The Odesa Tea Cups

Odesa Service. For a family weekend we take the overnight train to Odesa, in the south-west corner of Ukraine.  It's a ten-hour journey, and when we arrive at 9 a.m. the streets of the old town are still largely deserted.  As a historic port city, Odesa has immense name recognition around the world, not least for the famous Odesa Steps sequence from Eisenstein's classic movie, Battleship Potemkin, itself replayed in Brian de Palma's 1987 film "The Untouchables".  You don't have to walk far through the town to see that such fame is fully justified: a great swathe of the city's historic centre has survived the past hundred years more or less intact (allowing for post-war reconstruction), and the streets ooze charm and historic interest.  We take in a visit to the restored opera houseto watch "Swan Lake"; explore the Black Sea beaches; tour the Literary Museum; and check out the famous Western and Eastern Art Museum where, unfortunately, the "Western" exhibition is closed.  It all adds up to a rich and fascinating mix, with a southern ambience quite different from other cities of Ukraine.

One striking feature of Odesa is brought home to us when we visit the Shalanda restaurant at Lanzheron Beach.  In late October, it's still just about warm enough to sit on the terrace overlooking the Black Sea, and we're encouraged to try the place by a few types tucking into bowls of soup, hot drinks and in one case some enormous schooners of brandy.  The Shalanda is just one of a series of straightforward restaurants along the front; the reason its terrace has gathered an above-average crop of diners becomes apparent the moment we sit down.  Within seconds, a waitress has materialised with menus and offers us brightly-coloured blankets to help stave off the cool breeze.  Throughout a lengthy session of tea-drinking, which later morphs into lunch, the service is world-class, from the piping hot drinks we're served in elegant mugs to the fact the staff always seem to be there when you need them, and are invisible when you don't.  I've no complaint with the standard of service in Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine; but the Shalanda restaurant, and to a lesser extent some of the other places we visit in Odesa, are particularly impressive.  If Ukraine can show the rest of the world this kind of service during Euro 2012 and more widely, the country's future as a tourist hotspot will be assured.

Opera House                                                                                            Deserted Street in Old Town