Odessa Tales

Word Count: 2171 Not too long ago, I had the chance to visit the beautiful city of Odessa. When I casually mentioned how weird it was that the train station in Odessa – as well as train stations in Bender and Tiraspol (part of Transnistria, the country that doesn’t exist) has a lot of armed Interior Ministry cops posted there, I started getting comments about … Continue reading Odessa Tales

Blowing Smoke

Word Count: 1810 It’s been an interesting week in Romania. What started out as a one-note story, that 27 people died in a fire at a club/disco soon morphed into wide-scale protests, and the “sudden” resignation of the Prime Minister (and a few other minor hacks). The Western media has been scrambling to knit these facts into a cohesive story, all without success. For low-attention-span … Continue reading Blowing Smoke