If you ask me which road between major Ukrainian cities is the worst, the answer comes instantly. Of course: Odesa to Dnipropetrovsk.
Yes, that is the highway. There are trains too, but things are not exactly simple there either. A few trains run between the cities: 10 hours, 14 hours, and 17 hours on the road.
500 kilometers in 17 hours, Karl!
The ten-hour train runs only once every two days, which makes planning a little harder.
That was the one we took. In the end, the train turned out to be quite decent, the nighttime temperature was perfect for sleep, and behind the wall in the neighboring compartment a couple occasionally moaned rather immodestly.
Odesa welcomed us with warm weather for mid-October and a Friday mood that seemed to show on people’s faces.
For a few days of lodging we chose a simple one-room apartment in the center, on a fairly quiet street. When we arrived, it turned out that the apartment was actually a room in a communal flat converted into a standalone place. Overall that was fine, just a little unusual: you step out of your apartment into the corridor of a communal one. The four-meter ceilings make you look up more often. After standard 2.5 meters, you feel very small against that scale. The flat and the neighbors were all very much in the spirit of Odesa.
Odesa is a city of cats. I have never seen so many cats in any other city. And interestingly, they are often not alone. Where there is one, there is always another.
There is something special about seaside beaches in the cold season. Maybe it is the pleasant emptiness that pushes you toward reflection. Or the dog that looks like a corgi and drinks your coffee the moment you set it down on the sand. And by the time the caffeine kicks in, it is already racing across the empty beach with some sock in its teeth.
And Odesa is also a city you want to return to, to soak in the architecture, gastronomy, and cold sea once again.