So if you're thinking of learning a foreign
language and you're really motivated you should
go ahead and check out the link below in the
description to this video. If you're listening on
the podcast in the show notes because there, you're
gonna find my link to
italki, which is a website with which I found so
many language tutors over the years, they have
over a hundred and 10 different languages there
and you can take the classes via skype that's
what I did one on one to learn languages like Russian
Ukrainian using teachers that I found on italki
and there they also have a function
called italki classroom where you can actually take
them outside of Skype. There's actually a classroom
feature that they've added to the service that's
a great platform. You also get 10 dollars credit
if you go through my special link below here in the
description. It gets you started on taking your first
class it's gonna be one to one tuition that's what
I use and that's what I found to be really
effective over the years in all the languages I've
been learning like French, Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian and lots
more so best of luck, go check it out. So welcome back
everybody, whether you're watching me here on YouTube
or you are listening to me on the podcast I'm
Conor Clyne. This is Tsar Experience video podcast
and in this episode we're gonna be going into my
travel story here in East in the East of the real
raw East of Europe. Greetings всем привет из Одессы
I'm speaking to you from Istanbul Park
Парк Стамбула
in Odessa Ukraine on the shores of the Black Sea and this
city is really relevant to my travel story
because this is one of the cities that I first
came to on my travels around Eastern Europe on my
very first trip, so the purpose of this podcast series is
something that actually you ask me for, because
um you thought that uh longer format will allow
me to go to little bit more detail with you guys
that I can in the short video, I really try to
pump out that advice or a travel blog where I'm
trying to give you a sense of the atmosphere,
much you can expect to experience if you come
to eastern Europe, countries like Ukraine, Belarus
Russia, the Baltics, Romania, maybe Serbia, Moldova these kind of countries so put out a
poll on my social media and you overwhelmingly
voted for this type of format it's still in you
know the early stages. I think this is episode
four. I didn't divide up some of them into two
parts. Like this episode. So definitely give me
your feedback. I write me come and let me know
what you would like to hear me speak about more
in this longer kind of story telling format um
the reason I'm doing it the reason I think it's a
lot of value to you guys out there is because I
will underwent a certain process that maybe
you're also going through at the moment you know
you may be your Living in North America or Latin
America or Western Europe or Africa or Asia or
somewhere outside the region you're, considering
to travel here. Um to have basically a big
adventure and I went through those adventures
myself and a lot of things went really well now.
Things but really really badly so I want you to
learn from my experiences and apply that
knowledge when you decide to come here to the
East of Europe. It's a little bit more about
myself. I know in the other episodes of the
podcast I've got a little bit more into detail
about my background so I'm my name is Conor of
course it's a very Irish name. I don't have a
very Irish accent, even though I was born on the
West Coast of Ireland and that's actually where I
went to university first, I did take advantage of
um the opportunity to study abroad so I went to
study in France. That's my first foreign language
French. I went into that in episode two of the
podcast them that whole experience about learning
languages and then I actually went on to study in
the Netherlands, Italy and the United States. I'm
a lawyer by profession that's what I qualified as
and I actually studied international relations in
the United States.
So I have this kind of dual background in both
law and international relations. Now I have been
traveling like I described in episode two. I went
to France on Erasmus, which is an exchange
program and that was my first time living abroad
for a considerable amount of time is one year long
so I had already lived abroad I've done that in
the studies as I said in the Netherlands and Italy,
before going to the US so I had taken obviously a
lot of opportunities to travel uh when I was
studying in these different countries so I really
knew Western Europe and North America we'll say in
Latin America. I travel to a little bit as well.
Really well and a lot of you probably are able to
relate to that cuz you've probably already gone on
trips to Europe and, like everybody, that first
trip I took after my erasmus year I actually went
to Italy um on the classic tour of Venice, Rome
and Florence and I did go down to Greece to some
islands is very classical and at the time I was a
student, so I didn't have that much money so I
actually backpacked and I stayed in hostels
um and I did things a lot cheaper than it would
today necessarily that's not really how I
travel nowadays. I don't stay in youth hostels as
you probably know, if you've read the articles on
my website: www.tsarexperience.com as I want to have a more local experience
but probably if you've started out traveling you've
probably done all those things yourself or you're
planning to do them and that's actually what I
did as well, when I started traveling and they
were fantastic experiences for that stage of my
travel development so I had traveled of course across
Western Europe, most of the countries, there
also to Central Europe a little bit I went to
Prague for the first time of course, this is a
huge destination for a lot of you to travel to
today, beautiful city and it was pretty easy to
travel to those countries because in general alot
of people spoke in English. I did very touristic
things so I went to ... I was able to stay in
youth hostels a lot of times, people spoke English
there and I did speak some of the Western
European languages, a little bit anyways at that
point, I was in use them when I got stuck it was
relatively a comfortable travel experience now,
obviously, Eastern Europe is a completely
different kettle of fish and when I
was studying at ... in the US in grad school at Johns Hopkins University at SAIS, um, I actually
specialized in the former Soviet Union that's
going to .... they renamed it to the New Eurasia at
the time so I was studying a lot about the
politics and the history of the former Soviet Union and I
was really interested in it and I actually took a semester
of Russian. I was actually the worst student in
the class. I didn't learn very much but I
did really learn a lot about the history of
the of the region and that was really what I
thought would be really valuable in terms of
traveling here in the real East of Europe
when I got around to it a couple of years later.
