The view from my window

When we checked in to the hotel our security adviser took one look at the large room with big windows opening out over the square and told me I would need to move to a small room at the back of the hotel. It’s safer he told me. So now I look out onto the wall of another building which has been painted with an amazing mural from the satirical novel The Little Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov featuring many of the characters and scenes.

It’s quite stunning and in ordinary times would be part of a tourist wall art tour of Odessa. I feel very fortunate to have it right outside my window.

Today was a slightly frustrating day trying to write emails in Russian with the inevitable challenge of getting the right keyboard overlay and proofreading. On a more positive note I found an optician who couldn’t repair my glasses but knew a man who could. A colleague helped me find an underground workshop where the only man in Odessa who can mend anything is based. He looked them over and told me his repair would last about two weeks if I was careful - long enough to get me home to Oxford and would cost £5. A complete bargain.

(No sirens last night - I slept from 9pm to 6.30am! We had two sirens in the morning though and bombing of the bridge that would otherwise have been one of our evacuation routes - luckily there are other options.)