Hey guys, since I last talked to you I have made the 5 1/2 hour drive from Kiev to Odessa, where I spent 3 nights, and have traveled on to Chisenau, Moldova.

On Friday, I got on the road at about 12:30 for the long drive to Odessa. The landscape was flat farmland, but still pretty in it’s own way. It was a long drive but a lot own downloaded albums on Spotify and a couple of podcasts made it a little better.

Upon arrival to Odessa, I found the room I had booked pretty easily and then set out on the town to see what kind of mischief I could get into. I spent most of the evening checking out various bars around town, and towards the end of the night I met a couple guys named Vasily and Alex outside one of them. They wound up inviting me to go to a dance club away from the tourist area, which was cool. They were nice guys, so we exchanged contact info and I eventually went back and turned in for the night.

The next morning, Saturday, I set out to get some breakfast and check out a few things around the city.

While I was at breakfast, I got a call from Vasily and Alex to come meet them at 4pm at a beer pub a little outside of the downtown. They would be meeting there with some friends to pregame for a concert they were all going to that night, and they wanted me to come hang out. As I didn’t have any firm plans for the day, I jumped at another opportunity to do something away from the tourist scene and with some local guys. With the time I had to kill beforehand, I saw a few of the things I had planned to see that were enroute to the pub:

After the guys left to go to the concert, I went back to my room to chill for a bit and then I grabbed my music equipment and headed out to get some Saturday night busking time in. The plan was to play and then have the guys come meet back up with me and hang out after the concert – they were all interested to hear some country music.

After a while of hanging out and listening to me play, we all decided to put my stuff up and head back to the Bourbon Rocks to listen to the band they had that night.

Finally, at around 3am I’d had enough and decided to grab a burger and head back to my place. The other guys decided to stay out. I had my burger and witnessed no fewer than 3 guys catch a beat down on my way home!

On Sunday morning, I reached out to Alex to see what he was getting into during the day. He wrote me back that he had been robbed by 3 guys on the way home and wound up with a broken leg and a broken jaw. I couldn’t believe it! I felt so bad for him, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do at that point. So in addition to all the other fights I saw, my buddy got beat up too. I guess Odessa can be a rough place at 4am on a Saturday night..

On Sunday afternoon, I set out to see a few more of the sights in the city that I didn’t get to on Saturday. In the evening, I went out and did about 2 hours of busking downtown.

On Monday, I checked out of my room and killed a little time before the catacomb tour that I had booked to do before leaving town. Odessa has the largest system of underground catacombs in the world at almost 3000 kilometers, and several people recommend the tour to me. I enjoyed seeing everything, but it was pretty strenuous in places and I got filthy in the tunnels!

There was tons of art/graffiti on the walls as well. Some dating back to the 1800’s. Here are a few things I saw:

Directly after the tour, I set out for my destination for the evening of Chisenau, Moldova, three hours to the west. I wanted to go to Moldova because it is the least visited country in Europe, and it is also on the way to Romania – where I need to be October 30th to pick up Grant. Traffic was tough getting out of Odessa, and the border was a long wait – so I wound up driving through all of Moldova after dark, which was a real bummer.

I arrived at my hostel in Chisenau tonight about 9:30 pm and immediately took a shower to get all that catacomb grime off of me. Now I’m just chilling out, getting this blog ready for you, and looking forward to doing some exploring around the city tomorrow.

Talk to you guys soon!