I DID IT! :o))

ok, it is not exactly important right now what I did, but I am just so happy I actually did it, I had to write about it... ! :D

Odessa

This weekend I went for a trip to Odessa, a port city in the south of Ukraine.

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The nice part about travelling in Ukraine is that although travelling to most of places takes several hours, the train system is so worked through, that you can travel to most of the places over the night - leave in the night and arrive comfortably (if you had a good sleep on the train) in your destination the next morning.

That is what our plan was for the long weekend. The first fairly funny thing happened at 22.45 in Kyiv. We show our tickets to the conducter, and she with a confused face look at us and says... but your tickets are for tomorrow night, not tonight. And indeed, the date 18th April is printed on the tickets and tonight is the Friday 17th. Well, anyways, there is nothing that cant be solved if the right amount of money is there. When we ask for a free space, we are told the new price, and the conductor finds us several beds, including their own.

We arrived to Odessa at 9am the next morning. It was sunny and warm and we set of to find a place to have a breakfast. When we find this beautiful Zavtrak cafe, outside on the main street, witch French music playing and croissants "fragrant", a nasty looking Security comes to us and says "we are closed"... We look around and see other people having breakfasts in the cafe... So I start to enquire... at the end we find out there is "technical problem" but as long as we "take away", we can sit outside. Well, Ukraine :o).

At 1pm we accommodated ourselves in an appartment that we had rented for the weekend and set off to explore the city. The center of Odessa is small but there is a number of beautiful sunny streets with amazing architecture and lots of trees. We made it to the main sights and managed to accidentaly meet one American that we got to know in a pub few days back in Kyiv ("... what is your name?") (he already had a nice Ukrainian girl on his hand). After the stroll, we ended up in one tiny cafe in a park next to the Opera... we got some food and just relaxed. Later on we moved into another cute restaurant in one of the side streets where we accidentaly met an AIESEC couple (Dutch and Ukrainian) - the world indeed is small. And then, in the night we went to one traditional Ukrainian restaurant with simply amazing amazing food. After that we were to go to area called Arcadia, where some of the night clubs are located close to the beach area. With expectations of a wild night we were thus quite taken aback to discover this lively street with lots of bars to be completely empty and liveless... well... it was simply too early in the season :o)).

Next morning, three of us set off for a nice quest. When visiting one of the social service centers last Tuesday, a name of a boy was being mentioned and that he was transfered to Odessa. I said I am visiting Odessa the very weekend and so we agreed with this lady that I will try to see the boy in Odessa if we manage to find in which Rehabilitation center he is placed. The boy is HIV+, with history of TB complications, an orphan. When in Odessa, I call and find out from another social worker the address of the boy and we go and do shopping for fruits and sweets that we could bring along to the center, both for the boy and other kids. Afterall it is Easter (orthodox).

We get a taxi, find the Rehabilitation center and enter into the building. We are stopped straight at the reception by one of the social workers there, as we simply can not just march in the center (logically) and ask to visit some kid. I look at the lady, then I look in the corridor, and I see "my boy" sitting there on the sofa. He just had a visit from his relatives and by sheer coincidence he was out there sitting, watching us and listening to my explanations. The lady insists that it is not proper what we did, without announcing the visit ahead and getting consent of the director, as well as that they do not accept food for children... at the end (no matter the strick voice, she does have a good heart) she lets us talk to the boy and does take what we brought for the children. So we spent several minutes with Vadim. He tells us a bit about his life in the new place, about things he likes and plans for future... and he seems so positive looking and so reconciled with his situation, I could hardly believe it.

We meet the rest of our group in one restaurant in the early afternoon but since they seem to be keen of continuing to eat, two of us set for a walk around Odessa. We go to the port, walk through a park and meet the rest few hours later at the beach. Beautiful beautiful beaches are in the very center of Odessa. We hang out around, have fun on a close by lift... and after that we walk through the streets of Odessa back to the appartment. We are to go out for a dinner (some of us - steak house!) and then go out. This time being wise, we decide to go to this famous several-floor disco place in the center of Odessa. But the place is closed... Odessa, believe it or not, is simply empty during the Easter break. We are amazed, speechless... We slowly walk towards our appartment when I suddenly hear a music for the basement. When we turn around the corner, there is a night club. We are happy to finally find some life in Odessa! We enter the bar and two guys stop us along the way "Do you know what this bar is?" ... we look at him confused... "It is a gay club"... one of the friends looks confused and says "but there are girls too..." ... "those are lesbians" ... So our "luck" lasted only few seconds when we are walked out of the club.. but then we realize... they never said no to us... just warned us. So we go back... We get our own table and join into this crazy night. There are many things happening... but we enjoy ourselves. It is nice not to have to care... I even tried to dance by a pole! But it is not as easy as it seems... but it is great fun to play. Anyways, at the end the night ended up being great :o)).

