good morning look at that nice car and welcome to a rather snowy windy rainy and freezing cold
odessa ukraine in december my glasses are slipping down my nose because of the rain brilliant
today i had every intention of filming a top tier travel video you know the ones with the overly
dramatic voiceover and the flashy drone shots well clearly that's not going to happen today and i'm
not going to subject myself to another Novi Sad situation with the rain therefore i thought it'd
be a great opportunity to do a bit of a sit-down talking update video because i actually have a few
updates shockingly so if you don't like that sort of video switch off now but if you do stay tuned
but first we've got a dog hello
ah what a fluffy angel despite the weather i thought i'd show you Deribasovkaya Street which is
like the main pedestrian walking tourist street in the center of odessa i'm located like a block away
so i'm always down here and you've got these food places over here like uh turkish places all sorts
of stuff the food is really good in a desert i've actually just thought to myself we're gonna what's
the word improvise today because i'm gonna have something in this video i gotta go to the shop
to get it though it is like supermarket food but it is indicative of some of the food you can get
in odessa and ukraine it's one of my favorite things ever if you've seen on instagram you know
what i'm talking about yeah we'll cover this more in one of those aforementioned top tier videos
we've got pretty lights here's the end of Deribasovkaya street oh copyrighted music um
yeah de Ribas it's named after Jose de Ribas yes that's a spanish name we'll cover the story
behind that in a future video so that may seem so i haven't just been sitting on my ass for
the last three weeks i've been in odessa i've been teaching english as normal and i've been finishing
an ebook that i've been writing i actually started it when i first got to belgrade back in
when was that august i don't know so today is really the first day i've got a chance to come
out and the weather's like this um so it will just be a case of waking up and seeing what the
weather's like going forward and whether i'm free silpo it's time to practice my cyrillic reading
my ukrainian good morning my russian thank you goodbye let's go thankyou goodbye
it's bloody grim in it but i've got me food all right let's go home i'm home praise the lord yes
the ironing board is my desk get over it right food i think we'll have that later okay the thing
about ukraine that has absolutely shocked me i'm finally a shocked youtuber after all these years
i can't believe i didn't know this i'm sorry for my absolute stupidity and ignorance but
heating right apparently in some countries there is something called heating season i.e the city
regulates the heating and turns it on at a certain time and then turns it off and you have no choice
whether you actually want the heating on or not someone called greta right i've discovered the
reason for excessive burning of fossil fuels this is my vaccine certificate double shocked let's
show you the food i've got we're going to have it later because i've got to put it in the saucepan
and everything but you cannot come to ukraine poland belarus russia latvia you name it without
having Vareniki look at these absolute beautiful angels so i know this doesn't look like much
right now but trust me it will the theme of improvisation will continue with my cooking
techniques if you know poland as you may know i'm half polish pierogi or van any in ukraine
is the best um it's something my nan used to make my mum still makes it i've made it as well from
scratch with varying degrees of success it's basically like a dumpling filled with cheese
you also get uh like pierogi ruskie which is filled with potato and cheese and you top it with
like bacon bits and onion there are also sweet versions my man used to make like a blueberry one
it's great to have some food that i don't need to research because i know about this already
kind of so i thought i would try and make the background a little bit more interesting with some
remnants from the past there's my a huevo laptop bag al pastor from mexico available on my website
by the way teatro isauro martinez book which Jorge gave me in Torreon in mexico when i went to that
theater in that video and also some light reading wait for it deportation of poles to siberia
that's my grandad written by my nan this book i had my mum send it to me in serbia because it's
research for a book which i'm planning to write at some point um it's all very interesting and
you know if you know anything about deportation of polls in siberia it's heartbreaking it's
horrendous horrific all of those words um i would recommend reading about it if you're interested
now the drone shots you're seeing in this video were filmed a few days ago when the
weather was vaguely slightly better i obviously am planning to film videos here in odessa and indeed
ukraine so i've got a bit of a plan but it all very much depends on one thing and i mentioned
it already i said vaccine certificate it's not a vaccine certificate because i've had
the first one my second one is next week although i still need to book it it has really annoyed me
throughout covid when people say oh it's so easy to get a vaccine it's not um especially if you're
in a country in which you are not a resident you're not a citizen you're not a taxpayer you
don't have any type of temporary residency it's just not possible um you know serbia i couldn't do
it mexico i couldn't do it ukraine really i can't do it either but there are ways and means money
bribery basically i have to pay three hundred hyrvnia which is about 10 us dollars to get
the second vaccine next week so as of next week i'll be fully vaccinated the reason i'm doing it
i've got to be honest primarily it's for travel purposes because it's got to the point now where i
literally can't go anywhere except mexico and the balkans without any kind of restriction so it's
just about making it easier for me going forward i was sick for like a few days afterwards and also
yesterday it's kind of continued i haven't felt great since getting it but that's life so um yeah
and also with the vaccine in ukraine from october the 21st just before i got here you can't actually
get on a bus or a train to go anywhere in ukraine in terms of domestic internal travel without
a certificate so if i didn't get it i would be stuck in a desert the whole time which
i don't want to do my ebook is the next point so as you know i teach english online i've written a
number of ebooks in the past concerning particularly business english for english
teachers themselves not for the actual learners but this one's a bit different and then it's
for both and it's kind of focused on the world of hybrid working remote working post pandemic
while we're kind of still in a pandemic you know what i mean so it's kind of focused on the topics
which people need to be discussing nowadays and that should be done kind of mid-december
