A friend from Berlin has shot some great photos while in Odessa and I thought I share them with you.

Well, that’s me by the Black Sea – throwing stones the wrong direction.

That’s Odessa at night…

Her name sounds like a beautiful legend, like a distant myth.

Petra Reski

Ukraina: he sighs, breathing in the remembered scent of mown hay and cherry blossom. But I catch the distinct synthetic whiff of New Russia

Lewycka, ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’, 2005

To us comes a stingy, stubborn Polish Jew; and we turn him into a wildly gesticulating, rapidly inflammable and fast becalming Odessian.

Isaac Babel

It’s been a while since I last updated, but while my Central Asian blogging takes place exclusively at neweurasia, this place is somewhat reserved for travel updates. So I guess there will be a couple of posts coming from now on as I arrived in Odessa for four weeks of intensive Russian-language training this morning.

Getting here was unexpectedly easy: The UIA flight from Gatwick to Kiev took three hours, the night train to Odessa nine. Then a little wait for someone of my language school and – into the classroom for a first four-hour session of imperfective/perfective, verbs of motion… you name it.

Now it’s time to get to know the city, which at first sight looks great. I am living with a family not far from the centre (10-minute walk), their hallway features a window facing the sea-side, (or better: features a vista of the biggest port of the former Soviet Union). I’ve got my own desk, which is good, for which I’ll start working on it tonight.

‘Kazakhstan’s hydrocarbon resources and their implications for development’ will be my nightly occupation for the next weeks. My 10,000-word thesis is due soon and I really have to start writing asap. So, after a heavy end-of-term period back home in the UK, sober academia is about to rule my life here in Odessa.

I’ll be in Odessa/Ukraine for the whole April 2006. I’ve already booked my flight some days ago, and am now in the process of finalising issues with my language school. In my third year at Uni, I am taking a two-unit Russian course over at Queen Mary University in order to make myself understood when travelling in Central Asia. As I am from East Berlin, it is rather sad that I’ve been in the first year that had no compulsory Russian classes…