Around Odesa

I thought readers might be interested in a few more details around what it was like getting to Odesa and being there in wartime.

You can’t fly into Ukraine so you fly to Moldova and then transfer on land. For me this was four flights – to Auckland, Singapore, Istanbul and then Chisinau. I ended up detained in Chisinau for around an hour as immigration authorities there hadn’t someone from New Zealand before and didn’t realise we were on the visa free entry list (despite me telling them). Also they wanted to know the location of the conference I was attending in Odesa, but I couldn’t tell them as I didn’t know. For operational security reasons we were only told 12 hours before it started. Eventually I got released and had a three hour drive across the border.

A typical cobblestone street.

The Potemkin Stairs which are 20 metres wide and 140 metres long.

The Air Alert app which warms you of potential incoming missile strikes.

This is the bomb shelter in the hotel I was staying at – basically just a room in an underground level. There were usually two or three alerts a day. The only time I didn’t got into the shelter was on my final night there. The alert went off at 1 am and I knew I had four flights the next day, so I just rolled over and went back to sleep, banking on the low probability of the strike being near our hotel.

Beautiful music and singing at the welcome function.

The lounge of the hotel the conference was at. Beautiful decor.

A local string quartet at the farewell dinner.

Local architecture.

Beautiful city gardens.

There is around a three hour queue at the border leaving Ukraine. This is because no Ukrainian men aged 18 to 59 are allowed to leave due to conscription. My driver just drove past the queue straight to the border. I asked why we didn’t have to join the queue and he said it was because I had diplomatic status. This cave me a moral quandary because of course I don’t (many at the forum did) and I pondered informing him of his incorrect assumption. But an aversion to three hour queues won the day and I was waved through!

Statues at Chisinau Airport. My flights home were via Istanbul, Hong Kong and Auckland. Sadly I caught Covid-19 on the return flights, so then had five days of isolation when home.