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In Which I Get In Steppe
November 11, 2008 by Mike
Odessa
Route: Izmail - Tatarbunary - Bilgorod-Dnistrovskiy - Odessa
[Ukrainian readers of a sensitive disposition should kindly note that I am transposing the names from my Ukrainian map (Cyrillic script) to the Latin by myself -- with a wing and a prayer and a tenuous grasp at best of the Cyrillic alphabet.]
"The roads improve after Tatarbunary."
With these happy words ringing in my ears, I set off, though I was tempted to ask 'How could they get any worse?'
And a few miles after Tatarbunary I almost went back to describe in bum-numbing, suspension-shattering detail exactly how they just *had* got worse.
It's extraordinary -- at times, like riding through a snow field of moghuls, at others like biking over logs. Having had problems not once, but twice with my shock absorbers -- each temporary fix requiring further replacements, I am particularly fussy about riding at speed through potholes the size of a cow and sometimes the depth of a cow too. A tall cow. Wearing high heels.
And the days are getting shorter, quicker. It's pitch black by five. Too dark to be comfortable on the bike by 4.30.
All in all, I'm glad I made it to Odessa today, all of 170 miles down the road.
Odessa -- wow.
With the Carpathian Mountains that straddle Romania and Ukraine behind me, I'm now well and truly in the steppes. It's flat, low, sparsely populated. Fields are huge, miles and miles across; some now grassland, others freshly ploughed: the black earth of Ukraine, bread basket of the USSR:
How many books, articles and essays have I read about these fields? [Answer: lots. But not for 20 years.]
I met some [more] extraordinary Ukrainian women today.
First, stopped up by the side of the road to warm up my hands, I noticed a woman riding a small scooter up one of the regular dirt tracks that fork off at right angles from the main road, leading for mile after straight mile down the edge of a field to goodness knows what kind of remote place. She rode up to the highway, close to where I was parked. Close enough to wave in two-wheeled solidarity; close enough to see that the hairy herbert on a bepanniered Bonneville wasn't a Ukrainian policeman; close enough to see she didn't have number-plates on the scooter. She duly got off the scooter, pushed it over the two lanes of tarmac, remounted. started the engine and rode off the other side. There was nobody else in sight. Hell, there probably wasn't a living human being for ten miles in any direction. But she wasn't about to ride an unregistered motor vehicle on the public highway.
Second, stopping for a much needed cup of hot "chai" on the outskirts of a dirt-poor village, I met Maya and Inga, her daughter. We had about six words in common, but once again a smile -- or a laugh -- says more than enough. Maya marvelled at my presence; I scoured the shelves of her little village shop -- toothpaste, cans of beans, disposable biros, the abacus in place of a cash register -- and marvelled at their survival. And -- forgive my immodesty -- but which of the two, mother and daughter, was flirting with me the most?
Third, an old woman, convulsing, swaddled in cardigans and tights, carrying a short walking stick, lying on the edge of the other side of the road. Yes, convulsing. I stopped as fast as I could -- just as a white van filled with men drove past, slowly, on her side of the road. They CANNOT have missed seeing her. But they drove straight past. I don't enjoy writing this, because I don't want to sound like I'm showing off, but they didn't stop, and other cars hadn't stopped. But I did, and I know that you would have done, too.
I grabbed her hands -- they were warmer than mine (!) which I took to be a good sign -- and the violent jerks started to subside. She watched my eyes. I couldn't make her understand a word. Another car passed. And another. The third stopped. Thankfully. A young man in a 4×4 who spoke to her in Russian (I think) then Ukrainian (it certainly had an effect.) She was breathing normally again. She showed no signs of being in pain. Nothing was broken. We got her to her feet but she couldn't stand upright. Vodka. It was about 11 in the morning. (I should be getting used to this.) She was in a state, but not in danger. Not that the people who had passed her by could possibly have known that.
We made her comfortable at a point away from the traffic, and left her to sober up. I've been thinking about her all day. The chances of me having found her the one and only time she got that drunk are pretty slim. She was less than a mile away from a village and pointing in that direction. She'll be OK, if not on top of the world. Had there been any doubt, 4×4 man could and would have taken her. And.. If I had been able to take a passenger and speak her language.. I would have done.
--
There are a LOT of memorial markers here, headstones, crosses, plastic flowers, marking fatal accidents. I thought I'd count them, so I could emphasise the point here: in the next five kilometre stretch, there were precisely... none. So much for making my point. Then, before the next kilometre marker, there were *six* of them; and a large monument to Soviet soldiers killed here in the Second World War.
--
Level crossings here are not automatic. There's a small hut with a wooden chair and a bed and big pot of tea, and an employee of the railway who comes out to manually close and open the gates. I saw this happen twice. The operators, both times, were women.
--
50 people in a field, stretched out in a row as they moved up the ploughed rows, sewing seeds, I guess, by hand. They looked very cold.
--
To Odessa. A long suburban crawl, then finding myself by luck on a main drag, past the railway station -- which I mistook for a castle or stately home planted in the middle of the city -- and shops that looked increasingly affluent. I was heading, of course, straight to the Potempkin Steps.
I've seen my fair share of history besidetheseaside, and Odessa has plenty of it, but this was cinematic history. Somehow, it tastes different. And blow me down if I didn't shed a little tear when I realised I'd made it here. Not like me at all.
Go on, treat yourself. Watch this clip:
Comments
By Mike | November 29, 2008 6:01 PM
Wotcha sis -- f you want to know what happens to the baby, you'll have to pour yourself a BIG glass of house red, put yr feet up and watch the whole film:
http://tinyurl.com/5ty9bj
No popcorn!
By Helen | November 30, 2008 1:02 PM
Wow!! I've made it! I got a mention in your blo...diary. Oh, and I've just eaten my first Christmas chocolate which, I'm guessing, will be the first of many.... today just gets better and better...
thank you
hx
By Mike | December 4, 2008 7:13 PM
Helen! How's the Bentley? ;-)
--Mike x
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By KC | November 28, 2008 9:24 PM
Blimey daze Mike..W'appens to the baby?? That along with your latest escapades and the welcome into the world of baby of Remy and Helen......its all a bit much for a big sis on a Friday night. I get a lorra pleasure reading from your vantage point and I certainly hope a lorra othere will too one day. Wot a TRIUMPH Mike!