Undead in Odessa
- Bernd
- Nov 30
- 12 min read
A journey against fear
2025
I thought Game of Thrones was the product of a fantasy series, and I'm astonished to discover that it isn't. The kingdom of Winterfell in the north of the Seven Kingdoms is Ukraine in the analog world. Its front line—just like in the series—borders a massive wall of ice. Behind it lives a culturally rich people, increasingly ruled by the undead, soulless beings who were once human. Worse still, the longer these undead practice their sadism, the more the population beyond the wall—in a perfidious, insidious process—becomes undead themselves.
Nothing justifies this trip
I am not a member of a government, a party, or a newsroom that employs a staff of security personnel to ensure my safety. To avoid any misunderstanding: It is good that politicians from different countries and political parties are traveling here to see the situation for themselves. This sends a strong and important signal to the Ukrainian people.
I, on the other hand, am just an ordinary traveler, not a VIP.
The atmosphere in Ukraine is oppressive, and it's difficult to endure the air raid sirens at night, but also during the day, all alone, let alone describe them. I'll try anyway.
Nothing on this trip is meticulously planned or coordinated, nothing is organized or prepared. Nothing justifies this journey. Except perhaps to report impartially on the conditions and the people in my blog.
My motivation? Thinking outside the box.
I'm not interested in mindless, opportunistic ideology: West versus East, North versus South, rich versus poor, capitalism versus communism, right versus wrong. This journey is, at best, a plea, a campaign for fundamental rights within a rules-based, civilized world order in the 21st century.
On October 28, 2025 I board the Flixbus in Chişinău.
Borderline
The first thing I notice after crossing the border is the vast, golden wheat fields of Ukraine. It's a fertile land. A granary. A rich land.
My seatmate is traveling back to Kyiv with her two sons. Her gaze sweeps across the fields. In recent months, the Russian shelling of the Ukrainian capital has intensified. I nod. What can I say? It's a different dimension of life. Worlds separate us.
After a total of five hours, we reach the port city.
Odessa
Founded in 1794, the Black Sea port city of Odessa is famous for its beaches and 19th-century architecture. Among its attractions are:
the Opera House,
the monumental Potemkin Stairs,
the magnificent Primorsky Boulevard with its mansions and monuments,
the Transfiguration Cathedral,
the historic center of Odessa...
Under normal circumstances, this would be the focus of my travel blog. But since the Russian war of aggression, nothing is normal here anymore.
After Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, which is only 300 km away, Odessa has gained importance for Ukraine. It is home to Ukraine's largest seaport, naval base, and home port.
At the deserted bus station, a self-made taxi driver immediately picks me up and takes me to the hotel together with his wife, who is waiting in the car.
The abandoned hotel and Marilyn Monroe's smile
The spacious lobby, with its glittering glass chandeliers and large windows reminiscent of better times, is deserted. Only a few lamps cast their dim light. Attractive oil paintings adorn the wallpapered walls. The young woman at reception speaks a little English, helps me check in, and hands two keys to her colleague. I could choose between two rooms on the 5th floor.
Both rooms are roughly the same. I choose the brighter room with a small balcony. It smells a bit musty. The rooms don't cool down as quickly in the sunshine. I air it out.
Nights can get uncomfortably cold at the end of October. Quick check: Electricity works. Water is running too.
Portraits of Marilyn Monroe hang on the walls of the antiquated dining room, including one of her dresses. An homage to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood?
The staff is exceptionally friendly and shows great dedication. As best as the circumstances allow, they give me the impression of a perfectly normal hotel experience. But the tourists are missing.
The tension and the constant work under life-threatening conditions are clearly visible in their pale faces.
I should have booked a room on the first floor. There are elevators. But for obvious reasons, I don't use them: in the event of a power outage, I'd be trapped.
The stairs are my fitness program.
Unusually normal
At first glance, Odessa seems like any other tourist city. People go about their work, shop, and meet in cafes, restaurants, and parks. Families and newlyweds stroll through Stambulskyy Park, taking selfies at the Potemkin Stairs. Teenagers hang out on park benches or stare at their phones. But as I said: the international tourists are missing.
The park surrounding the Transfiguration Cathedral is a meeting place for art enthusiasts. Here, too, behind the cathedral, a drone crashed.
As on many of my travels, I find something I like. I choose an oil painting of the Potemkin Stairs. The sales conversation takes place with the help of the ingenious invention of a translator.
Praise be to technology!
Just a few streets further on, I reach the City Garden, a city park surrounded by shops, restaurants, and cafes. Here, too, people meet friends and relatives to forget the hardships of war for a moment. Everything seems normal.
Very close to it, at Derybasivska St. 31, I discover Lviv Handmade Chocolate, a chocolate shop.
Here you can buy delicious, homemade chocolates and pralines.
I also took the opportunity to enjoy a very tasty hot chocolate in this tastefully decorated chocolate shop. It delights the nose with its delicate chocolate scent.
Anyone looking for a gift for family, friends, or acquaintances will find something here.
