Travelling by train is easily the
most comfortable, enjoyable, safe and affordable way to travel
between Ukrainian cities, and between Ukraine and neighbouring
countries. Ukrainian trains connect all the main cities and most
towns, including
Kyïv (spelt Kyïv in Ukrainian, Kiev in Russian), Odessa, Lviv
(spelt Lvov in Russian), Sebastopol, Simferopol, and Kharkiv. There are also international
trains from key Ukrainian cities to Moscow, St Petersburg,
Riga, Minsk, Tallinn, Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, Prague,
Vienna, and Krakow.
It's
easy to check train times for any journey within Ukraine or between Ukraine,
Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and the other
ex-Soviet republics - just use the enquiry system below. This
links to the excellent online timetable at www.poezda.net.
Search
tips:
If
you are unsure of the spelling, use the first two or
three letters of the placename and the system will
prompt you with suggestions...
'Fast,
firm' = Fast 'firmeny' train. 'Firmeny' means 'top
quality service' with modern coaches and a restaurant
car. Look for a 'firmeny' train first.
Ukrainian
Railways also have their own website, but in Ukrainian and Russian
only, at www.uz.gov.ua.
How to check
Ukrainian fares...
www.poezda.net
will also give you approximate fares. Ukrainian rail
fares are amazingly cheap by
Western standards, and a typical long-distance overnight
journey - for example Lviv to Kyïv - will cost in the region
of £7 in platskartny, £10 in kupé and £20 in spalny vagon.
The fares now include bedding.
Ukrainian
trains offer
the normal 'Russian' range of sleeping accommodation:
'Spalny Wagon' 2-berth compartments (1st class). Some trains have
Russian-style compartments with both beds at the
lower level, other trains use European-style cars with an
upper and lower berth plus a washbasin.
'Kupé' 4-berth
compartments (2nd class), 9 compartments per coach. Toilets and
washrooms are at the end of the corridor.
'Platskartny' open-plan dormitory
cars (3rd class). Bunks are arranged in bays of four on one side of
the aisle, in bays of 2 alongside the coach wall on the
other side of the aisle, 54 bunks per coach.
Right:
'Platskartny' car. There are 54 bunks
per coach, arranged in transverse bays of 4 (at left
of photo) and longitudinal bays of 2 above and below
the window (right of photo).
Far
right: 'Kupé' class 4-berth compartments on an older
Ukrainian train...
Whichever
class of travel you choose, each coach is looked after by a
pair of attendants called a 'provodnik' (male) or 'provodnitsa'
(female). The provodnik will check your ticket at the
door to the sleeper when you board. Shortly after
departure, the provodnik will come round to take your ticket. You may be asked if you would
like a glass of black Ukrainian tea ('chai') - this costs
about 3 gryvnia, or about 30p. Bedding (two sheets,
pillowcase and towel) is then handed out in sealed packs -
blankets and mattresses will already be stacked in your
compartment. After a few journeys, you will become quite
proficient at making up your bed!
A
samovar with unlimited free hot water is available at the end
of the corridor - pack some tea or coffee, sugar, cuppa soups
or water-based drinking chocolate and bring your own
mug. Most long distance trains have a restaurant car serving drinks, snacks,
and inexpensive full meals - reckon on less than £6 for two
courses and a couple of bottles of beer.
Security...
There
is no need to worry about security on Ukrainian trains, it's
the way Ukrainians themselves travel, including families and
women travelling alone. Just use the same common sense that you would use
anywhere, use the locks on your compartment
door at night and don't leave valuables unattended. In
addition to the normal lock on the compartment door, 'Spalny
Wagon' and 'kupé' compartments have a security latch which
stops the door opening more than an inch or two, and which
cannot be released from outside. There's also a safe
place for your bags at night - if you have a bottom bunk,
there is a metal box underneath the bunk which you can only
get to by lifting up the bunk - in other words, for anyone to
get to your bags, they will have to shift you off your bunk
first! Your provodniks will probably also lock the access doors
at each end of the corridor at night to prevent any unwanted
guests.
Kiev
- Lviv: 'Grand Hotel' sleeping-car.
Until 2006, the
overnight train between Lviv and Kiev used to have a special
sleeping-car run by the Grand Hotel in Lviv. However,
this special sleeper was withdrawn in 2006 so no longer
runs. The normal
Ukrainian Railways 2-bed sleepers remain available on this
train.
Reservations
are fully computerised, and you
can book train tickets up to 45 days in advance for any
journey within, or originating within, Ukraine at any
Ukrainian railway station. If your Ukrainian or Russian
isn't up to scratch, write down your requirements, using the
Cyrillic (Russian) script if you can. Alternatively, to
avoid the queues and any language hassles, you can book rail
tickets through travel agencies, for example those located in
the lobbies of certain major hotels.
How to buy train
tickets from outside Ukraine...
Option 1,
buy tickets from
www.ukrainetrains.co.uk or Unipress or other
local Ukrainian agencies
Normal UK
European rail agencies cannot book rail travel within
Ukraine, although Deutsche Bahn can book international
trains from Germany or Poland into Ukraine. However,
there are a number of reliable agencies who can book
Ukrainian train tickets for you and either allow you to
collect them or courier them to your home country.
www.ukrainetrains.co.uk can book trains
from Kiev to most destinations within Ukraine and allow you
to collect them in Kiev or send them to any address worldwide.
