dying. there's still a way to do it without everybody getting murdered.”
it gets quiet then and the problem hangs between us. meanwhile, the skidrows are filled with the disenchanted and the discarded; the poor die in charity wards among a scarcity of doctors; the jails are so filled with the disordered and the lost that there are not enough bunks and the prisoners must sleep on the floor. to get on relief is an act of mercy that may not last and the madhouses are stuffed wall to wall because of a society that uses people like chess pawns...
(All excerpts from 'A Quiet Conversation Piece' from the short story collection Tales of Ordinary Madness)
Waiting for Moonrise
Not a bad view to go along with dinner tonight. And it managed to get even better - to the naked eye if not the cheap phone camera lens - after the full moon came up just a bit later....
NB: If you've been following this page for a while, you already know that it's the time of the month where many photos of the sky are taken in vain, and this full moon was no exception.