No sooner has the short break ended than the cityscape confronts me again with the direct and indirect consequences of the Russian war of aggression.
Here and there, construction fences block the view of buildings damaged by Russian air raids: the Transfiguration Cathedral, parts of the Bristol Hotel, the Museum of Archaeology, civilian residential buildings and shops... All war damage is being repaired here with incredible speed, because every destroyed building paralyzes people and otherwise leads to resignation.
On the damaged buildings near the port and in the old town, they have boarded up the huge windows with chipboard. During the Russian attacks, the glass panes shatter with incredible force. Anyone who isn't injured by thousands of razor-sharp shards of glass flying around is lucky. The port is one of the Russians' preferred targets because it contributes to Ukraine's economic survival.
Emergency generators are visible everywhere in the city. Putin is having power plants destroyed, primarily just before winter. Without electricity, there's no heat, no water, and the cold of winter is like an additional instrument of torture, designed to wear people down further. Decentralized energy supply is therefore vital.
How do parents and frail elderly people organize themselves in such situations? Caring for infants and toddlers in an ice-cold apartment, providing them with warmth and security, suddenly becomes a matter of survival.
In the event of an air raid alert, mobile bunkers are used to protect the civilian population.
Drone attacks can occur at any time of day or night. These devices have fundamentally changed warfare. Air defenses must constantly adapt to them.
Anyone caught in the crosshairs of drone pilots has virtually no chance.
Bang! Boom: If you're lucky, you're instantly dead; if you're unlucky, you're wounded; if you're even worse off, you lose hands, arms, and legs.
This is how Russian warfare against civilians works.
There is a tension in the air, which will soon become clear to me during the coming night.
This is not a test alarm.
I had just finished working on my laptop when, shortly after 11 p.m., the city's air raid sirens blared an apocalyptic wail outside.
Almost simultaneously, the warning app on my phone goes off. A male voice warns and urges the population to immediately seek shelter in the nearest refuge.
The eerie alarm sounds continuously. I close the curtains, as if that would make any difference.
My whole body is vibrating uncontrollably. I wander around the hotel room in confusion and pull on my trousers. Where is the nearest shelter? Looking at the phone. Too far anyway.
The hotel, almost empty, is deathly silent. No one rushing frantically through the corridors, no one to chase after, no one to orient myself by.
On the streets, too: no one to be seen. The people are enviably disciplined. Or apathetic. Probably both.
The alarm falls silent about an hour later. Exhausted, I fall asleep for a short time. But just two hours later, the whole process starts again, ending and beginning anew. My body is put into a state of constant stress.
Then the audacious idea strikes me to capture the eerie atmosphere in a short video. At least to some extent.
The following night, too: I force myself to stay calm, gradually regain control over my actions, at least some of it, decide again to stay in my room, and open the Ukrainian warning app. It shows the individual regions of Ukraine on a map. The east, where the front line runs, is constantly red, and now the Odessa region is as well.
This might sound ridiculous. But I decide to lie down on the bed, or rather, sit down. I only know scenes like this from the news or movies. But I've left my comfort zone. This is reality now.
Undead Attacks
Air raid alarm on October 28, 2025 at 11 PM.
October 29, 2025, at 2:00 AM: Another air raid siren sounds, which stops half an hour later. October 29, 2025, at 3:39 AM: Air raid siren sounds again, all clear at 4:19 AM, then silence.
October 29, 2025, at 11:18 PM: Air raid siren sounds again.
October 29, 2025, at 11:54 PM: Air raid siren spreads.
October 30, 2025, at 12:22 AM: More regions of Ukraine are affected.
October 30, 2025, at 4:02 AM: Another air raid siren sounds; almost all of Ukraine is affected.
October 30, 2025, at 4:52 AM: Air raid sirens are in effect throughout Ukraine.
October 30, 2025 at 7:06 AM: All clear for the Odessa region
October 30, 2025 at 8:05 AM: Attacks are decreasing
October 30, 2025 at 10:11 AM: Air raid alert in the north, east, and Crimea
The black drone attacks occur predominantly at night because they are harder for air defenses to detect in the dark. Sinister harbingers of death, designed to destroy and demoralize the population.
In war, nothing belongs to you, not even your life.
The outward composure of the Ukrainians in the face of constant stress is admirable. But the relentless attacks are leaving their mark on their faces.
October 30, 2025, 12:03 PM: Another air raid alert for Odessa and all of eastern Ukraine. I'm out and about in the city center again on this beautiful, sunny autumn day.
October 30, 2025 at 12:40 PM: All clear for the Odessa region
October 30, 2025 at 1:57 PM: Another air raid alert for Odessa. I'm currently walking through the city park.
I look into the face of a young woman walking in the park with her toddler and ask her, "And now?"
She shrugs and replies in broken English, "In war, nothing belongs to you, not even your life," and walks away with her child. She turns back to me and thanks me for the anti-aircraft defenses from Europe. "Without them, we would have been lost long ago." I suddenly feel ashamed of our absurd debates on German talk shows. The AfD and the Left Party talk about negotiating with the undead, who don't want to negotiate. I might as well hold a circle of chairs with zombies.