They charge the Ukrainian Railways price (more or less),
plus a £19 fee per booking if you collect tickets at Kiev
station, £25 for delivery to a local address within Ukraine,
or £59 for delivery by DHL to an international address
(which must be the same as your PayPal or credit card
registered address).
Another
excellent agency which can book train tickets within Ukraine
for you is 'Unipress' -
http://travel-2-ukraine.com/transportation/train-tickets.htm.
Unipress sells Ukrainian rail tickets for about US$15
(platskartny) or US$20 (kupé) for a typical long-distance
journey including their booking fee, plus an additional
US$46 if you want the tickets sent by DHL to the UK. I
can recommend their service as both helpful and efficient.
Real Russia is a UK-Russian agency who can sell
tickets for all the ex-Soviet states including Ukraine.
What tickets
can this system sell? This system can sell
tickets for any mainline train journey within
Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus,
Lithuania, Kazakhstan and the other ex-Soviet
states. It will also sell tickets for journeys
starting in those countries heading outwards, for
example Moscow to Berlin or St Petersburg to
Helsinki. Reservations officially open 45
days before departure, but Real Russia allow you to
request tickets up to 180 days ahead and they will
contact you for payment when the price is confirmed.
Can
anyone buy tickets using this system? Yes,
you can buy tickets online with a credit card
whether you live in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia,
or wherever.
How
are tickets delivered? Tickets can be
collected free of charge at Real Russia's offices in
Moscow or St Petersburg, or an e-ticket can be
emailed to you so you can collect the ticket from
most main stations in Russia (but not in other
ex-Soviet states). Tickets can be sent to UK or
EU addresses for a £12-£15 charge, or couriered to
any address worldwide also for an extra charge.
Who run this
service?Is it reliable? This
service is provided by Real Russia, a reputable
joint UK-Russian company which gets good reports
from users. They can also sort out your
Russian visa.
Booking tips: Look for a train marked 'Firm'
if there is one. 'Firmeny' trains are the best
'quality' trains, with modern coaches and good
on-board service. 'TBC' means the system
cannot provide a price for that particular train
automatically, but they'll contact you with a cost
by phone or email and you can they accept or
decline.
Is
it cheaper to buy at the ticket office?
Real Russia charge the normal Ukrainian Railways
fare plus a 15-23% mark-up to cover their costs (all
agencies charge a mark-up, in fact Real Russia is
one of the cheapest agencies).
The
fares shown on this system include the mark-up.
By all means buy tickets at the ticket office if
you're flexible, but trains can get fully-booked so
it's good to pre-book if you want a specific date
and train. It can be worth the extra to
quickly and simply organise your Ukrainian or
Russian rail tickets in English.
Option 3,
buy online direct from Ukrainian Railways...
The Ukrainian
Railways (UZ) website is
www.uz.gov.ua and they now have an online booking
facility at
www.e-kvytok.com.ua. However, although
registration can be done in English, the ticket booking part
is currently only available in Ukrainian. But you can
find a step by step guide to help you though the booking in
Ukrainian at
www.ukraine-travel-secrets.com/ukraine-train-ticket.html.
If you can cope with the Ukrainian language, this is the
cheapest way to buy tickets as there are minimal fees.
Tickets booked online must be collected at the station
before departure.
Feedback if you use this service would be appreciated!
Yalta, a seaside resort and site of the 1945 Yalta
Conference, has no railway station but it can
be reached by trolleybus from Simferopol. These run
every 20 minutes throughout the day. It's the longest
trolleybus ride in the world, taking a very scenic (but
bum-numbing...) 2 hours 40 minutes across the mountain
range and down to the coast. The fare is just a few
hryvnia.
Livadia
Palace, site of the Yalta Conference 1945: Don't miss the Livadia
Palace on the coast just outside Yalta town centre - the famous photographs of
Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin seated side-by-side at the
1945 conference was taken in the courtyard here. The
photo on the right shows the same courtyard today. For a
mass-murderer, Stalin was pretty good at
choosing cool conference locations...
Balaclava,
7 miles from Sevastopol, also has no railway station.
It's most easily (and very cheaply - about £2) reached by
taxi, but there are also buses (with a change of bus required
from trolleybus to diesel bus at the out-of-town trolleybus
terminal). In recent times a submarine maintenance base,
it was closed to foreigners until 1996. During the
Crimean war of 1854-55 the British used it as their supply
port for the siege of Sevastopol. You can climb up to
the ruined fortress on the hill overlooking the harbour on one
side and the Black Sea on the other.
The charge of the Light
Brigade, 1854: "...into the Valley of Death rode the
six hundred..." wrote Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Walking or taking a taxi the three miles inland from Balaclava
town you can visit the site of the Battle of Balaclava, where
the famous 'charge of the Light Brigade' took place during the
Crimean war. The battlefield is completely unmarked, so
take a good map.
