Odessa, Ukraine

Wow. We left Cracow yesterday afternoon and took the 4 hour train to Przemlz (or something like that), a little town close to the border between poland and ukraine. we had dinner there ( really cute and cheap little city) and after we took the train around 19h21, leaving for Odessa. We had to go through the polish customs before we got on the train. If I thought the polish night train was bad, boy was I wrong! Picture a really old train from the black and white movies. the walls are made of plywood, there's a carpet on the floor that's probably older than my grandmother, and it smells like an odd mixture of salami and a horse stable. the controller of the train, a woman, comes running down after us through the hallway, yelling, and we try to tell her that our bunk numbers are 52 and 56, and that there are no such numbers, but she just answers something in ukrainian and stuffs us into the next compartment, pointing to the two bunks on the right side. The two other ukrainian guys who were already in there get there stuff and leave the compartment ( apparently the controller thought it would be best to fill 1 compartment than to let us have 1 for us alone. Anyways, at this point I look around in our "room" for the night... the "beds" look like old school bus seats with leather on it, i smells really weird, it's unbelievably hot, and... the windows are screwed shut!!! Apparently this is custom in Ukraine. I must admit I started crying and the bf, who has much experience in travelling, comforted me and laughed a bit...The Ukrainian customs were also funny, not speaking a word of english, but we managed...

Well, my first impression was a bad one, but I must say I was wrong. We had the compartment to ourselves the whole night, got an extra matress to put on the school bus seats and it was pretty cool during the night. On top of that, our neighbours were 3 women travelling with children, and they really rocked! We hadn"t even left the station that they had already cracked open a beer, were laughing and talking in the hallway. Long story short, We eventually realised that one of them spoke a little english, and another quite good german. They shared their food with us, offered us a drink and we talked together till pretty late. We also then met a moldovan girl (Moldova is where we're headed after Odessa) and it was cool to be able to chat with her.

The night was great, I slept really well, I actually used one extra mattress as a cover cause I was too lazy to fishout my sleeping bag. Anyways, we arrived on time in Odessa. At the station we were swarmed with people looking to rent their rooms, appartments or houses on the beach side, but we were looking for something central. we walked through half of downtown looking for a cheap hotel, not understanding the writing (they use cyrilic alphabet here, so you have absolutely no idea how to pronounce stuff)anyways, we finally found a pretty cheap one that used to be the greatest hotel of odessa. It really does look like a Mansion in decrepitude, but whatever, it's like first class for dingy budget hotels :)

Tomorrow we'll try to find train tickts to get to Moldova, and check out more of the city. I'm exhausted and after the almost 24 hour train ride, I still feel like I'm on a train when I'm sitting...


PS note to self: never EVER complain again abour certain air companies having bad service or flights being uncomfortable