Learn Russian in Odessa

The NovaMova Russian Language School combines effective Russian language learning and a variety of activities in Odessa, a city known for its vibrant cultural life and relaxed seaside atmosphere.

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Russian language school in Odessa

NovaMova Russian Language School in Odessa offers students a unique opportunity to improve their language skills on the coast of the Black Sea. It provides a warm, inviting atmosphere where everybody is a member of a special club of friends. You’ll learn best when you feel at home! Russian-speaking Odessa will embrace your every effort to achieve your educational goals. You'll have the opportunities to interact, communicate and socialize in Russian — not only outside your class but any time during the day.

The spirit in our school goes hand in hand with the spirit of Odessa herself. It’s an open, cosmopolitan seaport city with a long history of opening doors to visitors from every nook of the world. Sailors, tourists, merchants, musicians, artists, actors and authors have all regarded Odessa their second home. Many nationalities and diverse ethnic groups have populated Odessa for hundreds of years, so it’s always someone new to meet! Hospitality and free spirit create a perfect atmosphere for you to have a good time in the city by the seaside, as well as great learning in the Russian speaking environment!

Why Learn Russian in Odessa?

Russian language environment

You will improve your Russian by interacting with your host family and going on excursions with native speakers of Russian.

NovaMova language immersion

Our teaching methodology is internationally accredited. We make the learning easy by providing high quality language instruction.

Visa-free travel

Citizens of the US, EU, Canada, and some other countries can visit Ukraine for periods of up to 90 days without a visa.

The Pearl of the Black Sea

The resort area of Odessa is nearly 20 km long and features numerous beaches full of seaside cafes and nightclubs.

A spirit of adventure

Odessa has many museums, theaters, and a vibrant nightlife which offer students countless activities to partake in.

Courses and Prices

Russian Group Course1 week from € 165

Number of weeks	Price per week
1+ weeks	€ 165

Group lessons are the best place to interact not only with a teacher but with other students as well. You'll get an opportunity to develop your communication skills quickly and easily. W also maintain a low student-to-teacher ratio to ensure that the needs of all students are met.

Group lessons:

20 x 45 min per week

Min. course length:

1 week

Levels:

Beginner, A1, A2, B1, B2

Max. Class Size:

Ave. Class Size:

Days and Times:

June-Aug, Mon-Fr, 10.00-13.15

Start dates for the beginner’s level:

10.06 / 24.06 / 08.07 / 22.07 / 05.08 / 19.08

Start dates for A1, A2, B1, B2 levels:

every Monday, started from May, 27th till September, 27th, 2019

Russian Individual Course1 week from € 200

Course 10*
Course 15*
Course 20*

Number of weeks	Low season Price per week	High season** Price per week
1+ weeks	€ 200	€ 240

Individual program allows our instructors to adjust every lesson to the specific instructional needs of the student, and if necessary, to focus on the study of a particular topic. In addition, individual classes offer a more flexible schedule than group courses.

Individual lessons:

10 x 45 min per week

Min. course length:

1 week

Levels:

all levels

Days and Times:

Mon-Fr, afternoons

Start dates for all levels:

Every Monday (started from Jan 02nd 27th till Oct 11th, 2019)

* - Number of lessons per week
** - High season price is applied from May 27h 2019 till September 13th, 2019

Number of weeks	Low season Price per week	High season** Price per week
1+ weeks	€ 300	€ 360

Individual lessons:

15 x 45 min per week

Min. course length:

1 week

Levels:

all levels

Days and Times:

Mon-Fr, afternoons

Start dates for all levels:

Every Monday (started from Jan 02nd 27th till Oct 11th, 2019)

* - Number of lessons per week
** - High season price is applied from May 27h 2019 till September 13th, 2019

Number of weeks	Low season Price per week	High season** Price per week
1+ weeks	€ 400	€ 480

Individual lessons:

20 x 45 min per week

Min. course length:

1 week

Levels:

all levels

Days and Times:

Mon-Fr, afternoons

Start dates for all levels:

Every Monday (started from Jan 02nd 27th till Oct 11th, 2019)

* - Number of lessons per week
** - High season price is applied from May 27h 2019 till September 13th, 2019

Number of weeks	Price per week
1+ weeks	€ 285

Group courses combined with individual lessons. This requires a minimum of five individual lessons a week in combination with a group course. In this format, you get the best of both worlds!

