PETER: Let's do it, man. MAN: Let's do it.
♪ upbeat Eastern European ♪
PETER: It's an exciting moment. Going to Odesa.
Which is roughly 11 hours I believe.
[music continues]
Odesa, Ukraine...
[motorcycle passing]
[music fades]
So first impressions were these wide, beautiful boulevards with trees.
So the trees were just creating this canopy of shade
as we drove into the center of the city.
Everything here feels a little bit more grand.
You can feel that it was once a very...
A very important place.
And so you feel it in the architecture.
You feel it in the way the city was laid out,
and I was told it's actually a lot of French and Italians,
were the architects behind a lot of this construction.
A lot of cool detail in the buildings.
So there were ivy and grapevines growing up the buildings.
Almost a Mediterranean feel in a way.
But with a Ukrainian twist.
The challenge always is...
...finding some cool locals.
Because it's one thing for me to talk about the place
when I don't know much about it or rip off some basic historical facts.
It's another thing to find cool people
that help me bring out this place to the camera
♪ upbeat funky jazz ♪
Here with Dennis.
And Dennis, you said you're gonna show me
one of the coolest things in the city right here?
-Yes, we're going to Kanatna Doroha.
[gondolas clanking]
[music continues]
[gondola banging and clanking]
Get in, Danny.
[both laughing]
[latch clacks]
[cables creaking]
-Do you think this thing gets regularly maintained?
-Um... [crickets]
-Quite a cultural experience. This is from Soviet times, right?
-Yes.
-We're going right into the Black Sea, that's dope.
[creaking and clanking]
PETER: That thing's cool.
One of the big surprises with the Black Sea is it's not black,
and okay, people in this part of the world obviously know that.
From what I've seen it's got, sometimes, like a deep blue or turquoise color to it.
It's set up for this beach culture, and this whole party vibe on the beach,
and there's this massive walkway, and it's very open, and expansive.
[music fades]
♪ deep Middle Eastern ♪
There are cats everywhere here. It's cat culture.
What were you saying? There are a lot of cats here because why?
SERJ: Because back in the day they brought cats here to fight rats
that were coming here from the ships.
-Okay, let's check this out.
-Every yard... -I see cats.
PETER: And I see a very cool courtyard.
Oh, and it smells like cat sh*t.
-Yeah, pretty common.
-It's a lot here actually I've noticed.
That is beautiful, bro.
Is this normal? -Yep.
-Like a courtyard like this? -Typical. Super typical for here.
PETER: Super typical?
Do you know why? Do you know why it was built like this?
Just to have this peaceful internal area?
SERJ: It's a long history of living together, communication.
-Hmm.
PETER: Super quiet in here.
Other than that bus, but it gets really still.
SERJ: You can hear people washing dishes.
Someone's hanging their clothes to dry
and in the evening you can hear people chatting through the windows.
You can smell the fish is being fried.
Super cool.
-There's a lot of color here.
So I see color in the buildings. I see color in the people.
People dress with more color.
I feel it's a bit more animated.
It has a bit more of that Mediterranean feel.
That, you know, let's say Italian style.
Where it's a little more expressive...
[woman speaking Ukrainian]
...and outwardly emotional.
The life is on the streets.
It's at a pace much, much slower than the capital, Kyiv.
It's very chill here.
Everything moves very melodically.
And it's one of those places you can just, you know,
envelop yourself and, like, go into the streets,
and really get a lot of pleasure just walking these long, beautiful boulevards.
♪ upbeat Middle Eastern ♪
It's a port city and its history...
You know, at one time it was a very big port,
and it was very cosmopolitan.
So it has that air about it.
Port cities always have that...
True port cities always have that feel of adventure in them.
Ukrainian captains on the boats here get 10,000 a month, you think?
-Yeah, I know.
So you can, like, make 60 grand a year or even more if you don't have a family,
and you just, you know, you want to spend 12 months a year in the seas.
It's a long way to become a captain.
Ukraine is kind of Wild West of Europe
because it's kind of a European country
but you've got sh*t like parking's very bad.
Like, laws don't really work but you've got so much freedom here.
Especially if you're an entrepreneur, yeah.
Like, stuff is not that regulated that much.
You can make your first money here very easy
but you gotta deal with corruption and stuff.
-I feel, like, a strong juxtaposition between old and new.
So you can see it definitely in the architecture.
A lot of these buildings are falling apart a bit.
A lot need to be restored,
and then you see these new businesses that are very modern looking,
and they could be in the same building.
Like, one building can be...
You know, it can be falling apart at the top and look condemned,
and then the bottom is this brand new business
that's well lit and well designed.
PETER: Cobblestones way under this asphalt? SERJ: Yeah.
And most of this is actually covered with cobblestone
but most of the cobblestone is under the asphalt for some reason.
But this cobblestone is super famous.
It's actually Italian lava cobblestone.
-[Peter surprised] Oh, that's right.
They look like Naples. -Yep.
-Looks like in Naples.
SERJ: The whole city is actually built out of the shale rock.
This is shale rock.
