A Summer Abroad

Sevastopol

August 31, 2011

So Sevastapol…. not my favorite port of call. It is the largest port on the Crimean and definitely our most Soviet stop. It was founded in 1783 by Catherine the Great and named after a Greek settlement whose name translates to “city worthy of glory”. And it has been utterly destroyed twice: once during the Crimean War and once during WWII. This was less than interesting for me because I couldn’t care less about the Crimean War and Sevastapol is all Crimean War all the time. They seem to be very proud of their military history, as well they should be. I’m just not all that interested in it. In any event we got to see an old Soviet Submarine Base and the so-called Valley of Death of “The Charge of the Light Brigade” fame. Anyway, I will leave you with the photos I took and some creative writing inspired by the area and by my personal boredom. I challenged myself to write Haikus, so they’re pretty bad. We can all have a good laugh. Enjoy:

Balaclava

I saw cheap vodka,

Floating in the sea. I thought

What does it taste like

When you need it? Asked,

And wondered why the Black Sea

Had not swallowed it.

--------------

It seems to me right

That red wine grow over the ghosts

Of the Light Brigade.

But what must wine taste

Like that has grown and fed on

Crimean Corpses?

Odesa The City

August 30, 2011

I did get some stuff done after emerging from the catacombs as well. Odesa is a really beautiful city for a city that was occupied by both the Nazis and the Soviets, two groups not known for their architecture. The city managed to avoid getting destroyed like some other Ukrainian cities were under the Nazis despite plans to level the city by placing explosives in key locations in the city's catacombs. That means that most of the older buildings (older being relative since the city itself is only about 217 years old) are still around, giving the city an air of St. Petersburg. Of course there are Soviet style flat blocks around the city, but they're new and didn't replace the old buildings.

Above, you can see WWII memorial of the city. The second photo there is a monument to especially brave heroes of the defense of the city. Interestingly, one of the duties of the school kids is to participate in the Youth Honor Guard (we were there too early to see them in action, so I have to use a stock photo, sorry) which means that they stand guard around the Eternal Flame. I can't decide what I think about the fact that school kids have to do this in Odesa, but it's certainly interesting.

I also visited the Literature Museum and the Odesa Cathedral, which is dedicated to the Saviour's Transfiguration. The Odesa Cathedral was rebuilt and recently restored after being destroyed under Stalin. The City of Odesa itself did not expend any tax payer dollars to do this; it was entirely financed by the community voluntarily, which I think is pretty cool. The Literature Museum was seriously cool. It chronicles the history of the Odesa literature scene, which is surprisingly extensive. Chekov kept a house in semi-nearby Yalta and many other authors had summer places here or served nearby during the Russo-Turkish War. The entire thing is in Russian, which is a bit difficult since that is not a language I speak, but the museum was still really interesting. I always think its cool to see original editions of famous works of literature or newspapers featuring articles or editorials written by people I've studied. Quirky though it was, the Literature Museum was a highlight of the city

Finally, I got the opportunity to attend the Opera in Odesa. This was perhaps not among my best ideas. The production was La Traviata and all I can say is that the music was great, but we kind of knew that already. The set was legitimately two dimensional and did not move, which is an issue for an opera requiring moving set pieces. The singers did not project either. Which is straight up weird for opera. I get that it's at best a second rate opera house, but I've built better stuff for my school. Let me reiterate that: I have built better sets for a High School than the ones I saw in a professional Opera House. Yeah. The building itself was actually quite pretty (In case you can't tell yet, I'm a big fan of Odesan architecture), so I'll leave you with some pictures of the exterior and the theater area.

Journey through the Catacombs

August 30, 2011

I’m sure you’re growing accustomed to my city history blogging, so I’m going to mix it up a little. Today the Azamara Quest docked in Odesa, Ukraine and I took the opportunity to descend into a little known aspect of the city’s experience in WWII. Literally. But before we get to that I would like to say a few words on the city because it does tie into the story of the Odesa Catacombs (Катасомбе in Russian. I think.)

The Ottoman Turks settled Odesa as a base of operations in order to more easily raid the inland cities. The port flourished as a slave trading market selling the people who were captured during these raids. The city was properly founded by the Russians after they took the city in the Russian-Turkish War. Catherine the Great figured she could not name her new town after the Turkish stronghold (after all she had just captured it from them) so she decided to name it after the ancient Greek settlement she figured was in about that location: Odesus. Her court, ever the flatterers, told her that as a Czarina she shouldn’t let the name be masculine as she was a woman, so she changed it to Odesa. The city was designed by the same Dutch Architect who laid out Manhattan on the grid system, so the city is wonderfully easy to navigate. Catherine also declared the city a tax free zone, which is where the catacombs first come into play in Odesa’s history. Because there were originally next to no trees in the area (French gardeners later planted trees along the streets and in the areas for picturesque shade), all of the houses are built out of sandstone; and in order to promote settlement one of Catherine’s economic advisers allowed the people to mine for their housing materials directly under their houses, mandating that the quarries go at least 15 feet deep. Anyway, this led to the creation of a spider web of interconnecting tunnels beneath the city of Odesa. They’re nearly impossible to navigate if you don’t know your way around (to this day one or two kids die per year getting lost even though the entrances are sealed) but, for those who did, the tunnels became a smuggling network. Even though Odesa was a tax free port, goods that left the city had to be paid for. So merchants would send 90% of their goods through the catacombs with smugglers for a small fee, pay taxes on the other 10% as they left legally, and pick up everything else at a predetermined village since the catacombs extend through the countryside as well.