Group lessons:

20 x 45 min per week

Individual lessons:

5 x 45 min per week

Min. course length:

1 week

Levels:

Beginner, A1, A2, B1, B2

Max. Class Size:

Ave. Class Size:

Days and Times:

June-Aug:, Mon-Fr, 9.00-13.15 and afternoons

Start dates:

Available from May, 27th till September, 27th, 2019

* - Number of lessons per week
** - Available from May 27th till September 27th, 2019

Number of weeks	Price per week
1+ weeks	€ 405

Group courses combined with individual lessons. This requires a minimum of five individual lessons a week in combination with a group course. In this format, you get the best of both worlds!

Group lessons:

20 x 45 min per week

Individual lessons:

10 x 45 min per week

Min. course length:

1 week

Levels:

Beginner, A1, A2, B1, B2

Max. Class Size:

Ave. Class Size:

Days and Times:

June-Aug, Mon-Fr, 9.00-13.15 and afternoons

Start dates:

Available from May, 27th till September, 27th, 2019

* - Number of lessons per week
** - Available from May 27th till September 27th, 2019

Accommodation and Transfer1 week from € 210

Host Family Lodging*

Board	Price per week	Extra day
HB	€ 240	€ 40
BB	€ 210	€ 30

Shared Apartment**

Price per week	Extra night
€ 260	€ 50

NB: There is an accommodation finding fee - 30 euro. This fee is non-refundable.
* - Please, note: check-in - Sunday after 14.00, check-out - Saturday before 12.00. All the extra nights are to be paid additionally.
** - Shared Apartment option is available from May 26th till September 14th, 2019. Please, note: check-in - Sunday after 14.00, check-out - Saturday before 12.00. All the extra nights are to be paid additionally.

Transfer service

Transfer	Type	Price
Airport Transfer	One-way	€ 20
Airport Transfer	Two-way	€ 40
Railway station transfer	One-way	€ 15
Railway station transfer	Two-way	€ 30

Transfer service is provided by our qualified drivers and is available 24h.

Dates & Prices 2019

Accommodations in Odessa

We offer several different types of accommodations to fit your needs.
You can select from the following options:

Home stay

Immersion with families that are native speakers of Russian. Comfortable private rooms with everything that is necessary and with plenty of language practice. Location within 30 min from school. Breakfast and dinner are included.

Apartment

Private

We can help you rent your own apartment for the duration of your stay, and we stand ready to help you with any problem you may have.

Shared

Less private, but cheaper option. Private rooms for each student (max 3 students per apartment). Common bathroom and kitchen.

Hotel

downtown

Convenient and affordable places to stay which are located in walking range from center and our school. Location within up to 15 min of walking from the school. Meals are optional.

Apartment Hotel

downtown

Comfortable rooms equipped by bed, kitchen-studio, bathroom with all necessary accessories, TV, phone, air conditioner, mini-bar, safe. Situated not far from the sea and within 5 minutes of walking from NovaMova school.

Extracurricular activities

Language comes to life during social situations. It is therefore important to apply the skills learned in the classroom to real-life situations. We give you many opportunities to use your skills outside of class.

Conversation Practice

Guest Speakers

The Cooking Club

Russian Speaking Club

Russian Movie Club

Russian Conversational Practice (Peer coaching)

Peer coaching is an additional learning activity in the fashion of one-on-one conversation outside school. It complements formal instruction and allows you to retain your knowledge by practicing it. Besides, you learn a lot of language that cannot be found in textbooks. You overcome your fear of speaking, gain confidence using more colloquial style of speaking, and power your vocabulary.

All levels

Guest Speakers

Guest lecturers are a highlight of our program. NovaMova regularly organizes meetings with former or current members of parliament, political analysts, historians, lawyers, educators, religious leaders, and specialists in folklore. These meetings are held in our conference room which is complete with a projector, white board, audio and video equipment. We always schedule our meetings in advance and take requests from our students as to what they would be interested to learn.