At the roundabout, at Katermyns'ka Square, the war suddenly takes on a face. In remembrance of the city's Ukrainian fallen, people have placed photos and laid flowers here: sons, friends, fathers.
Who will lead Russia back to civilization?
Initially, the Russian government tried to explain
the shelling of civilian buildings
with stray missiles.
By now, they themselves no longer believe their lies.
I walk towards the harbor and see a burned-out high-rise building in the distance. A security guard politely but firmly tells me not to take photos there. Up there, he points to the Potemkin Stairs, it's allowed. I change direction and wearily climb the 192 steps, sit down on a wall, and fall into a brooding silence.
It makes a difference whether I get my information about the war in Ukraine from news reports, talk shows and newspapers in Germany, or whether I experience firsthand the fear that Putin causes with his atrocities.
He coldly sends his own soldiers to their deaths. To him, they are nothing more than cannon fodder.
Russia is not only waging a war of aggression against a sovereign state; it is waging a war against the civilian population, against infrastructure, water supplies and electricity, against hospitals, kindergartens, schools, and homes.
Putin and his friends are waging a war against civilization.
I remember the press photo during the Corona crisis, in which Putin, out of fear of contracting the virus, is sitting at a ridiculously oversized table receiving other state guests. How pathetic.
Trick or treat: human abusers
Initially, the Russian government tried to explain the shelling of civilian buildings with stray missiles. Now they don't even believe their own lies anymore.
The powerful in the Kremlin believe they can break people through their state terrorism: in Chechnya, in Aleppo/Syria, against their own Russian people, and now here in Ukraine.
I'm afraid you can't negotiate with war criminals.
A small consolation: History teaches us that the civilian population has often driven its tormentors to the devil.
It is not without reason that the Russian government reacts with panic to opposition figures, including the murdered regime critic Alexei Navalny (born June 4, 1976 – February 16, 2024), Vladimir Kara-Murza, Maria Alyokhina, and others.
Russia will need these people, these faces. For they represent—like the German resistance fighters in Nazi Germany—a humane Russia.
Deprived of light
Here in Odessa, history repeats itself for me, more so than in other places. The atrocities committed by the attackers are legitimized by absurd and baseless arguments. Dictators have always urged their populations to produce children for their wars, children they like to pat on the head in media-savvy displays, only to send them to the front lines years later to be used as cannon fodder.
Nowhere are children trained militarily at such a young age as in Russia. As if Hitler's Germany were a blueprint for them.
The aggressor twists the facts, calling the victims aggressors and the aggressors heroes to justify their blatant sadism.
You can repeat a lie endlessly. It doesn't become the truth. Not in Nazi Germany during World War II, not in the Vietnam War of the 1960s, and not in the wars waged by the Russian government.
Germany paid for its actions at the end of World War II with countless civilian casualties, territorial losses, and the division into a democratic and a socialist state.
It was the ordinary people of the GDR regime who took to the streets in 1989 to end an unjust regime.
No walls, no poisonous ideologies last forever.
Germany knows all about it. The following song by Tom Tykwer, Mario Kamien, and Nikko Weidemann comes from the film Babylon Berlin, a crime series set in Germany during the 1920s and 30s, shortly before the Nazis seized power. It is sung by the Lithuanian artist Severija Janušauskaitė. It also fits with Russia's war of aggression. Listen for yourself: To Ashes, to Dust:
I get up, glance down at the harbor one last time, and walk back to the hotel, lost in thought.
In Star Trek III – "The Search for Spock" – Spock says, in essence, that the good of the many outweighs the good of the individual. And Captain Kirk replies, in essence, that the good of one individual is just as important as the life of many.
Departure from Odessa
There's an air raid siren on the day of my departure, too.
A grumpy taxi driver takes me to the bus station.
What if there's an air raid now? What if, while traveling on the bus, an attack is launched by the undead pilots in Russia, who are starving for death and controlling their death drones as if it were a computer game?
And what if the bus that's supposed to take me back to Chișinău doesn't even come?
It's already dark when the bus pulls in. There it is again, that familiar fear in my gut that hadn't been able to paralyze me.
Human rights are not a matter of political ideology or worldview. They are fundamental rights. The poison of National Socialism and Communistism is not a regional phenomenon. It is once again gripping large parts of the world and diminishing the spirit of international understanding.
The bobblehead dog on the parcel shelf
I'm sitting happily in my favorite café in Chișinău again when a cynical metaphor pops into my head:
Putin is sitting in his sleek Lada, in high spirits, driving smugly along the highway towards Kyiv. At least he believes he is on the highway towards Kyiv.
On the parcel shelf at the back of the car sits his bobblehead dog, reminiscent of the North Korean leader. It, too, is beaming with excitement, finally getting to play a minor role on the international stage again.
What neither of them knows: The supposed highway is actually the back of the Chinese dragon, flying westward.
Which brings us back to our starting point with Game of Thrones.
I think this time I'm a time traveler.
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