The photo above shows the site of
the battle and the famous charge today, when the Light Brigade
would find their horses hindered by the endless vineyards.
In the photo, the Light Brigade would have charged from left
to right towards the line of Russian guns which were lined up
across the shallow valley roughly where the line of tall
pointed trees is in the distance. Only about 100 of the
600 British cavalry survived.
Weekly passenger ships link Istanbul with Odessa in Ukraine
across the Black Sea, taking about 36 hours. For
sailing times, days and fares, see
www.gess-tour.com/teplohod.shtml (in Russian only, but
open it in Google Chrome and use the translate facility).
The ship 'Prinses Elena' sails from Istanbul weekly on
Mondays at 18:00 arriving Odessa at 10:00 on Wednesdays.
She sails from Odessa at 20:00 on Fridays arriving Istanbul
at 10:00 on Sundays.
Fare from US$360 including cabin berth in shared cabin.
Feedback if you use
this Istanbul-Odessa ferry would be appreciated.
The Thomas Cook European Timetable
The
Thomas Cook European timetable
has train, bus & ferry times for every country in Europe
including Ukraine & European Russia, plus currency & climate
information. It's essential for any serious traveller
and an inspiration for armchair travellers! It costs
about
£13.99 from the bureau de change in any branch of Thomas Cook, or
buy online at
www.thomascooktimetables.com
(worldwide delivery). Alternatively, buy the
special independent traveller's edition at Amazon.co.uk.
The Thomas Cook Rail Map of
Europe is highly
recommended as easily the best and most comprehensive
map of train routes all over Europe, as far east as
Moscow, Kiev and the Crimea. High-speed and
scenic routes are highlighted.
Buy online at
www.amazon.co.uk
(worldwide delivery)
For
the serious independent traveller easily the best guidebook to take is
the Lonely Planet or Rough Guide. This Lonely Planet Ukraine
guidebook is brand-new as of late 2005.
Never travel without insurance from a
reliable travel insurer, with at least £1m or preferably £5m medical cover. It should also cover loss of
cash (up to a limit) and belongings, and cancellation. An annual
multi-trip policy is usually cheaper than several single-trip
policies even for just 2 or 3 trips
a year (I have an annual policy myself).
Don't expect travel insurance to bail you out of every missed
connection, but European international rail conditions of
carriage (known as the 'CIV') contain consumer protection
provisions that entitle you to travel forward by the next
available train if you miss a connection because of a delay to
the first train, irrespective of who operates which train, and
even if your ticket is in theory train-specific and
non-changeable.
Feedback from using
insurance for rail & ferry travel is always welcome. Here are some suggested insurers.
Seat61 gets a small commission if you buy through these
links.
If you're a
UK citizen travelling in Europe, you should apply for a free
European Health Insurance Card, which entitles you to free or
reduced rate health care if you become ill or get injured in
many European countries, under a reciprocal arrangement with
the NHS. This replaced the old E111 forms
as from January 2006. The EHIC card is available from
www.ehic.org.uk. It doesn't remove the need for
travel insurance, though.
Get a spare credit card, one designed for foreign travel with no currency
exchange loading & low or no ATM fees...
It costs nothing to take out an extra credit card.
If you keep it in a different part of your luggage so you're
not left stranded if
your wallet gets stolen, this is a form of extra travel insurance in itself. In addition,
some credit cards are significantly better for
overseas travel than others. Martin Lewis's
www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-travel-money explains which
UK credit cards
have the lowest currency exchange commission loadings when you buy something
overseas, and the lowest cash withdrawal fees when
you use an ATM abroad. Taking this advice
can save you quite a lot on each trip compared to using your
normal high-street bank credit card! You can save money on ATM charges and exchange rates using a
Caxton FX euro currency Visa Card, or indeed the
multi-currency 'Global Traveller' Visa Card,
find out about these cards & sign up here.
Get an international SIM card
to save on mobile data and phone calls...
Mobile phones can cost a fortune to use abroad, and if you're
not careful you can return home to find some huge bills
waiting for you. I've known people run up over £1,000 in
data charges just by leaving their iPhone connected during a
simple trip to Europe. However, if you
buy a global SIM card for your mobile phone from a company
such as
www.Go-Sim.com you can slash the cost by up to 85% and
limit any damage to the amount you have pre-paid. Go-Sim
cuts call costs in 175 countries worldwide,
and you can receive incoming calls and texts for free in 75 countries. It's pay-as-you-go, so no nasty bills
when you get home. It also allows cheap data access for laptops
& PDAs. A Go-Sim account and any credit on it doesn't
expire if it's not used between trips, unlike some
others, so a Go-Sim phone number becomes your 'global phone
number' for life.
Yalta, a seaside resort and site of the 1945 Yalta
Conference, has no railway station but it can
be reached by trolleybus from Simferopol. These run
every 20 minutes throughout the day. It's the longest
trolleybus ride in the world, taking a very scenic (but
bum-numbing...) 2 hours 40 minutes across the mountain
range and down to the coast. The fare is just a few
hryvnia.
In
the UK, try
If you live in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland or the
EU, try
If you live in the USA or Canada, try