All levels

The Cooking Club

Our Cooking Club gives you an opportunity to learn how to cook most favorite local traditional dishes and practice your speaking while doing it! We invite talented Ukrainian housewives and professional cooks who show you the best recipes: borshch, solyanka, olivier salad, vareniki, and many more.

Small groups (up to 10 people) will allow you to fully participate in the process of cooking. Before the class, every student gets a copy of the recipe to be cooked and a glossary of terms that will be used so that whatever is being said in the kitchen will be understood and committed to memory.

All levels

Russian Speaking Club

You can learn new words, phraseology, colloquialisms, meaningful expressions that will help you to gain better rapport with your local friends the natives and ascend near to sounding more genuinely, more like them. You will learn what to say and what avoid saying in different situations in which you can find yourself. This is what we call living the language. The Speaking Club is when the students mostly smile and participate with sheer excitement.

All levels

Russian Movie Club

The moving images are a great source of motivation and enjoyment at the same time! They make your learning keep going! Cinema uncovers wonderful opportunities to see how the language works in so many varied situations that only fiction movies can provide!

You will hear a genuine and diversified language wrapped in high-quality sound for your learning, listening and viewing pleasure. In many episodes, the visual context will help your intellect to decipher what is said at the moment even if you do not understand the lines.

Films are shown in our comfortable specially equipped movie room: both the sound and the video are of high quality so that you could hear and read effortlessly. The films are integrated into the teaching syllabus and usually is a part of your classroom before and after viewing. Many teachers today are more and more keen on building the whole course on the films of their professional preference.

All levels

Excursions and Tours

We often ask our students to describe Odessa in three words. We often get - wine, architecture and cinematography. Others argue it's more about people, seaside and restaurants! Many may disagree and bring architecture, history and art! Parks, fashion and farmer markets! Music, design and boats! Pushkin, Gogol and Chekhov! Tchaikovsky, Vysotskiy or Sholom-Aleichem!

Whatever your passion may be, you will definitely find it in the streets of Odessa. We are prepared to help you to satiate your cultural curiosity by offering our branded excursions and tours to see, feel and learn through own experience.

Odessa Walking Tour

Shabo Winery

Catacombs

Odessa architecture

City old courtyards

Odessa Criminal

Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi

The Ukrainian Venice

Odessa Walking Tour

The way Odessa lays out its streets, parks and avenues really makes a visitor feel cozy and comfortable. To move from one place to another is really like moving between rooms in a big and welcoming house. The architecture is intensely influenced by French and Italian styles with buildings bearing a seal of their famous western architectures.

The impressing Potyomkin Stairs featured in famous film Battleship Potyomkin, a mega awesome Odessa Opera House, fantastic monuments, parks and promenades will surprise even most experienced travellers. We will be happy to take our students around town for a pleasure getting to know Odessa more intimately!

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Shabo Winery

Shabo is the name of an old wine grape growing valley near Odessa founded by ancient Greeks. The area has long enjoyed a reputation for delicious wines and fruit. You will have a nice tour of the vineyard, explore the King’s Cave Cellars, and take a break in the winery’s restaurants where you’ll taste samples and learn about the local tradition of winemaking.

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Odessa Catacombs

A totally unreal place at the city’s outskirts where you’ll find a rock quarry and a network of tunnels that used to be the source of 90% of the building blocks for buildings in Odessa during the 19th-century construction boom. The limestone managed to provide architectural and stylistic coherency.

A three-level maze of tunnels spans out for nearly two thousand miles of underground streets, making it the largest underground labyrinth in the world. You will hear about role these abandoned mines have played in the city’s life. A refuge for shelter seekers, an operating space for pirates and smugglers of the past, chilling tales of the WWII heroes’ final stronghold, and much more!

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Odessa architecture excursion

Odessa is proud to possess gorgeous architecture which attracts people from all over the world. It was built according to a plan not chaotically like many other cities. The city plan was rational and harmonic. Just like Saint Petersburg (called Northern Palmira), Odessa (Southern Palmira) developed its skyline under the supervision of French, German, Italian, Austrian, Russian and Ukrainian architects who built the city carefully in terms of Russian classicism, empire style and baroque.

