hour.
The following morning, after thirty
minutes of prayer and the opening
of a bottle of vodka I enquired after
the boyfriend who was no longer in
the apartment. “Hah” she said, “He is
too young and after sex he snores so I
make him to go to his house.”
Another fifteen minutes of prayers,
a stiff drink cut with health giving
orange juice, and she’s out of the door
and off to work to use her languages
on the phone and Linked-In on her
keyboard to generate sales leads
around the world.
He sits at the first table on the
right in his restaurant with his book
of room and restaurant bookings
in front of him. We have no mutual
language so my Couchsurfing host,
Alexandra, from Chisinau, the capital
of the previous country, translates his
long and ardently apologetic speech.
The short form of which, at 10.00,
is that no rooms are available until
13.00.
Samuel and his nephew, a fourtimes
graduate of Yerevan University,
have refurbished the hotel and built
a two-storey building with eight
rooms from wood, with their own
hands. And the restaurant too. In
the evenings, Samuel is the chef for
the shaslik; perhaps one of the best I
have tasted.
Even with no language it is not long
before I understand that Samuel was
for 13 years a professional footballer
for the team Ararat-Yerevan. He
shows me film, on his phone, of his
nephew, a player for Manchester
United. I am happy for him, but tire
of watching quite quickly. I am not a
football person. Besides, my wife, in
England, supports the Arsenal.
My arrival at the Comfort hotel, at
Vapnyarka, near Odessa in Ukraine
was by a circuitous route.
The previous day, in Chisinau,
Moldova, my Couchsurfing host
expressed a wish to visit the coast.
There is no coast in Moldova but I
said I am going to Odessa to make a
surprise visit to my business partner
who is holidaying with her family
and friends and surprise myself by
asking, “Shall I take you there?”
Alexandra had courage, it must
be said. Her first ride ever on a
motorcycle and no option, once we
go, to turn around and go back home
for tea.
I thought we might leave in the
morning but permission for an
impromptu vacation had to be sought,
supplies bought, so it was at four in
the afternoon, that we set out from
Chisinau, heading east. Google Maps
was as falsely optimistic as ever; the
three hours and twenty-eight minutes
predicted turned into eight.
The roads were not good. The
city of Tiraspol, on the left and the
most direct route, is in the hands of
Russian backed insurgents seeking
bribes and other extortions, and
thus to be avoided. Hour after hour,
lines of trucks the size of houses with
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