A Tale Of Two Cats: Rescuing Our Ukrainian Cat From Odesa. Part One

A Tale Of Two Cats: Rescuing Our Ukrainian Cat From Odesa. Part One

[Applause] Feel the summer touching my face reminding Me today we’re on a journey in fact we’re on two Journeys we are heading off to Europe um my wife is heading back to Ukraine and I am heading across to Europe uh through Germany and through Poland um it’s a Journey that’s been 18 months in the planning if you followed

Me and my wife on social media on Twitter on Facebook or on YouTube you will know that uh until 2022 we lived in odessi Ukraine and for obvious reasons we’ve had to leave um since then we’ve lived a pretty nomadic life we’ve uh moved from place to place first into

London where we uh stayed in my late father’s apartment and then we moved up to the beautiful Northeast of England where we bought our own house and um that’s where we’ve been living for the last few months and uh now it’s time to go back to Ukraine at least for my wife

Um there’s a specific reason for it someone got left behind we haven’t seen her for 18 months so we’re on the M1A heading down towards Lon uh we have a hotel tonight in Luton we will stop overnight then tomorrow morning I will drop Tanya at Lon airport and I will

Head on down to Dover where I will take the ferry across to dunker and then on to Germany I’m going to Potter around Germany and I’m going to be doing some stock photography and some stock video and I hope that you’ll come along and see what I’m doing for those videos so

That’s the story we’re uh just north of Leeds now and we’re going to be heading down tonight to to Luton we’re going to stop overnight and um as I say I’d love for you to come along it’s going to be an emotional journey and uh hopefully it

Will involve a reuning on the uh Ukrainian Polish border on the 16th or 17th of August then a Mad Dash back across Europe and uh across the English Channel back into the UK it’s going to be about 3 three and a half thousand miles round trip and uh I’m doing it in

The Jag and we’ll talk about that later when Tanya’s off on her trip to uh mova she’ll fly into mova and then down to adessa by bus so that’s where we’re going that’s what we’re doing um hope you come along for the trip and we’ll talk to you later we were breathing flying

Feeling the light guide in our Way Runing with the night light Hearts Burning For the First Time reality is closer by when I’m getting older Dar D the castle paint you and me in yellow and now will be over we’re solders and we’re higher higher we’re higher higher we’re higher higher we’re higher

Higher when the light R were strin with nothing more Come for the nighted to teus with warmth and such music Love And Touch we were Ro so very good evening we’ve made it to Luton we’re at the premier in very close to Luton Airport and Tanya will fly off to chisen now tomorrow and uh tomorrow morning our adventures will diverge

You’ll be coming along with me I will be filming this trip and uh it will travel across Europe and hopefully end up with a uh reunion in Southeastern Poland in a town whose name I cannot pronounce um somewhere around the 16th of August that’s the plan um Journey Down was pretty good um

Ended up being a little bit later than we expected um mainly because of my own stupidity uh I’m usually quite fastidious in my organization everything was ready um I was already about 10 minutes to leave the house to drive down to Durham and picked Tanya up from her

Work and then we were just going to drive further down to to Luton checking my wallet that I’ve got my credit cards and something triggered me to check my Drivin license which I did and then I looked at the address on my Drive-In license and it was our old address I’m

Like oh Christ now I had changed it and I’d forgotten to send the old driving license back so I thought it’s in the house I’d go and find the other new driving license with the correct address an hour couldn’t find the bloody thing at all it was just not there um so I

Thought to myself I’ve got the old V5 in the old address I’ve got the old driving license in the old address I’m just going to take a chance drove down to darham to meet Tanya from work just it played on my mind if something goes wrong what’s going to happen you know

Please pull me and I’ve got the wrong address there’s a car accident I’ve got the wrong address does it invalidate my insurance so I said to Tanya let’s drive back four eyes are better than two maybe we’ll find him so we went back searched the entire house found nothing I went to

The kitchen to get a glass of water noticed some mail on a little low shelf in the kitchen it’s not going to be there it was just junk mail rifled threw it and there it was so I’ve got the right documentation it’s the right address the V5 is in the right uh

Address as well the car documents and uh we’re ready to go so uh tomorrow morning Tanya will go off to Luton Airport and I will drive down to do in sort of middle of the afternoon and then Saturday morning I’ve got a fairy out of DOA So good morning um I’ve just walked with Tanya up to Luton Parkway railway station where she’s taking the new uh expensive Dart 4minute ride5 up to Luton Airport and she’s going to be flying off to chis now it’s a bit bit of sweet actually because Luton is the airport

That we arrived in uh 18 months ago if youve followed me on Twitter and followed my wife Facebook or any of the other social medias you know that um for 12 years we lived in adessa Ukraine and uh for obvious reasons we had to leave in um February 2022 I was actually in

