I'm in Odessa, Ukraine, in a restaurant, looking out at the pedestrian mall in the center of the city.

It looks like Paris or Rome, cobblestone streets, big ornate buildings that are like monuments unto themselves,

a city sometimes called the Pearl of the Black Sea.

I've been traveling for two or three days.

My phone says it's January 5th, 939 a.m.

I've been in airports, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Kisinau, the capital of Moldova,

and then a four-hour bus ride in the middle of the night across the border to Odessa.

I didn't need a visa.

I didn't even have to get off the bus.

So easy, but kind of strange, considering I was entering a war zone.

Every night and sometimes during the day for the past month,

Russian missiles and drones have been pounding the city.

Their targets are mainly power plants and pipelines,

trying to deprive one million Odescents of electricity and heat during the long, cold, and dark winter. But sometimes the missiles and drones fly into apartment buildings, killing and wounding civilians more directly.

I wouldn't have been surprised if all the shops and restaurants here would have been boarded up,

closed for the war.

But everything is open for business.

People are out on the streets, shopping, going to work.

Walking over to this restaurant from my hotel a few minutes ago, an air raid siren went off.

No one on the street flinched or even changed their stride.

Traffic didn't slow down, let alone pull over, which is also strange.

People in Odessa seem to be going about their day as normal.

...