Odesa calls to mind those boomtowns of the Wild West; deep in debauchery, gold, wine, women and song. It's one big funfair, but if you are not organised then the intense heat - like anywhere - can be quite unpleasant.
I remember arriving on the Greek Islands one summer with a few friends who assured me that there was no need to arrange accommodation beforehand as there "will be lots of Greeks waiting when we alight from the boats." Ha! The ship docked in the fierce midday sun with not a soul to be seen... and tons of roudy English descending. We spent the first two days trapsing round the islands searching - me Atlas like under the great weight of my girlfriends massive rucksack - and the nights sleeping on the beach. On the third day I waded into the water for a paddle and stepped on a porcupine-type sea urchin which left me with over 50 spines in my foot. Yeah, that was a great holiday. I found a doctor to whom I paid about 30 quid to help me, all he did was attack me with a needle. The islanders swore that the best way to remove the spines was to pour human urine over them, so my friends all pissed into a bottle and poured it slowly over the base of my aching foot. It didn't do any good and I've never known if this is really part of Greek folklore or just the locals having a laugh.
Odesa was certainly lively but I have decided to head back westwards to Poland, to go any further east from here on my own would be foolhardy especially as I don't speak Russian. Knowing that it would probably take some time and not a little effort to buy my train ticket, I made a point of going to the railway station the day before I wanted to leave. I was right. I queued for a good 30 minutes and when I got to the window I was told tersely that I had to go to another place. I queued again elsewhere for an hour and when I got to the front she pulled down the blind. It is disconcerting the way they speak to each other, like in Poland, without any courtesy or cordiality. Then a miracle! I recognised Vitaly and Alexej in yet another queue, they had been in Odesa for a few days and had had the same idea as me. So I joined them and we took pictures of ourselves while fending off others pushing in.
At the next window an argument seemed to have broken out. The battleaxe behind the glass was shrieking at a man who was in turn gesticulating wildly... "What going on?" I asked my comrades. Vitaly calmly replied... "He's buying a ticket." At the end of another long wait we purchased our return journeys home, the boys going north to Moscow and me west to Lviv where I would spend one last night before the final leg back across the Polish border to Lodz.