We can write a lot about the beauty of Odessa but of course it’s better to see it with your own eyes. Our guide will tell you why this building is different from the next on of the same style.

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Odessa old courtyards

The old courtyards of Odessa are architecturally unique … and so are their inhabitants. The neighbors may all be of different nationalities but nevertheless everyone is very friendly and welcoming. Most of these courtyards contain everything that a typical Odessa yard should have: a water tap (where babies and linen are washed), a place where one should go “to look at the moon” – a toilet, and a long jerry-rigged table. Once you’ve experienced living in such a place, it will remain one of your warmest and most unforgettable memories.

Most of our guides have their own stories about Odessa courtyards. And we are ready to share our memories with you and show you genuine city architecture that creates a unique Odessa atmosphere.

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Odessa Criminal

The corner of Bogdana Hmelnitskogo and Zaporozhskaya street is the very heart of Moldovanka – a historical part of Odessa. All the famous outlaws of Odessa grew up here on the famous street Myasoedovskaya. One of the most popular criminals of Odessa, Michael Vinnitsky (known as Mishka Yaponchik), was born here. He was the prototype for Benya Krik – the main character of Isaak Babel's collection of short stories, The Odessa Tales.

He had his underground office called “Malina” on that corner. There is a pawn-shop there now. On the very same corner, there was the famous school for thieves, with its mannequins equipped with bells for future “artists” of the Privoz market to practice with.

There are many gangster stories about the criminal past of Odessa and its heroes, such as Sonka the Golden Hand, Gregory Kotovsky and many others. You will hear them during the excursion, along with Odessa anecdotes.

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Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi fortress trip

A real traveler always dreams to see the places of ancient times. If that is you, you are welcome to Akkerman fortress in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi. It is one of the most ancient cities in Ukraine situated on the right bank of the Dniester Liman in Odessa region, in the historical region of Bessarabia. Its history starts in the 7th century BC when Greeks founded here their colony, Tira.

The city changed its names many times. The fortress was used as a defense against the Turks. However, in the 15th century, the Turks conquered and overtook the fortress. They gave it a new name Ak-kerman, a name that means "white stone." Now it is known as Белгород or a white city. In 1770 the fortress surrendered to the army of the Russian Emperor. The fortress invites you to share in the spirit of its history.

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Vilkovo - The Ukrainian Venice

Vilkovo is Ukrainian town in the Odessa region also known as the Ukrainian Venice. There you can see the widest part of Danube, as well as its interconnected, narrow channels. There you can also find three harvests of strawberry and good wine, visit local fish and fruit markets. You will see that locals use boats more often than cars.

It’s hard to describe a trip to Vilkovo. It is a must see! And if you wish to stay for a night or two you are welcome to a wooden hotel on a small island where you can go fishing right on the balcony or you can take a boat and find a nice quiet place away from people. It is a perfect place to escape from the city.

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Gallery

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Testimonials

I was in Russian class at NovaMova school in Odessa from the beginner level. And I enjoyed it very much. I think I’ve made quite good progress. I liked the style of teaching because it was related more to communication than learning just vocabularies about different topics.

Dirk Schiffers

Germany

It was an amazing experience; we had a lot of fun. It was very easy going but still severe enough to make a lot of progress. A very good teacher. The group of students is also very nice. And Odessa is a very nice place to enjoy, with a lot of nice people. So I definitely recommend this school.

Peter Derkx

Holland

I really enjoyed my time in Odessa with NovaMova. I found that teachers a really great here, and the location is fantastic. I met a lot of interesting people. For me, it was a really great experience. And I would strongly recommend this school if you want to learn Russian.

Luigi Varanese

Italy

I’ve just completed four weeks of course at NovaMova – three weeks in Kiev and one week in Odessa. I really enjoyed it. The classes are well prepared and very professional. The opportunity to visit two cities is very nice. I can advise everybody to study Russian at NovaMova.

Thijs Pieters

Holland