On Monday morning we go for a breakfast in two. Already on Sunday we were only three for breakfast. The nights seem to be hard and not many people manage to get up "early" (=before 12). I love the breakfasts, as we always end up in the same place, which is simply lovely with its atmosphere, slow forgetful waitresses and yummy food. In the afternoon, the 10 of us go to the close by Nerubayskiye Catacombs. We get lost several times along the way, before we find out that although the Catacombs are marked on the left in the map, in real they are on the other side of the road. But we find them and are lucky enough to be on time for the last "showing".

Close to Odessa there is an area where 15m thick layer of limestone was formed at the bottom of the Black sea. That dates to 2mil years back and the sea has moved since then several km away. The limestone has been used as a cheap building material and most of the center of Odessa was built from it. The stone was being mined since 2nd half of 19 century leaving labyrinth of approx. 3000 km long corridors. The corridors were mined in three floors and are connected to each other. So far only half of the catacombs are mapped and 700m of those are showed to tourists.

When Odessa was attacked by Germans during the WW2, it took 73 days before the city was occupied. During that time several brigades of partisans were formed and hid themselves in the Catacombs. Catacombs thus served as a base for undermining the German occupation and spying. There were 12 brigades with approx. 1500 men. Each brigade was placed in different part of Catacombs and were not connected, on the other hand each brigade did have internal connection with different parts of the caves. The partisans built all the necessary places within the catacombs, kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, ... even classrooms for their kids. They had the artillery room there, shooting training room, meeting rooms... etc.

As much as harm as partisans tried to cause to Germans, the Germans would cause to partisans... they would flood the cattacombs, close entrances to Catacombs with concrete, put poison gas into the Catacombs... The partisans lived over 900 days in the Catacombs, some 2/3 of them survived.

On our way back to Odessa we took local marshrutka, which was a great experience, utchitivaja how crowded the marshrutka was, but how friendly the people were.
The rest of the day we spent in a cafe, then went to a Fat Moses for dinner... and by 11 were at the railway station, ready to get back to Kyiv by the night train (and of to work in the morning).

In Europe, Ukraine is the country with highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate (1.63%) among adult population. The estimation is that 440 000 people are infected with HIV. Although the rate crossed 1 percentual point, the epidemic is considered to be concentrated (rather than generalized), which means there are still groups that are most at-risk and the epidemic has not yet been really bridged to the general population.

These above sentences should serve as an introduction to an experience that I went through yesterday. I met with a social worker who has taken me to visit several of the social daily centers that concentrate on injecting drug users as well as on people that are diagnosed as HIV-infected (ВИЧ-инфицирован).

... will continue later

... neighbour

I just had a talk with our neighbour. He seems like a nice guy, while ringing already second time this week, that we have forgotten to close/lock our outter door... we got to talk and he started to remember that only 10 years ago, there were no double doors... that people did not even lock their flats... He said it was regular practice to hang out with neighbours, to have dinner with them... that they would come ringing from the neighbouring floor to enquire if he had lunch and take him over... or different neighbours would come, ring and bring along breakfast.... it sounds really cool and it is a shame such things have disappeared from Ukraine ... although I must admit that being woken up at 2am by a bunch of folks bringing alcohol and food and staying over till 6am is rather unsual :D.

... wonder what is happening with the world...

Myanmar photos

I finally managed to sort out the photos from Myanmar. These photos were taken in Delta Irawadi, more specifically the Labutta region after the cyclone Nargis hit the region in May 2008.

Slunatko

I was forced to leave him home as he would never fit my backback. My sister thus adopted him for the time I am gone.

Czech airlines...

Ok, this is hillarious:

Czech Airlines / Contact us:
....

Můžete nám samozřejmě poslat také zprávu prostřednictvím elektronické pošty. Stačí vyplnit následující formulář. Přesvědčíme Vás, že Vaše zprávy v koši neskončí.

And their answer:
Dear Mrs Martina SouckovaFor info please kindly contact CSA Kiev + 380 44 288 10 60/64Thanks Best Regards CSA Kiev

Thanks, that is really helpful!