Arriving in Odessa I ventured through the night to my hostel, interpreting the phonetic virtue of the Cyrillic writing to match street names up to the Roman alphabet English versions on my map. I made it to the hostel and checked in.
The next day I went for a run, had a shower, then hung out with an American who seemed pretty tame. Later we joined another American who was having her birthday. On the way to the beach our travel was interrupted by a police officer who stole from us… darn, no Black Sea beach!
Our plans changed then we grabbed dinner to de-stress after the robbery. I packed my bag and was ready to leave early. At 0430h my taxi arrived and I departed to the Odessa airport – by western standards tiny and I can safely say a bit dumpy. The metallic seats were comfortable enough as I waited for my flight to depart. There are no jet ways here; two Ukraine International Airlines stood on the tarmac with and Aeroflot plane and a few others.
Odessa was nice – it would have been great to have had more time there!