that will be on my website along with the other ones which you can get as well and the reason i'm
doing that you know people ask me like why do you bother i was like because it's a source of income
quite simply and it does help people out as well trying to get into the world of teaching english
and also doing what i do you know the reason i've been able to travel full-time for five years is
because of that let's not forget that if it you know youtube on its own does not make enough money
to do what i do you know things like ebooks and passive income as a whole they may not be
things which you know are making me thousands or millions it's steady income that comes in
in little bits here and there which you know kind of pays for daily expenses like you know
cigarettes and Vareniki and things like that so it is worthwhile and
you know books that i wrote last year i still get sales on them now like you know every week um
throughout the week you know so it comes in little dribbles but it is worthwhile is my camera wonky
i hope it's not speaking of poland i finally have a bit of an update concerning polish citizenship
if you don't know last september september 2020 i started the process in terms of obtaining polish
citizenship because my grandparents as you can see were polish and i can obtain polish
citizenship by descent it's becoming increasingly popular for people to explore that option
particularly people from the uk i'm wobbling the ironing board because of brexit so primarily the
reason i'm doing it is purely to make travel and working and living in the eu much easier
because right now it's basically difficult with only a british passport just because i'm getting
a polish past polish citizenship and passport hopefully doesn't necessarily mean i want to
or i'm going to move to poland i don't want to move to poland i've got no desire to move to
poland you know i've only been to two cities in poland perhaps that will change in the future
but having an eu passport will obviously mean i can live anywhere in the eu so it doesn't matter
whether it's latvia which is the ultimate plan or estonia or spain or italy whatever italy would be
a dream sorrento i'd love to live in sorrento so posh the last update was the fact that the polish
provincial i keep saying provisional um provincial office we're waiting for the uk to authenticate
there's lots of great vocabulary in this video my documents that i sent them way back in february
this week i finally had an update in that they've completed that review and that
basically everything's looking good and hopefully in three to four weeks i.e around christmas or
realistically early early 2022 because of you know christmas shut down and everything that's
so annoying i should receive confirmation but i'm not gonna count my chickens before they're hatched
that's this expression isn't it because i don't no it's not confirmed yet so hopefully next year
early next year i will have that what's going to happen after that so you may know that i'm
my ultimate aim is to settle down somewhere in the eu get a cat and kind of have a normal life again
that's still very much the aim even though you know obviously i'm still traveling you know mexico
serbia ukraine because at the moment that's kind of my only option i'm not going to go to the uk
that way that polish passport let's say i get citizenship in january best case scenario
it will take about another six weeks to two months to obtain the passport
um by which point i won't be in europe i'll come on to that um and then i'm probably going to be
doing uh you know another sort of six months seven eight months of what i'm doing now travel related
stuff in various countries kind of like it's season seven because this is season six right now
season seven as with star trek the next generation and star trek voyager and deep space nine the best
season seven was the final one i'm not saying that i'm gonna finish i'm not gonna film videos anymore
after season seven because i will um it just won't be in the same guys as it has been of consistent
travelling i'm going to be based somewhere so yeah i'm pleased finally there's a bit of
cut through if you know what i mean with that okay let's have the Vareniki it's like 11
in the morning i don't really want it at this time but what can you do saucepan some butter
let's not burn the batter i hate these induction things okay i have burned the
butter brilliant it doesn't really matter um okay but any key goes in the saucepan
um i would yeah like i said i normally have this with um bacon maybe onion on the top as well and
i would normally fry it in a frying pan so that it goes golden brown but i haven't got a frying pan
so i've got to use a saucepan okay it doesn't look great let's be honest but honestly i don't care um
so as you can see you have like a cheese inside and it's really good when you have it with bacon
and when they're a bit more golden brown but you know what i don't care it's the taste that has so
once i made this and it was the best i kind of improvised again with it i had like mustard in
it and lots of pepper i forgot pepper brilliant um it was better than my mum's sorry mum um but
the second time i made it was on christmas day in poland last year and it was an absolute disaster
heavenly some people call it polish ravioli it's not that um it's pierogi this is only
from the supermarket it is the fresh one there is a frozen one in my freezer too
but of course go to a restaurant you can get a proper restaurant one which i do plan to do in
a video lovely you also get uh pelmeni which is um kind of similar usually it's smaller dumplings but
the filling is only with me i don't really like that for some reason much prefer Vareniki that
was divine so that's it that's all the updates and just in terms of uh what you can expect
going forward i'm gonna do my absolute utmost to film as many videos as i possibly can in ukraine
by the end of the year because i'm planning to leave ukraine on new year's day that will be when
the end of season six will be and then i'm going to be taking my yearly youtube creative break
this year it was four months it won't be four months it'll be like a month
this time because at the end of january early february i'm gonna be going somewhere that isn't
in europe to start off to kick off season seven it's a country that i have been to twice before
it's not mexico um i've been there seven times and it's uh but it's somewhere that um i went before
youtube and i it's somewhere i've always wanted to go to in the youtube era and it's gonna be epic
let's just say it won't be snowing so uh watch out for that in the future but for the meantime
you're stuck with the desert videos in crappy winter weather brilliant
uh so thanks for watching um i will try to get out tomorrow to film a proper video so you can
hopefully expect that in a few days a top tier one hopefully because there's quite a lot of things to
do in odessa actually i was quite surprised thanks a lot i'll see you next time i'll catch you later