So I returned to work in Brussels as a lawyer
actually, I was working in an international law
firm and later on I worked at European
Commission and I went into a little bit of that
in one of the previous episodes you know I was
really motivated to travel around Central
Europe and actually see all the different member
states of the European Union because I had
colleagues from those countries so I thought it
would be really valuable to have at least visited
everybody's country once if you have
them as colleagues but again, that's all pretty
easy to navigate as a traveler or a tourist
because it's so well set up for tourists you know
you're not gonna have a problem with the language
you know the tourist infrastructure is there
things are very well organized relative
so I was really I guess um curious about going to Eastern Europe but I didn't really understand what the
differences were going to be and eventually, I
basically traveled to Saint Petersburg with my
German girlfriend at the time, she had a fear of
flying so we had to go everywhere overland. She's
gonna love that bring this up on my podcast
many years later and we had a great time. She
actually looked very Russian and everyone was
surprised when ... she wouldn't actually reply
in Russian and I would try to reply but my Russian
skills were really basic. I mean I could just say
a few pleasantries ask for things the survival
Russian was basically what I had now we had planned
to go to Crimea together In Ukraine, the
following year at the time that it was obviously
had not been annexed by Russia, um and we really
motivated to do that because in part it was visa
free travel to Ukraine while Russia it's always a bit
of a hassle. You have to go get a visa. I know a
lot of you might have gone to the World Cup where
they had the derogation for that so you took
advantage but normally it's just a lot of hassle
and I have other videos you should go and check
out in the channel about getting this is in the
region, like Belarus that's just been
liberialized actually this week when I'm filming
it's actually gonna be 30 days visa free now
after I complained again, it seems like every
time I make a video about about going to Belarus
and complain about visas and stuff,
President Lukashenko then changes the law, like
the next week. It's not the first time he's
done that so I wonder am I really having influence
on the president or someone in his
office. I don't know well that would be great that
I'm able to help you make your life simpler for
everybody if I moan here on my channel so we
were gonna go back there and I was really excited
um of course I traveled as a couple so again
it's a little bit um less I guess lonely because
you're obviously with someone all the time um and unfortunately
we actually broke up before going on this trip to
Crimea so we're gonna take the train all the way
to Poland down through Ukraine and then go to
Crimea. Obviously it's a big peninsula in the
Black Sea and I'm then travel up here to Odessa in
Ukraine and then on onwards to destinations
that we were really interested in travelling to.
Now, we broke up and I didn't really have a plan
so I said yeah. It will still go to still go to
go to
Ukraine, still go to Crimea because I just like what I have been planning
to do anyway so I was gonna do a solo trip. Now
I have done solo trips before and many of you
probably have uh my preference is always to
travel with a really good friend who I enjoy
traveling with. I don't feel like I want a
travel buddy necessarily. I really don't like that
concept if I'm not gonna hang around the person
and appreciate their time in general, I don't
really wanna be stuck on a trip with them for
several weeks for sure so that's not my style so
I wasn't really worried about travelling on my
own I had done it many times before I had no
problem meeting you know, people on the way
so then I arrived in eastern Poland to do this
trip and I was gonna go all the way for three
weeks through Ukraine. I was gonna be able to
fly this time because I was not with my ex girlfriend
and then on into Moldova through the Balkans
Basically was ... another area of
interest for me so I was really excited it's
going there. I actually thought okay my I speak a
little bit of Russian it's gonna be great. I
remember actually the first day arriving in
Lviv and it was a complete culture shock. I mean
it was the first time I think I had ever experienced it.
I was completely lost. I couldn't read properly
like even though I thought I knew the alphabet.
I wasn't used to reading in Russian or
Ukrainian.
In Lviv they actually speak Ukrainian and not Russian there
in everyday life. So it's even harder again,
because I didn't even speak the language of that
particular city and I was trying to speak in a
second language with the people there and it
was so hard. I was messing everything up I was
sitting on my own. It was really like difficult
and it wasn't just the language. It was actually ... I'd
been lured into a false sense of security a
little bit because I had studied the history and
the politics so much I thought that I would
understand the country and it turned out that was
a huge mistake on my part because to understand
the history and the politics is good. It's better than
nothing but it left me completely unprepared for
actually how things operate on a daily basis in
eastern Europe and you know local people how
they interact with each other all this stuff. I
had of course previously dated some Russian
speaking girls in Brussels where I was working
as a lawyer and in Washington DC where I had
studied but in hindsight, they were actually
pretty westernized or they had you know, tried to
integrate to where they were living and where
they were studying so that then made me you know I didn't really
appreciate what it was like to meet local people
actually in a country like Ukraine, alot of crazy
things happened to me on that trip. It was a real
whirlwind I'll be honest and I will actually
go into those more in future episodes of the
podcast and there's really great interesting
stories for you guys to listen to so well done
and congratulations on getting this far in the
podcast. I see you're still with me and actually this one I've
decided just played into two parts. This is the
end of part one of my travel story as you can
see, I'm still here in Odessa, Ukraine.
It's late evening ... getting close to sunset
here so before you go, if you're not subscribed
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always great when you help the channel out and
yeah next week I'm back and you can watch the
second half of this podcast episode where I
outline my travel story and what brought me to
this city in particular, so looking forward to
seeing all your smiling faces are or all your
attentive ears if you are listening to this on the
podcast on Soundcloud or on itunes so
see you next week!