oh! dessa

so, odessa was a pretty place

as evidenced by this photo



of course, that wasn't the first thing i saw when i arrived. oh no. the plane lands, and i'm one of the last people to be getting off the plane. we're kept on the plane for a bit as we're waiting for a bus to take us to the terminal.
i get off the plane and can only see one building. about 100 yards away. well, that's not the terminal, i think. we could just walk there.
i get on the bus, and here's a photo of how close the building is.



that doesn't look so close as you may have thought from my description but that's because the bus went round in a circle from the plane to the terminal, rather than in a straight line, in a comical attempt at protocol of some sort.

and of course when i say terminal, really, its just two and half rooms.

anyways, the person i was meeting was arriving after me and i didn't wanna leave the hotel in case they arrived so i was set to eat the remnants of the food i brought with. this turned out to be a disaster as the can of tuna i planned to eat wasn't one of the ring pull variety. having some rare foresight i brought my trusty pen knife, complete with can opener! it's called a can opener, but i think thats very deceiving. my last pen knife which i'm convinced was stolen by a cornish bird in south spain worked like a dream, whereas this one....

let's just say after 15 minutes of struggling, the can was 1/8th open and the can opener part of the penknife was so bent out of shape that i couldn't even think of closing it back into place.
this made it awkward to get to the tuna, so i went and found the only tool in the hotel available. a plastic straw. i'm not sure what i intended to do with this, though drinking fish oil through a straw was becoming more appealing with each passing minute.

so oil ended up everywhere and here's a pic of my lovely meal



(just to be clear the tissue is soaked in oil)

so things were off to a bad start when i got a phone call to relieve me of my futile attempts at feeding myself. something or other about a missed flight so had to sort that out instead.

in closing, i would like to point out that parts of odessa do in fact live up to it's name of the pearl by the sea (or whatever it used to be called) but it is falling apart rather quickly.