Odessa, Ukraine

I woke up after 09:00, showered, dressed, got ready, and took my sweet time before exiting the hostel after noon. I then walked through the old part of Odessa again, this time to the Museum of Western and Eastern Art, which has a collection of mostly western art housed inside a beautifully ornate building colored white and a light sky blue. Well, I reached the museum and –surprise, surprise – it was closed. I have had terrible luck with the museums in Odessa. So, with not much else to do, I walked south to the Odessa Passage on Deribasivska Street (near the Transfiguration Cathedral); the Passage is a very ornate shopping mall, albeit very small and lacking many worthwhile stores; although, the building itself is worth walking through. I then walked through some of the city’s parks before arriving at a traditional Ukrainian restaurant, where I treated myself to a feast. I had Cossack kvass (the national drink), Ukrainian beer, pork fat spread with bread, veal tongue baked in spices with cucumber slices and mayonnaise, veal entrecote with mushrooms and pomegranate sauce, poltava (soup with chicken balls and halushkas (pieces of dough)), podolyanochka (salo stuffed with chocolate, nuts, and raisins), and a mocha – suffice to say, it was a fantastic meal. After the meal, I wandered around the city some more, hoping to find a reasonably priced clothing store (since anything I wear on this trip will be worn down very quickly, thus no point in paying premiums); however, all the clothing stores in the old, central part of Odessa are designed for more upscale clientele. Finally, after 16:00, I returned to the hostel and listened to some music for the next two hours. At 18:05, I grabbed my coat, left the hostel, and walked to the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater for the 18:30 performance of ‘Pearls of Ballet’. I entered inside the lovely theater, was shown to my box, and I sat down ready to enjoy the performance; I also ended up sharing the box with a Ukrainian couple. At 18:30, the performance began and I was treated to six different ballet dances; the first four, before the short interval, I did not recognize and I have no idea what they were or what ballet they may have been taken from (the posters are all in Ukrainian, which I cannot read); the last two, after the interval, were ‘Le Spectre de la rose’ and ‘Dance of the Hours’; each of the six segments were well danced to lovely music, but the ‘Dance of the Hours’ was easily my favorite. Once the performance had concluded (and after I had clapped with the rest of the audience for five-straight minutes or so while several ballerinas received flowers from their personal patrons), I exited the theater, walked to a nearby market, bought some Eastern European beer, water, and moloko, and returned to the hostel. Once back at the hostel, I got to work typing out journal entries, while the resident cat laid on my lap and purred (I think she loves me). While typing out journal entries, I drank the three beers I had bought earlier and listened to music. I finally went to sleep after 02:00.