ukraine: izmail

the beginning of may is a time of holidays in ukraine, i get to travel a lot :)
for the 4 day weekend that included 1-2 may, i decided to go south...i booked train tickets to/from odessa, and made the effort to see a couple new towns around odessa...
my train into odessa arrived at 0500...it was nice to be walking out of the train station and watching the colours of the sky change as the sun came up...beautiful, and since it was so early, very quiet...
i had a hard time figuring out where to find a bus station from which to catch a bus to a town called izmail, but eventually i did figure it out...i was happy when a tram driver let me on the tram i needed to the right bus station (as opposed to the wrong bus station, which was close to the train station) even though i wasn't at the stop when he pulled away...

thankfully, once i got to the bus station, it was easy to hop on the best bus to izmail...it was a 3 hr ride, and really pretty...at several points i looked out the window and realized i was looking at a living ukrainian flag...blue skies, fields of yellow...beautiful...if only i'd been able to stop the bus to get out and take a couple photos...(one of the few reasons i'd love to have a car here in ukraine)...
the hotel in izmail wasn't anywhere near the city center, i felt like i was on the edge of nowhere! after dropping my bag, i headed back into the city...

izmail is a border town, there isn't much there...it once had a big protective fortress, but nothing remains...
while walking, i passed a park and decided to walk through...quiet and peaceful, with a memorial of some kind in the middle...on the other side of the park was a pretty church...
i continued walking, eventually making it to the city center...i found a big blue church that looked different from what i'm used to seeing...the main part of the church looked normal, but the front had a set of big columns...nifty :) ...i wish it had been open to visitors...

not far from that church was a the suvorov museum...a small place, with good displays, and quite a bit of information...some even in english :)...there were old uniforms on display, maps of battles fought, paintings of people important in the history of the area, etc...in a money/energy saving effort, the lights in each room are only turned on when someone walks into the room...
as i continued walking, i found a statue of lenin...this surprised me, as i know most statues of lenin which used to be in ukraine have been torn down since the madness of maidan...then again, this is in the south, which has always been closer to russia...

the WWII memorial in izmail is different than most...it's a ship...probably not quite full size, but it's plenty big...if i'd been able to get to the top of this memorial i probably would've been able to see the river, as it wasn't far away...
i got to the river and since it isn't big, i could see the other side...in other words, i was looking at romania...(if i had been able to figure out how to cross just to get the passport stamp, i would've done it...but now that romania is in the EU, it isn't quite that easy)...that being said, there are river cruises, or it looked that they were available...maybe i can go back?

i meandered back to my hotel, walking through another area of town...nothing exciting, just another area of a random town in ukraine...
izmail doesn't get many tourists, ukrainian or otherwise, since it isn't close to anywhere...
the next morning it was a bit of a challenge to figure out how to get to the bus station...i didn't know where it was, since i'd gotten off the bus the day before before it got to the bus station...it was fun to use the little bit of russian i know to get myself sorted...a couple locals helped me out, yay! ukrainians are friendly, it's awesome...