welcome to the elegant odessa ukraine lying on the shores of the black sea odessa is a popular resort
city yet much more than that once home to the largest population of jews in ukraine and formerly
the fourth largest city in imperial russia odessa is full of art nouveau and classicist architecture
as well as being the home to ballet and opera over the next few videos we'll be seeing what odessa
has to offer we'll be visiting food and christmas markets the iconic potemkin stairs the site of
one of the most marveled at moments in cinema history and even an ex-soviet cable car adorned
with cinema legends such as charlie chaplin and that's just for starters this is gonna be classic
morning all and welcome back to odessa in ukraine for another video from a desert in
ukraine i'm gonna be here for the next few videos okay because i'm currently waiting for my second
vaccine in order to be able to travel again brilliant that's tomorrow and you might
be wondering why have i chosen to film this video on a day which is not sunny why am i out
on a cold tuesday morning in the wind and the rain will you shut up right the car is gone now
yeah there's a simple answer to that it's december in eastern europe there is no sun i haven't seen
the sun in about three weeks so this is what we've got to work with but we have got this to work with
as well this is empress catherine the great she founded odessa in 1794 odessa is also known as
the pearl of the black sea among other names although today i'm pretty much calling it
a manky bit of seaweed on a beach in england so with that in mind let's explore
now despite the weather as you can see there's lots of nice architecture in odessa look at that
i can imagine in the summer it's gorgeous there's the
empress catherine the great statue up there there's the hotel de paris that was meant to
be a french accent but whatever and if you know a desk site you probably know where i'm going to be
heading first is the first sighting of a lada of course if you've seen my serbia videos you know
i was obsessed with yugos and zastavas as well in ukraine we have ladas very similar looking
classic cars from that era did you know my dad used to be a car mechanic and i'm sure he used
to tell me stories about ladas or jokes to be more accurate about around the fact that they basically
just fell apart as you start driving them um a bit like zastavas and we're doing a lot of up and down
in this video i don't mean having sex i mean going up and down things that's what i mean the first
one's over here it's not open yet uh i've got about 40 minutes to wait so first we'll check out
the probably the most well-known tourist attraction in odessa i'm located on primorsky
boulevard which is this street here i see a lot of people like riding down here on bikes and stuff
again summer i'm sure it's wonderful maybe not now but this is what i'm talking about
it might not seem like much to begin with but trust me the history behind it is epic
now for any film buffs this is an epic moment because i'm walking down the potemkin steps
or stairs whatever you want to call it basically 192 steps going down to the black sea down there
and at the bottom supposedly the steps are wider so that when you're standing at the bottom it
looks longer like a perspective thing we'll see when we go down the bottom basically there was a
movie battleship potemkin which is said to be one of the most epic examples of cinema history and i
haven't seen it i've seen clips of it from researching this video and honestly i wasn't
aware of it whatsoever and it was a silent movie um back in the early 1900s it kind of depicted
an event which supposedly happened here it's based on true stories it didn't actually happen on these
steps i think that was used for dramatic license or dramatic effect you know what actually happened
was a little far away i think but basically the battleship potemkin came into port down there and
there was a mutiny the sailors staged the mutiny on board it was in 1905 i think it was around
the time of the first russian revolution which again is something i'm learning about now that
i'm here i'm not the expert on that bolsheviks the um you know the demise of russia as it was
and the formation of the soviet union lenin et cetera it's all very interesting and basically the
people of odessa came to the top of the steps up there to kind of welcome the people the sailors
that were staging the mutiny and it kind of all went wrong basically gunmen arrived behind
them and sort of force them down the steps and shot them all there's a bit in that movie where
there's a woman like a mother and she gets shot and she's with her pram like at the top and
the as she falls the pram falls down the steps and she knocks it basically and you know is
responsible for her child's death effectively and the way it kind of careens down the stairwell
past you know scenes of misery and death is quite grim but um you know i think the fact that it was
silent kind of adds to the effect it allows you to kind of imagine the horror that was happening
