Return from Odessa

on sunday we decided to return to kiev via a place called bilhorod-dnistrovsky which has as its main attraction a 13th century fort. (only attraction.)
the lonely planet guide claims the town is 55 kms from odessa and on the train takes 2.5 hours to get there. bullshit on both counts! it's a hell of a lot further than 55km and if the train can do it in 2.5 hours i'll buy a round of tickets.

amusingly we programmed into the gps our trip to b-d and return to kiev as one journey. mistake! as far as we can figure because the trip to b-d and the return used part of the same route the gps got confused and tried to send us in big loops three times. thankfully we trusted ourselves enough by this time to tell the lovely olga (the name we dubbed the gps voice) to bugger off. paper maps and a sense of direction have always done me fine. and no smart arse comments about women not having a sense of direction or being poor navigators! quite frankly i'm one of the best map readers/ navigators/ route plotters you'll ever met. yes, i'm proud of it and no, i'm not going to be modest about it. i'm enraged by men making spastic claims about womens inability to find their way around and women often abdicating responsibility for this easy task. so, nah!!

right, where was i?

the drive to b-d was thru the ukraine country-side and small towns. this is where you really learn about the poverty of the nation. the urban oligarchs have a lot to answer for.
sadly the fort was a bit disappointing. yeah, it's big, old and impressively situated but like everything else in this country, not appreciated. such a relic in australia would have protection orders slapped all over it, interpretations, information boards, restricted access, etc. etc. maybe those things are excessive and we should be allowed to clamber all over centuries old structures and sites. i think a sensible approach to conservation and preservation will enable enjoyable and informative experiences for more people now and future comers.
it was a good place for phoebe to have a run about and for us to get some lunch.
on the authenticity side, the squat toilets were straight from the middle ages! gag, gag, gag!

leaving b-d we thought heading north around the dnister river estuary would be quicker than the southern route we had taken to get there. this excitingly meant going thru moldova! of course, we had not applied for visas to visit this country, nor did we know anything about the border crossing or what reception we might recieve. it was a risk because if border control had sent us back we would have added at least 2 hours to the trip. as it happened we were waved thru without even an inspection of our passports. and no stamp! i do like collecting interesting stamps in the passport. oh well.

paul took over the driving shortly after this. the road between odessa and kiev is quite good- mostly.
we probably should have factored in that a lot of people would be returning to kiev after the long weekend. oops. the traffic was heavy but at least moving. moving at quite a clip sometimes too. with us travelling at 120 - 150kmph we were still being overtaken by black 4wds and luxury cars. if you dare to drive in the left hand lane (remember we're on the other side of the road over here) too slowly for these drivers they will sit a metre off your rear bumper and beep and flash their lights until you move over. yes, at 150kmph. we decided that the blacker the car you own the more you are allowed to do this.
we eventually caught up with a traffic jam the likes of which i have never seen. it's hard to explain but the ukranian attitude to life made it so much worse. our four lane divided highway narrowed to two lanes and then due to road work on a bridge to one lane. a new road, still closed to traffic because it's not finished parralled our road. literally hundreds of vehicles decided that this surface was perfectly fine to drive on to enable them to get to the front of the queue faster. ukranians believe that life is short, in the hands of god and that you only live once. all this might be true but here it translates into an exceedingly selfish, 'i'm out for all i can get and fuck you' attitude. it is not conducive to cooperation. and you know what? it's catchy. we too bumped over the verge and raced down the unfinished road to get ahead. it's so irritating to try to do the right thing and just get smacked in the head for it. we knew everyone around us was cursing us and all their fellow travellers. but that's just it- they weren't fellow travellers, they were obstacles and annoyances. i'm really not getting to the essence of it. just trust me that you want to shoot everyone and drive a tank over their cars because you're so pissed by the whole situation.

we made it over the bridge and the road widened and the traffic return to its normal hell-for-leather speed. (hey david, can you make that a Thing?- where did "hell-for-leather" come from?) an hour or so later we joined yet a worse jam. again, we popped over the verge to the closed road and dashed along to the front of the queue. upon rejoining the proper road we squeezed and squeezed get 'round the one lane left to us. actually i noticed the traffic going in our direction just claimed the on-coming traffic lane as well, forcing anyone (thankfully few) travelling in the opposite direction to use the ditch. oh what fun!

our return trip of approximately 700km took 12 hours to traverse.
phoebe was thankfully mostly entertained by a transportable dvd player that clips on to the back of the front seat. percy gazed about, slept and sang with me for most of the time. she did heartbreakingly cry on a couple of occasions. what can you do? i sang and shushed her and tried to distract her. i really think she's quite a trooper and took it all very well. one of her crying sessions was because she had a pooey nappy. can't blame the kid for that. who wants to sit in shit for hours?

we made it back to our apartment a little after 9pm. percy went to sleep and did her usual four hour stints. i really was hoping she'd be so stimulated and hence exhausted she'd sleep for hours and hours, i could have used the sleep so much myself. alas, not to be.

all up it was a good trip and i'm pleased to have been to odessa and seen something more of ukraine.