Transport in Ukraine

Railway station in Lviv

The first time I was told my train from Kiev to Franyk takes 12 hours I was shocked and pleasantlty surprised at the same time. As I really love traveling by train and had dreamed about taking the train through whole Russia I felt I'm almost realizing it. Somehow it seems to me very romantic to drive through whole country, especially when the train is rather old and doesn't have all the modern conveniences.

On the other hand, 12 hours!!! In Estonia it takes 3 hours to get from nortern coast to southern boundary.. My longest flight has been around 16 hours and it was to Ethiopia which is really far away.. From Kiev to Franyk is around 600 km which means that the train goes at the average speed of 50 km/h.. How well would be, 12 hours went really fast as most of the time I managed to sleep in this clucking train.

Train tickets  in Ukraine are enormously cheap - from Kiev to Franyk 180 grivnas which means 18 euros, and let me remind you that the distance is 600 km. From Franyk to Lviv the ticket is 12 grivnas or 1.2 euros and the distance is 130 km. There are also buses but somehow they are more expensive although less comfortable - seems that Ukraine has reached the development level where people want to pay more to feel less convenient. I took the bus four times and all of them felt like I was in a blender - all the people in the bus would form a nice international humanshake.

As I'm still convinced that Ukrainian people are great I give you a new example. Me and one other foreign guy in the bus to Lviv, I had asked the bus driver in my poor Russian to tell me when and where we arrive in Lviv. He was unexpectedly forthcoming and said that will take us into the center wherever we want to. After four hours of driving we saw a huge hill and sky that was in a green glow. Supposedly we were in Lviv and so after some hesitations I went again to the bus driver but this time he refused to talk in Russian and kept speaking in Ukrainian. Although those languages are quite similar I didn't understand anything.. On the first seat were two younger people who said that they speak some English but unfortunately it was really so little that it was practically nothing.. So we were just sitting and waiting what's going to happen, without knowing when and where we should go off the bus.

Soon one girl who was sitting close to us said that she can help us and she said it in very clear English. It came out that this bus actually didn't go to the center at all but just stopped somewhere on the outskirts..  And of course exactly on the otherside of what we needed. Luckily for us we had met this girl who told us where to get out and what even better - she came with us. We took one bus to the city center and after she waited almost half an hour to get us on the right bus and even told the bus driver to tell us when to get off.

So, my experience says that in Ukraine you can get into some trouble but practically always there is somebody who can help you out - remember the lady with umbrella from the last post. Plus there will be some more similar stories.