Hello! I write as a happily liberated human!
When my fellow volunteers and I first got to Ukraine, our ability to travel was very limited. During our first month in our training city, Chernihiv, we weren't allowed to leave town without an official chaperone. At all. Once we finished training and got to site, we weren't allowed to leave site for one month, and weren't allowed to travel internationally or use any of our annual leave time for three months. In other words, we were basically captives. But, I've been at site a whopping 3.5 months now, and I am a fully liberated human! (Well, within certain Peace Corps rules). Anyway - it is time to travel. So, I figured I'd share some of my recent and upcoming adventures, and write a bit about the experience of traveling in Ukraine.
I recently returned from my first major trip since I got here. Ukrainian Independence Day is August 24th, and since it fell on a Thursday this year, most of the locals took the following Friday off to make a four-day weekend. PCVs are advised to do as the locals do, so I along with a couple girlfriends headed south to the port city of Odessa.
*obligatory photos of our weekend in Odessa. We ate tasty food. We drank tasty drinks. We lounged on the beach. It was marvelous. You should definitely go visit Odessa.*
I live about a 10 minute walk from the nearest bus stop - the end of the line for the only marshrutka that comes to my neighborhood, about 12 km outside of the city center. Virtually every journey I take starts with me walking the half-paved road to the bus stop, and hopping into a boxy yellow vehicle that is something between a van and a minibus, and covered in advertisements. We bump along through the village toward the main road into town, make a quick venture in the opposite direction to pick up a few more people, and then flip a u-turn that would probably be illegal in the US to head into the city.
 |
| The humble beginning of any adventure, be it to the grocery store or to the mountains in the far west. |
 |
| The marshrutka! Transportation isn't always glamorous, but it's how I get to my favorite coffee shops, how I go to see my friends, and how I start virtually any adventurous exploration of my adoptive home. |
The seemingly universal rule of traveling in Ukraine is that you get off the marshrutka somewhere near the McDonald's. McDonald's is very savvy in their marketing, so their restaurants are cleverly placed near most major inter-city travel hubs across Ukraine. McDonald's is also one of the only places open early in the morning (even the coffee shops here don't tend to open until 9am or later - Ukrainians don't seem to be morning people). So, if it's morning-time, I hop off the marshrutka by the McDonald's, grab an egg mcmuffin, and enjoy the privilege of a decent restroom before walking to the vokzal (train station) or the avtostancia (bus station). If it's night-time, I usually just snack on some fries and use the free wi-fi to check in with people before my departure.
 |
| WiFi! Bathrooms with toilet paper! Milkshakes that actually resemble milkshakes! Though I don't necessarily like to admit it, McDonald's has become a staple of traveling for me. Many a journey has included a short interlude at this McDonald's in downtown Cherkasy. |
I can head out from Cherkasy either by train or by bus. If I'm lucky, I can get a train straight out of the Cherkasy station. The Odessa-Kyiv train passes through Cherkasy, for example.
 |
| Catching the night train from Odessa... |
 |
| ...and hopping off just in time for sunrise in Cherkasy. |
However, most of the trains actually come through the neighboring city of Smila. For my next upcoming adventure (Carpathians, here I come!), I'm heading to Smila first, which means my first marshrutka will take me to a second marshrutka (by way of McDonald's, most likely) and then I will get on a train.
While I imagine that the first-class trains in Ukraine are probably comparable to other trains in Europe, the trains that I can afford on my PCV budget are... an excellent way to experience a post-soviet country...? Something like that. In a typical economy train car, there are horizontal pallets with a bit of cushioning that serve as benches while you are awake, and as beds while you sleep (overnight trains are very common). Imagine bunk beds, but squeezed into a narrow train. It's actually pretty nifty how they fit so many beds into such a tight space - although I thank my lucky stars I am not tall, because people over about 5'9'' must have a hard time fitting.
 |
| I was unable to take my own picture of the train interior, because it was full of children on their way back from summer camp, and I did not want to violate their privacy. However, this is a pretty standard Ukrainian 'platzkart" train car - the kind I and my fellow volunteers often ride. Picture courtesy of the very handy Ukrainian Train Guide from UkraineTours.com. |
There is no air-conditioning on the trains, and many Ukrainians are superstitious about opening windows, so a ride in the summertime promises to be stuffy and sweaty. I got lucky on my ride back from Odessa - the other people in my section didn't mind that I opened the window, although somebody did close it in the middle of the night while I was asleep...
I am glad that I am not left to my own devices when it comes to buying train tickets. In Ukraine, you can actually buy them at the bank - which is way easier than heading all the way to the station. You can buy tickets online, too, but that defeats the purpose of going and buying them at the bank: the people there share the secrets: Get the bottom bunk, because it is used as a storage bench, and that way you are the one who controls access to your stuff while on the train. Get a bunk toward the middle of the car, so that you are not near the toilet and its potentially offensive odor. The windows only open on one side of the train, so grab a seat on the side where you can open the window. The ladies at the bank who help me buy my train tickets are some of my favorite people. Seriously.
All in all, my trip to and from Odessa required a marshrutka, a trolleybus, a big bus, a taxi, a train, and another marshrutka - but successfully navigating my first big inter-city trip and surviving my first overnight train ride felt like such milestones that I enjoyed the process just as much as the vacation itself. Next stop: the Carpathian Mountains, by way of marshrutka, another marshrutka, one of those notorious overnight trains, a shuttle bus, and, for good measure, a day's journey on horseback.
Very useful travel tips. An eye opener that host families can be (and perhaps most of them, are) in the sticks. That маршрутки look less like car taxis and more like minibuses - and these remind me of the blue shared taxis of Istanbul, which were never Soviet: so maybe the Soviets copied them from Turkey? Although the culture of transportation tends to run very deep into history with shared coaches, carts and whatnot.
ReplyDeleteSo, the takeaway, is be prepared for a complex chain of public transportation if you want to go far. And, like any other country, of you are in psychological need of a temporary, what I'd term, "Oasis of the modern West"...find the McDonalds.