The Moscow Times » Issue 3917
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(http://www .moscowtimes.ru/articles/detail.php?ID=3D368037&am p;print=3DY)
City By The Black Sea.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
By John Wendle
Amid a crowd of tourists, a mother rolled a baby stroller up to the top step
of the Potemkin Steps in Odessa, seemingly unaware of the horror inspired by
a similar scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s film "The Battleship Potemkin."
The mother was not shot by tsarist troops, nor did the baby’s carriage roll
down the 142-meter staircase to Odessa’s port — but if it had it had, it
would have ended up in a car dealership.
Odessa has changed a lot since the time of Eisenstein, and even then it was
no longer the city where writer Isaac Babel grew up. Writing about his
hometown in "Lyuba Kozak," a story from his collection "Odessa Stories," Babel
described a place where "the sun hung from the sky like the pink tongue ofa
thirsty dog, the gigantic sea rolled on to Peresyp, and the masts of far-off
ships rocked on the emerald water of Odessa Bay."
Today, the stairs may end in rows of shiny cars and the spiky masts cutting
the sky have been replaced by the red and yellow necks of heavy-duty cargo
cranes, but no matter how much the city changes, it will always retain the
character of a port.
Odessa sits on a curved bay on the northern shore of the Black Sea. The
sheltered stretch of water attracted early settlers — the Greeks built a city
here in their drive to turn the hinterlands of the Black Sea into a Hellenic
breadbasket.
Over the centuries, everyone from the princes of Kievan Rus to the khans of
the Golden Horde and the sultans of the Ottoman Empire controlled the city.
It was known as Khadjibey until the late 1790s, when Russian forces won it
from the Ottomans in the treaty that ended the Russo-Turkish War.
The city’s thriving port boosted Odessa’s business sector as well as its
cultural diversity. The Albanian, Armenian, Bulgarian, German, Greek, French,
Italian, Jewish, Russian, Romanian and Ukrainian traders and sailors who came
through the port profoundly shaped the city — from the Italian baroque facade
of the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater to the Jewish Moldovanka quarter
where Babel grew up.
Another scene out of Babel’s "Odessa Stories" has a British and Malaysian
sailor visiting Lyuba Kozak to trade contraband "cigars, fine [Japanese] silks,
cocaine and filing tools, loose tobacco from the state of Virginia and red
wine that had been purchased on the island of Chios."
Scenes such as this give Odessa its romantic and exotic allure.
Unfortunately, the attractive beach area south of the city — accessible by
the No. 5 tram — is now cut into bite-sized chunks by crumbling concrete
walls built during the Soviet era for the purpose of dividing one sanatorium
from another. But the area is worth a look, if only to explore a post-Soviet
wonderland of decaying resorts and rusty cable-car towers and snap a few bleak
pictures of these areas of rusting absurdity to send back home. In all
fairness, though, the area looks like it might be packed in summer with fun discos,
kebab stands and plenty of places to have a picnic.
The main area of the city consists of block after square block of shabby but
historic two- and three-story houses, some hiding interesting courtyards and
all featuring on the first floor the blur of small shops found in any former
Soviet city: shoe stores, appliance shops, tiny cafes, internet clubs and
pharmacies, monotonous in their variety.
This area is most attractive at dusk, when the soft light drifts down onto
the tree-lined streets. It is the ideal time to start a walk.
Head north on Alexandrovsky Prospekt through a boulevard of dense trees. A
left turn at the end of the Prospekt leads to the park around the Cathedral of
the Transfiguration of the Savior, built in an eclectic classical style
between 1795 and 1809. Here, crowds of men have traded the mostly quiet game of
chess for raucous games of checkers and backgammon. Along one sidewalk, a
small daily craft market offers the opportunity to purchase Odessan and Soviet
souvenirs.
Deribasovskaya Ulitsa begins at the northeast corner of the park. This calm
pedestrian street is named after Major General Jose de Ribas, a Spaniard in
the Russian imperial army who helped capture the town from the Ottomans inthe
Russo-Turkish War.
Sadly lacking in outdoor cafes, the street is nonetheless worth the stroll
— both for the people watching opportunities it affords in the pretty,
well-maintained Gorodskoi Sad and because it is bisected by YekaterinskayaUlitsa.
This street features a montage of a trendy but very enjoyable sidewalk cafes
and restaurants, ranging from sports pubs and French bistros to pizzerias
and tourist traps.
Halfway down Yekaterinskaya Ulitsa is the newly restored Opera and Ballet
Theater. Locals say that the inside is even more beautiful than the ornately
carved, statue-bedecked exterior.
Yekaterinskaya Ulitsa ends at Yekaterinskaya Ploshchad, a roundabout
featuring a statue of Catherine the Great, pointing toward the sea. She led Russia’s
drive to the Black Sea, and the city was rechristened as Russian territory
two years before her death.
The right fork at the roundabout leads to the top of the Potemkin Steps. At
night, the staircase offers a light-dotted nightscape of the harbor — a much
more romantic way to see it than during the day when the smoke-shrouded
steel bones of the port are exposed.