Monday night I met up with Megan and her husband. They had wanted to go on the Chernobyl tour but didn’t realize the stops had to be booked a few weeks in advance. We tried to find other neat things to do related to the Soviet period, including an ICBM site tour, but to little avail.
Tuesday night I enjoyed borsch at a local restaurant/pub. Curiously, it came with a shot of vodka. Oh, Ukraine…
Wednesday I joined an Australian to shoot an AK-47. It’s the first gun I’ve shot, and I’m satisfied with having crossed the item off my list, in full-automatic mode, but continue to have little interest in guns. Nevertheless, we snapped the necessary pictures.
We stopped at the World War II museum on the way back to see some old military equipment. It rained heavily – really heavily. The next day we planned to head to an ICBM site, the hostel owner having a connection to get us into the launch room, but the Aussie bailed (though deciding not to communicate this) and the plan fell apart. I headed to the Monastery to see the caves containing the remains of some monks (neat, but a very short), the World War II museum without torrential rain, and then grabbed a bus to Odessa.
Plans have changed slightly. Originally I planned to “skirt” around the Black Sea via Moldova, Romania, and Bulgaria. Figuring I didn’t really want to subject myself to needless hardship walking through Moldova at the junction of Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania, I revised the plan to go through Chisinau, Moldova’s capital. Later, I also realized that there is a conflict zone called Transdneistra on the East border of Moldova and Ukraine which is difficult to avoid. Having done some investigation to estimate how much I might be blackmailed to get through the border, coming to some comfort that the situation wasn’t too grave, and realizing I could simply tell Mom and Grandma about my adventure after I was through the Russian-backed self-declared nation that goes unrecognized by most of the developed world, there remained a problem: I would spend an inordinate time in transit instead of visiting places. Finding some reasonably priced flights, I booked connections from Odessa to Istanbul and then on to Athens four days later.
The bus to Odessa, despite being a newer private ones, reminds me why I prefer trains. The man to my left is bulging into my seat and has some kind of breathing problem – wheezing with every breath. The guy to my right just looked over with an “oh no, we might have to deal with this for six hours” look. While trains can end up doing donkey runs or being stuck behind slower trains on the track, particularly in less-developed nations, thus taking more time than busses, space is much – much more generous than on buses. Toilets are almost always available, and you generally are not subject to obnoxious road risks such as potholes, fast turns, and a developing country favourite – the near suicidal tendencies of the drivers, including your own.