We were there for the better part of a week. Originally the plan was to take a train to Chișinău in Moldova, where we were going to rent a car and drive to the small village, formerly a shtetl, where Rachel’s grandfather was born. It would have been really nice, as the grandfather was still alive and was looking forward to pictures and reports.

But it didn’t happen, the trains from Odessa to Moldova were not running due to uprisings by Russian-backed separatists in the transdniester.

So we enjoyed extra time in Odessa. The opera house was undergoing renovations at the time.

Oh, that's too bad that you weren't able to get to Moldova.

I just checked Wikipedia, and its entry on the opera house has very little in common with what I remember being told during the tour. For example, I could have sworn they told us that it dated to the late 1700s, making it contemporaneous with Catherine the Great. Nope. Late 1800s. There had been an earlier opera house on the site, but even it was post-Catherine.

They also made a big deal about it being nearly identical with one of the great opera houses of Europe, either Paris or Vienna. This may be true, but nothing on Wikipedia mentions it. Those two buildings date from the late 1800s, too, so at least that tracks.

In any case, it is a very beautiful building, very ornate with lots of marble and gilding, and the acoustics were good. Wikipedia says that it was built on shifting ground, resulting in one end sagging by seven inches in the first three years. There were many rather terrifying cracks in the marble-clad walls (at least a finger's breadth) that extended from floor to ceiling. We were told that earlier attempts to stabilize the building that had included pumping cement into the ground had only made it worse. I hope the more recent restoration was more successful.

Wikipedia says that the theater was designed with vents under the seats, so that the basement could be filled with ice and straw in the summertime to keep patrons cool. We were there in late July and this system was absolutely not in use. It was stifling, and yet there was the ballet company below us doing a magnificent job. It was really a lovely production. I felt for the orchestra, which was also very good but which was having trouble staying in tune. It was like you could hear the strings melting under their fingers.

Crash and burn today. This is my first whiff I think.

It’s a sort of cheat, but auto fill saved me today as I was trying to triangulate. Got it in two.

Got it in 3 today. Damned atoll.

I was almost immediately in the neighborhood, but I have literally never heard of that place.

As you say, crash and burn.

quote:

but I have literally never heard of that place.

If you follow things military then you know that place. It houses a major US airbase.

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:

quote:

but I have literally never heard of that place.

If you follow things military then you know that place. It houses a major US airbase.

I do not.

The closest I've come lately to being aware of atolls housing military bases was perusing academic want ads, because some tiny institution in such a place is almost always wanting someone to come teach English composition. This week, it was the Marshall Islands offering to pay somebody $30,000 a year plus a housing allowance and a plane ticket to come teach for three years.

It looks like a fabulous place to lay on the beach when you're not in class. Since it's smack dab in the middle of the Pacific, it would be rather like being in the witness protection program.

My wife isn't a geography type. On the other hand, she is remarkable at telling stories about the picture. Today's country was ... a Victorian bird lady (beak) with a hat plume, a bustle, full chest, and long dress train behind her.

Got the Worldle on sight yesterday. (And I imagine most of you did. The difficulty differential between that one and an atoll in the Indian Ocean seems stark.)

Today, I got it by the I-know-it's-around-there-somewhere method with a guess to spare.

And I got the Wordle in two for the second time. This is stupidly exciting. Have any of you ever gotten it in one?

Today's became easy when I realized that the south edge was the ocean. Then it hit me.

Same.

Well, not easy, but it narrowed down my guesses.

Today's? Really? I thought that was a cow. Not a nation.

Getting much too obscure.

Today's was the first one that I couldn't get.