Completely Random Photographs from Odessa. October 14, 2013

The road to Vilkovo passes through Odesa. On the first day, when we were driving to the herpetological congress, I was shooting with my camera in all directions during a walk around the city. When we were driving into Odesa on our way home, it was raining. My colleagues and I went to Staraya Moldavanka to catch the Turkestan geckos that had multiplied there, and I didn't take any photos at all. If we had found geckos, I would have, of course, boasted about their photos, but this time we were unlucky. I am not trying to create any kind of complete picture of Odesa here. These are just some fragments of the city that caught my eye. From the train station along Pushkinskaya to Prymorsky Boulevard, across the bridge over Voenny Descent, along Ekaterininskaya to Deribasovskaya, and along Rishelyevskaya - back to the station, where the assembly for the bus to Vilkovo was announced. We've just arrived. Station Square. A strange space of an underpass. One of the surprises is the abundance of peeling, decaying houses. And this is with the flow of tourists that passes through Odesa! What plane trees! And indeed...

An almost harmonious combination.

It's amazing how these huge trees get enough small rectangles of open soil.

Recently, I was surprised by a non-round manhole cover in Yekaterinburg... The participants of the Herpetological Society congress looked somewhat different...

A photographer against an indifferent background.

She stood by a picturesque lamppost against a beautiful background and posed.

Everyone else was photographing her in a general shot.

Here is Prymorsky Boulevard.

At the Potemkin Stairs, there's a crowd of vendors.

When this hat was being styled, hair flew in all directions.

Here too, there is food for both the heart and curiosity.

Tourists are taken around the city in cute electric cars.

And this, of course, is a complete disgrace.

The use of wild animals, especially those listed in the Red Book, is prohibited by law.

I wonder if those conservationists who are proud that they can impose an unbearable fine for a basket of mushrooms collected in the wrong place, don't want to go and fine these guys?

Old Dobermans have trouble going down stairs.

The port.

On the left, a ship at the pier.

And on the right, as I initially thought, some large building.

Groups of foreigners, mostly pensioners, walk around the city.

They speak English, French, German.

Judging by their age, the Germans have lived through interesting times, although it's unlikely any of them were in Odesa during the occupation.

Over time, we figured out where they came from.

This is a fragment of what seemed to me to be the building to the right of the port.

A cyclopean cruise liner. The tourists who arrived on it were enough to fill the entire city center. How stylish Arabic script looks! We walked further, towards the cargo port. Even a single sailboat pleases the eye.

Her nose was frozen. Lesha persuaded me to take this shot: here you can see a normal, Gaussian distribution of locks hung on the bridge by loving couples (a kind of magic intended to freeze fluid relationships unchanged).

In the center is the maximum density, and closer to the point from which I am photographing is the right tail of the distribution. And what interested her so much?