This brings us to WWII.

As part of Operation Barbarossa the combined German and Romanian troops were to cross the Danube and take Odesa and her nearby oil refineries. The siege of Odesa went on for three months before their meager force was redirected to Sevastapol in order to better defend a more important area. During the time of the Siege the Odesans came up with some seriously creative methods of defending their city. They put cardboard planes on the ground to trick the Axis forces into bombing those instead of their real air force. Additionally, they painted their planes to look like the German bombers and would leave early in the morning to go bomb the Germans and return promptly at 6 AM. They had to return at 6 so that they didn’t get shot down, as the Odesan troops knew that any German planes flying over at 6 AM were really Ukrainian. The Germans called this the “Guten morgen”attack as they were so confused. And of course, they built their own tanks.

In reality they were tin plated tractors, but the Germans didn’t know that until they destroyed one. The Odesans would make it look like they were firing shells when really they had next to no artillery capabilities by having a guy fire shells behind the tank to create the illusion of tank fire. However the city was eventually taken and held for 2 ½ years. During this period there was a dual administration between the Germans and Romanians since the Germans didn’t really trust the Romanians to administrate properly. This led to stuff like having two separate, autonomous Gestapos. There were Italian troops occupying the area as well, but we were told that the Odesans didn’t really have a problem with them since the Italians would have rather eaten good food and chased women then fight. It may be a bit of a stereotype, but that’s what my guide said. Anyway, for the defense of the city, the removed Soviet Army left behind some guys to start a resistance movement; and these guys went underground. And that begins the interesting portion of the history of the catacombs (it makes the whole smugglers aspect look boring anyway)…

Trust me, there are catacombs beneath this picture

The Odesa resistance movement was a group of specially trained and equipped men and women whose job it was to be a pain in the ass to the Nazis. They occupied the tunnels beneath unoccupied countryside and fields since the Nazis would have killed the entire street of any family discovered to have resistance fighters hiding in their catacombs. They kept special equipment and maps to navigate the navigable portions of the tunnels (the catacombs happen to be very prone to tunnels and collapse), which meant that even after the Nazis, discovered their most commonly utilized entrances and diverted 10,000 men from the front to guard the tunnels they still got out and did their business in the towns. In fact in one battle between the Nazis and the Resistance, 300 Nazis died as compared to 8 Odesans.

Once again, there are issues with orientation, sorry about that.

The conditions of catacomb living were atrocious. The resistance fighters, men and women, had to put on makeup and change clothing as soon as they got out of the tunnels because they could be easily identified by their sallow, gaunt appearance (caused by living in the darkness for weeks at a time) and by their distinctive, moldy smell (from the dampness of the limestone catacombs). Smoke from the kitchens and laundry rooms was vented into unused tunnels so that it could diffuse into the environment to avoid detection. Those stoves were used to make a thin, fatty gruel that the fighters subsisted off of for months at a time. They originally kept only enough food for 75 for six months, but they were underground for much longer and in much greater numbers than could have been anticipated. This left them woefully undersupplied and forced them to stretch out what they had for as long as possible. Water was collected from the catacombs themselves, but this same water left everything damp and moldy and created the problem of flooding. Laundry was accomplished by a female doctor of German descent who lived underground with the men by baking the clothing in red hot pots, which both dried and disinfected them by killing any lice that might be living underground with the men. The walls were painted with codes telling the catacomb dwellers which passages to seal in order to direct the drafts of the tunnels towards uninhabited areas in the event of a gas attack. All of this was done with the resistance motto in mind:

КРОВь ЗА КРОВь

СМЄРТь ЗА СМЄРТь

This translates, according to our guide, as:

Blood for Blood

Death for Death

So yeah. These guys were amazing. In Euro you always hear about the French resistance if you hear about any resistance, and these guys have the French beat by a mile. I’ll leave you with a slideshow of the other pictures I took in the catacombs. Some of them aren’t great, but I almost feel like that makes clearer the conditions that these guys were living. Anywhere there’s Russian I have turned to my BFF Google Translate, but I have no way of checking it; so keep that in mind as you read. And please don't complain about the fact that some of these make questionable sense