Odessa, Ukraine - Trip to the Homeland

When I took this assignment in Russia, one of the things in the back of my mind was that it might afford me the opportunity to take that long-awaited trip to Odessa and the nearby German colonies, where my family heritage stems from on my father's side. You may have noticed, on occasion, a reference to another blogspot which I maintain, called  There and Back

At this point, the two sites have intersected at a common space and time.

Odessa - Pearl of the Black Sea. A city commissioned by Catherine the Great after driving the Turks out of Ukraine and claiming it as New Russia, also creating the need to colonize the southern part of Ukraine. That led to the manifesto inviting German settlers to the area. Well, this site isn't about history. I'll leave that to There and Back.

In its time, Odessa was probably the most ethnically-diverse city on the planet. The harbor was designed by a dutch engineer, the traders were Greek (the name odessa is a derivative of the Greek goddess Odysseus), merchants from all over did business in the port. The man probably most responsible for its early success was the Duc de Richelieu, the Frenchman who was appointed governor. The early architecture, still visible, represents a wide array of styles. My hotel is a restored Victorian mansion. The story is Trotsky used to stay there on his visits to Odessa.