Unique Odessa people
Odessites alltogether make an ethnos, free and pragmatic. To be an odessit means to have special views and a special manner to express your thoughts. One of the main features of the Odessa mentality is rebelliousness. And according to the words of Oskar Wilde “rebelliousness from the point of view of everyone who knows history, is virtue, the basic virtue of the person”. People most likely do not born as odessites, they become odessites as time goes by. “Many people would like to be born in Odessa, but not all of them were lucky “, - say one of Utesov witticisms. As the person who just spent a couple of years as certain special fluids get into his blood and he gradually becomes a real odessit.
It is true that people create cities as well as cities create the person. In general, the word “odessite” reflects more likely a nationality, than an ethnographic concept. In fact Odessa was never neither Russian, nor the Ukrainian city. It was the “open” city. Let’s look how streets are named in Odessa: Polish, Greek, Jewish, Italian, the Lutheran lane, Bulgarian, Genoa, Serbian, the Ukrainian lane, French and Italian parkways and so on
Odessites are also philosophers. They easily understand categories of eternity and infinity, constant movement of the world, observing and listening to a surf. They are don’t miss much and can’t suffer from loneliness for a long time. They are participants and story-tellers of improbable Odessa histories. The speech od odessites is full of brilliant phrases, they compose ingenious poems, sing hooligan songs, can be distinguished by sharp sense of humour and are always glad to please anyone with unexpected joke. It is obvious: what to foreigner seems ridiculous, for us is just life
