Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly sequence during which NPR’s worldwide workforce shares snapshots of moments from their lives and work all over the world.
Even final Wednesday afternoon — a workday — Odesa’s Lanzheron seaside was packed. A toddler in a ballerina swimsuit clung to an inflatable unicorn. A person backstroked close to two swans gliding on the waves. A girl meditated within the solar. In Ukraine’s legendary port metropolis, the salty breeze carried the splashing and laughter of a carefree summer season.
Ukraine has been defending itself from a full-scale Russian invasion for three-and-a-half years. With Russia attacking Ukrainian cities, together with Odesa, almost each evening, Ukrainians work at making life regular.
Even when it means breaking the legislation. Once I first visited this seaside in 2022, in the course of the first 12 months of the invasion, swimming was forbidden due to mines floating within the Black Sea. Police patrolled the seaside. I met a 90-year-old again then named Halyna Druz, who ignored them. She had been swimming right here for 40 years. Odesa was nonetheless free. Giving up the seaside, she mentioned, would really feel like capitulating to the Russians.
The swimming ban has since been lifted. I did not discover Halyna on the seaside once I went again there final week, however I might sense her joie de vivre among the many beachgoers benefiting from this respite.
The subsequent evening, Russian drones attacked Odesa once more.
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