these steps do go on for a while i have been here before like a few days ago and i did walk up
it is quite exhausting as a result there is something next to it which is the
funicular that's what we're going to be going on when it opens okay 191 192
here we are i'm at the bottom of the temp kids steps there are two pianos underneath this archway
i think that key needs some oil or something i'm down by the port obviously odessa being
right on the black sea is a key spot for trade you've got all this shipping equipment
and everything and railway over there but we're going to the left over here weird thing number one
is this weird monstrosity this gargantuan baby coming out of an egg
or something apparently it's uh said to depict the rebirth of odessa after the war
i'm walking down this pier opposite the potemkin steps there's the viking cenius there
i guess some sort of cruise ship oh look at all these other boats and ships and tankers in the
distance and but what we're here to see is this hotel odessa you might think oh it's just a hotel
yeah this hotel look there's a bird don't [ __ ] on me despite looking relatively
modern at least by sort of 20 years ago standards supposedly is abandoned um i think it was because
basically the construction of it was terrible and um it wasn't allowed to open in terms of
like health and safety or something or that you know the um there wasn't investment it looks like
some sort of um casino from las vegas you know one of those dated ones from like the 90s or something
but yeah it's weird because on google maps if you look this up there are all these reviews
like oh amazing hotel wonderful room and then there's another comment saying what are you on
about it never opened yeah so supposedly it never opened at all but there are all these weird fake
reviews on google maps never trust anything you see on google i wish you could see what i could
see it's um just an empty cavernous place with like um concrete stairwells that got nothing
on them and yeah just completely abandoned so clearly those google reviews are not accurate
right and back down again um we'll just have a cigarette
and then get on this funicular if it's open oh it is open brilliant okay
okay
I'm back on Primosky
boulevard with some road works behind me um nice architecture down here as well um yeah
that funicular i'm not gonna lie there's nothing i can do to make it wacky crazy bonkers exciting
um it's just a funicular nothing explodes on the way up or you know there isn't like flashing
lights or something over here ahead of me is the city hall which i got some drone shots of a few
days ago when it wasn't pouring with rain um it's got a big ukrainian flag at the top and there was
music playing from the side of it the other day i'm not sure that's about it it's got these big
columns out the front with these statues as well in these little alcove things outside
this building there's a big cannon obviously as you'd expect someone like odessa has seen a lot
of conflict it used to be part of the ottoman empire during world war ii it was occupied by
romania one of the axis powers and was made the capital of transnistria which is now
that weird strip of land in what is now moldova over the border which is both a country and not
a country you know it's like a disputed area which actually has its own passport and flag
here we are at the valerian opera theater it's iconic look at it um it reminds me of the
bolshoi theater i went to in minsk in belarus last year it looks very similar it was designed by
felner and helmer that was a mouthful in the late 1800s and supposedly they also
built other masterpieces like this across central eastern europe but this is kind of their piece de
resistance what is it with a french today um yeah it's awesome you can see obviously things like
swan lake classic i love swan lake love listening to the music it's the kind of music i listen to
you know when you're depressed or something or you're extremely angry it really calms me down
so um you know that would be great to go to if i had like a suit or something but i don't
we might check that out in another video who knows but right now i need
to get home because i've got two english lessons um but i'll be back out after that
to do something else hopefully the weather will improve see in a bit
oh it's okay okay fast forward a couple of hours and after a wardrobe change i'm back at it i'm
heading down towards an area called the divorce which i understand is like the rough dodgy area
of odessa but that remains to be seen it's where i'm planning to be in the next video
um we're heading towards a potentially top-tier destination but look at this
church behind me i walked past this the other day coming back from my vaccine a few weeks ago
it's green it looks much nicer in the sunlight i'll put a little shot over there of what
you know odessa might look like when the sun's out god forbid but yeah it's awesome that uh gold dome
on the top very common with orthodox churches in ukraine moldova russia belarus you name it
lots of lovely religious buildings in odessa look at the bulbous domes on this church humongous and