The UK at the time on some family business when war broke out and uh it cued a few days of extreme stress um the upshot being that within the space of 24 hours and with some help from our Romanian friends who live in Constanta we put a plan together and got Tanya out

Of adessa down to Ismael and across the border in to Romania um from there we spent a month in Bucharest Waiting For Her Majesty’s government to approve Tanya’s residency or at least a refugee status or visas whatever they were doing at the time the rules kept changing we hopped from B

Airbnb to Airbnb from hotel to hotel until eventually Tanya’s uh residency came through she was granted three years residency and we flew into Luton Airport I think it was March the 26th March the 2 7th in 2022 we arrived at 10 10:30 at night it was cold it was dark um we had

Accommodation in London my late father’s uh property was still on the market so we knew we could go and live there and um that’s what we did we took the train down we got into London about midnight and uh from there we stayed in London 6 months or so whilst the property sold

Then we moved up to the Northeast we rented a small house for 6 months um in order to buy a property and um round about January we found our Dream property a lovely little three-bedroom house in a nice area of Washington in the Northeast and we put an offer in

That was accepted and we moved in on the 18th of April so it all went fairly smoothly but now come with me I’m going to travel across Europe I’m going down to Dover today across to dunker down to Frankfurt I spent five days in Frankfurt filming Skyline and the old town and

Stuff like that then I will head across Germany probably stopping in Dresden before head heading down to kraal um where I’ll spend three or 4 days before meeting up with Tanya on the Southeastern borders of Poland come with me on the trip um there’ll be photography there will be video I’ll

Talk about uh different things that I’m shooting what I’m shooting why I’m shooting it um so this is going to be a little bit different it’s a little bit special this one for us it’s it’s a journey that we’ve been wanting to make for 18 months so it’s not going to be

Pure photographic video I’m not even sure it’s going to be one video it might have to be split into several but come along and see what we’re going to be doing for the next 2 Weeks so here we are we’re back in the car ready to head to do uh about a 2 and 1/ half hour drive I can’t check in till 3: anyway so that’s no big deal and uh let’s get this trip on the road go and get some diesel first and off we go 2 Theid [Applause] So very good evening everyone um been doing some shooting down here in Dover of the feries coming in and out and uh transport shots really uh they often quite sell quite well so uh I’ve got the uh 100 to 400 MM Fuji lens on and uh

That picks out the details and I can zoom back to our 100 slightly wider shots and uh by doing combinations of shots you’re more likely to sell stock in multiples for uh videos on YouTube or even uh Television Productions for some reason I’m having some real issues with

My shutter now I’m sure it’s something to do with settings um particularly when I’m shooting uh photos rather than video uh the shutter just does not seem to Fire and uh so I’m packing up a little bit early I’m going to go and Google what the problem is I’ve probably set

Something wrong it’s often the case and if I can sort that out tonight that will be good okay so tomorrow I’m off to the ferry port at 3 and on the ferry up 4 and then I will be heading down to Frankfurt so I will catch you in the German city of Frank So very good morning and uh it’s roughly 4:00 in the morning and dfds fairies advised me that we needed to be there 2 hours before boarding and now we through passport control through the check-in and we still have a two 2 hour wait so uh clearly it’s not that busy the

Traffic was quite busy into the passport area but uh once clear of that dfps and the other Fair companies have lots of check-in boobs and uh that’s all done so I’m cleared through French passport control have a first French passport stamp in a long time courtesy of brexit

But we won’t go into that um couple of hours wait I’m going to chill out here and um I’ll catch you once we’re on the ferry

Many of you that follow me will know that we had to leave our home in Odesa, Ukraine in February 2022. Unfortunately we had to leave someone behind, our cat Kiki.
You can read about leaving Ukraine here. https://www.jasonrowphotography.co.uk/blog/escaping-a-war-whats-next

After 18 months of a nomadic lifestyle in the UK, we were finally setttled enough to be able to go and get her. Cue an epic journey across Europe with my wife flying to Moldova and taking a bus to Odesa and me driving from our home in North East England to the Ukrainian border. This video series is the story of my journey across Europe and the near constant changes we needed to make to the trip.
It’s a little different from my normal photography videos, it’s certainly much more personal. There is however, plenty of photography along the way, stopping in some beautiful and interesting locations.

If you are a long time follower you will know that I have fallen in love with the North East of England and have spent much of the last year documenting it photographically. You can find some of my images here. All images are available as prints up to poster sizes, fulfilled by my partner photo laboratory in Newcastle.
https://www.jasonrowphotography.co.uk/prints-of-england

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