Um, it was made out of shales by millions of years at the sea.
So when they started to build the city it was the easiest way.
To just dig underground, and get out the shale rock,
and build the city.
So now we have a huge, huge lane of catacombs
under the city that you can explore.
It's, like, the biggest in Europe.
-You can tell this city had its best days behind it.
I don't know when that was.
Sometime in the 19th century I believe is when it was at its most booming time.
So it's not at its height right now but you see this young energy
sort of like poking through.
It seems like there's some sort of renaissance going on
and there are people creating here, and you can feel that on the streets.
DENNIS: It's nice to see that the city is changing.
The people, their mentality is also changing.
PETER: How so? What do you mean by that?
-Like what you see right now, like around this park,
it's pretty much made by a younger generation.
A younger generation that wanted change. -Right.
-This new mentality, and I see how it's doing positive things.
-And these cops coming at us, are they corrupt or no?
-These guys, they're in the academy.
So they're not corrupt yet but... [chuckles]
Faith. -Faith?
-I don't think a lot of people have enough faith that it's possible.
I mean there's still some kind of stereotypical belief that
there is no future.
Ukraine is falling apart.
We need to, you know, move to United States, for example.
-Right.
-And they don't know much about it.
They don't know a lot about States.
PETER: Maybe your life's better there, maybe it's not.
-Yeah.
-But you're not gonna meet.... There's one thing for sure.
For certain you're not gonna meet Brad Pitt on Hollywood Boulevard.
Like, so many people think here, like, it's just like the movies.
-Right? -Yeah.
When this whole political situation happened with Russia
and when there was...
When after a war, people here, like the whole mentality,
the whole psychology of people kind of got shooken up.
The good amount of people had some kind of awakening moment
inside of them and that's where I see the change.
People, I see this in their eyes and I'm very proud of it.
There is a saying, "Tough times create strong people."
"Strong people create good times, and good times create weak people."
"Weak people create poor times."
-At night this gets busy, right?
-Yes, it gets busy on the weekends.
It gets busy at night or when the weather is good.
Every night here there is a movie theater.
-Uh-huh.
-Like an open sky movie theater.
WOMAN: It's delicious. PETER: Cool.
Can I ask you a a question? -And it's a very big portion, yes?
-Yeah, it's pretty big.
WOMAN: I know a very beautiful place to eat tasty food.
It's Alive. -Yeah.
[laughs]
PETER: Oh, little promotion.
-It's the best place in Odesa. [laughs]
[Ukrainian]
♪ upbeat electronica ♪
SERJ: Well, Odesa was influenced a lot by Jewish culture.
Still a lot of people... lot of people come from Israel.
A lot of people from Odesa actually migrated to New York.
-Right.
-We got a small Odesa in New York.
-I've only been here a couple days.
So the food I've tasted has been fantastic.
A lot of seafood.
Garlic.
Parsley, thyme, charred vegetables.
I love that, like, the charred vegetables that have been grilled,
and they have that black char on them.
PETER: So Serj, you were telling me what about this place?
-This place was movie theater back in beginning of 20th century.
Then it was church.
Then it was a rock club, and now it's a city food market.
♪ upbeat electronica ♪
PETER: What just happened there, bro?
SERJ: We went through a secret passage...
Underground passage from the city food market
into the Georgian Cafe.
I really like those little secret passages.
[fountain splashing and people chattering]
WOMAN: Do you like it? PETER: Love it.
[woman giggles]
PETER: It's amazing.
WOMAN: You should go inside.
Inside the building it's just perfect.
-It's very interesting in Odesa.
When you round a corner near a university and then all of a sudden
it turns very Asian, very Indian.
Very Middle-Eastern.
SERJ: 80% probably in medical university are not Ukrainians.
It's mostly people from Arab countries or African countries.
-Why?
-Because the education, the medical education
is super cool, super good, and it's super cheap.
So we produce doctors for third countries.
So they can go back and help people there.
-It's got an interesting imbalance where you see...
You know, such opulence, and then you see...
Decay.
And people just getting by.
Usually when you have such a range of economic disparity
there's crime in the mix, and I don't feel it's dangerous here on the streets.
I really don't. Not once walking around at night or whatever
have I ever felt like, "Oh, this is a sketchy place."
Someone's gonna come at me with a knife in a dark alley.
I'm sure it happens.
But it really, overall, I've been told it's a safe...
It's a safe city to be in.
♪ mellow electronica ♪
[children playing]
[music continues]
[fountain splashing]
PETER: Pretty rad.
Appreciate your wisdom, your cool words, and look,
you guys guys tell the story.
The people I run into, and it's like...
I've ran into some very cool people that have just come out of nowhere,
and, like, told their stories, or the story of their country.
It's pretty sweet, man.
[poof]
We're gonna blow that up, all right. [chuckles]
It's special. It's a special place.
It's a bit of the Mediterranean
and a bit of Slavic culture mixed in one pot.
It's all over the place to be honest.
Which is cool. That's what makes it interesting.
I like places like this.
[claps]
All right, that's... That's my story.
♪ upbeat house music ♪