they've got yeah the gold and the black there was one in estonia what was it called i can't remember
there was um an example of a church with a black dome on the top this area does feel a little bit
more dodgy especially some of the clientele in the area you know asking for money that sort of thing
i can't really see what i'm looking at because of the rain on my glasses but there's a building
i must be near an army museum of some kind this is so cool you've got guns you've got tanks missiles
launchers jesus
here we go i have been reliably informed that i have to go through
this archway in order to get where i'm going someone told me it was french or has some
connection with ross um that's probably bollocks pardon my language but i am raging because the
thing that was meant to be the top tier part of this video i.e a 1971 ex-soviet cable car is
closed remain calm david the thing that was meant to be interesting about it was the fact that it's
not like a you know a modern gondola teleferico thing you know with a crystal glass bottom floor
it's almost like a dilapidated funfair ride from 1987 or earlier like i said the 70s it was it was
built and i understand that it doesn't stop so it keeps moving so when you get on you have to kind
of open it and get into it um without dying but they will go down to the beach i see hello but on
the plus side we found a ginger fluffy angel hello and the thing that's interesting about
these that i find i mentioned about silent movies earlier there's a weird connection here because
each of these cable cars has like a different design on them i just walked into a tree um like
there's one with charlie chaplin i.e silent movies pink panther there's one with albert einstein on
all sorts of different designs so let's see what we can get with the drone wish me luck
but it is bizarre i might even have to put in the title of this video abandoned cable car um i think
it's not abandoned i think more than likely it's just a case that it's a seasonal thing this cable
car very much reminds me of what i saw in pripyat four years ago i was in pripyat and chernobyl the
ghost city by chernobyl with of course the ferris wheel and the dodgems very famous that were never
used as a result of the nuclear power plant disaster in 1986 it's kind of that same kind
of feel of these sort of antiquated derelict kind of things that you get on and risk your life on
down by the beach in odessa in december kind of feels like a zombie movie right there's two guys
there there's a cat and this completely deserted promenade along the beach hello
how okay no i mean it's not that cold it's like 12 degrees celsius so um yeah it's not like it's
icy middle of winter sort of thing even though it is december oh lord and here we are my first time
ever in the black sea hang on oh god oh god there we go i can say i've been in the black sea i'm not
going in i haven't got my swimming trunks i feel like a kid in england like when i was growing up
and we go down the beach down by my nan's place or something and you know it would be like this
grim gray wet cold and miserable yet somehow we would have fun on a beach and that's what it's all
about it doesn't have to be this never-ending myth of perpetual sunlight that's a wonderful phrase
there is so much portrayed on youtube it gives this you know completely unrealistic view of the
world in that everywhere you go every day of the year is sunny and perfect and you can walk around
in your bikini i'm not in my bikini um you know and very much this this desolate kind of wasteland
feeling of this beach i know that it's winter and obviously that's the reason but when you think of
things like corona this is kind of the how what the world is now this dystopian world where even
beaches is empty and completely barren i'm coming up with wonderful vocabulary today
i'm heading back through the woods up the steps past the possibly abandoned possibly seasonal 1971
ex-soviet cable car in the background there's that cat again it's still in the same position
hello um yeah today um i'm glad i filmed this video because in the end i've had
an amazing time i must admit i was slightly reluctant to start filming videos in odessa mainly
because of the weather but i've gone out today and just bloody done it regardless i've gone through
a multitude of emotions general frustration in the beginning inappropriate humor absolute fury
and concluded this video with a wonderful serene and sombre feeling of desolation and abandonment
that was good as well so um yeah as i said at the beginning this isn't the only video from
odessa so if you have been here or you're from here or expecting to see certain things don't
worry the next few videos will hopefully quench your first if you have any thirst for odessa um
don't forget to like comment subscribe and all that leave a comment it really helps especially
considering the algorithm probably hates me now that i've left serbia i'm in a new country
that'd be much appreciated jesus why did i do that walking up the stairs ah lovely catch you later