Dear PrePaidGSM friends, I'm here to say you goodbye since tomorrow morning I'll be flying to Kiev and I will start my 2 weeks journey through Ukraine. I'll come back on the 18th of August.

In the meanwhile I think AndreA should be here much of the time, so contact him for any information.

Since we are getting some spam on the forum lately, I added some more "powers" to our "PrePaidGSM Friends" category, i.e.:
andy
Asick
beppe_bl
DRNewcomb
kiwisteve
Przemolog
Stu

You all lock, edit and also delete posts and full discussions. So, I trust you all very much, use your powers against the spammers and there won't be any problem.
I thank you in advance for your help and wish you all great holidays! :)
See you!

Carlo

Have a nice trip! Thanks a lot for the 'powers'! :)

I have just the only question here... Do you find Ukraine to be more attractive for a visit than Russia? :D

Ukraine doesn't require a visa, invitation and all that boring and expensive buroecracy which is needed for Russia and Belarus (2 countries I'd really like to visit), and it's also cheaper than Moscow or St.Petersburg! ;) Anyway Crimea, Kiev, Odessa and Lvov are really beautiful places indeed! :)

You sure are on the move lately, Carlo :D.....have a wonderful time and give us a captivating roaming report when you get back!!

While you are there, see if you can learn if Yaroslav I (c.a. 958 - 1015) was the son of Anna or one of the other wives of Vladimir "The Great". The question has only been asked by about 10000 genealogists before, but I'm sure you can get at the true facts. ;)

Yes, sure. :) Is this your planned route? I guess these are the most interesting places there. Hope you will have a nice trip, however they say Ukraine is not that cheap now, especially Kiev... :unsure: Be ready to meet many friendly people who do not know a word in a foreign language and be ready to meet few bastards who could cheat you at shops etc. (this applies to Russia as well). And visas, yes, this boring and expensive buroecracy that you've got to get through planning a trip to Russia is quite annoying. Anyway, it's just the same as a Russian has to deal with going to Europe. I guess it's fair, friendship and relaxations of any kind should be mutual. :blink: Nevertheless, I hope your trip to Russia is just delayed a bit, so being as close as Estonia or Ukraine, you'll arrive here eventually. :)

No money, please :lol:

Well... now i have the power and i'm alone... come on guys, it's time for a party :D

Are you providing the Chianti and the Fernetbranca :D?

yes :D And I'm waiting for a truck from Russia... Asick sent us dozens of russian women :lol:

I won't send unless Russians are able to enter EU without visas. :lol: Seriously, such the looking to kill females group would have significant problems in obtaining visas at the same time in the same place... Got what I mean, eh? ;) You'd better go here yourself instead. :P :lol: One visa is easier than a dozen. :)

By the way, I've just returned from Finland, where I spent a weekend. Although some Finnish girls are nice, I still believe Russian girls are nicer. :)

You're not too far away from Finland, are you, Asick? Are you close enough to pick up Finnish networks?

I'm far enough. It's about 200 km to the Finnish border. It usually takes up to 3 hours to get to the border from here and another hour to pass it and to get to one of the nearest Finnish towns (Lappeenranta, Imatra, Kotka etc.)

Sure I'm too far. They say it's possible sometimes to find the Finnish networks near St.Petersburg at the Finnish gulf coast (during extra long distance UHF spreading periods), but it's surely impossible to register on these networks. It's not even easy to use foreign networks in a few kilometers from that border, I've heard they mutually limit transmitting power and avoid any antenna orientation toward foreign territories at the Russian-Finnish border. May be it's just because of the relief (hills and forests), though.

Yes, this is why you have to use a truck for send them... :lol:

Oh, truck... Trucks are being deeply inspected by border guards, from the very bottom to the roof. Truck drivers spend nights and days waiting in the 2-3 km line to get their cargo checked and allowed to cross. Do you think the guards won't find girls there? :lol: I'm afraid the only possible solution is a submarine... :lol:

just called Effendi :D

He's driving... Ukrainian highways with cows and other strange things... maybe he is still drunk :lol:

Driving? Did he hire a car there???

Yes... maybe a truck too :D

Or even a tank - the safest solution because of "cows and other strange things" ahead :lol:

LOL :thumbup:

- maybe he's driving past Chernobyl - plenty of wildlife there

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4923342.stm

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/

Cows? What the hell does he do to cows? :lol: I'm afraid of them both. :lol:

He's living out his wildest childhood dream of becoming a cowboy :D

Привет! :)
I just come back home from my Ukrainian trip, which was really nice, sometimes a bit adventurous, but with really no big problems. Yes, Asick was right, speaking was really hard since almost no one know English, even in Kiev. It was much better in Odessa and Lviv from that point of view. We had a lot of problems with transportation... First the plane from Milan to Kyiv wasn't at the airport! :D So we took the Alitalia one who left Milan 8 hours later... after a technical problem! In Kyiv no problems and great 15 hours train to Simferopol where we cound rent a Hyundai Accent with automatic gearbox which was the slowest car I ever drove (and Russian/Ukraianian drivers are totally crazy). Then big troubles started once again: no train to Simferopol to Odessa, so we took a 12 hours bus. During the nights we stopped at a bus station where there was a tank parked in front of a bar with the owners drinking vodka! Andrea called me in that right moment, he can confirm! :D
Then in Odessa the transportation situation was even worse: no trains, no buses, no car to hire, no aeroplanes! I was thinking to go to Transdnestr and Moldova, but had no visa, when at last we found a night bus to Kyiv (my plans were to go to Lviv). We arrived in the capital at 4am, it was f**ing cold and I didn't sleep a single minute. At 9 we succeeded in renting the very last car available with Sixt (Hertz and Europcar were already fully booked) and I drove to Lviv (more than 500Km). We spent there a couple of days and yesterday I drove back to Kyiv and on the motorway from Zhytomir to Kyiv there were cows along the road, as well as bicycles, horsetrucks and old ladies selling any kind of goods! :D

An exciting experience in another former Soviet country. I took some pics of Lenin's statues for Asick! :D Surely I have to visit St.Petersburg soon, I promised it, and I want to go there.


P.S. Girls in Ukraine are unbelievable... no words!

Where's that roaming report I requested :D?

Nice to hear that you had so much fun.

Oh, I see you had great experience there! :) It seems you studied the local reality much more better than tourists who visits some historical places in the capital and then go back home. You blame Hyundai Accent to be slow... well, I guess you should've tried a 'classical' Russian car such as an old-time looking LADA to find out what the REAL SLOW car was. :lol: What do you mean drivers were crazy? Driving 150 km/h along a single lane road with pits and scratches making dozens overtakings a minute? It's not that unusual both in Russia and Ukraine. Anyway, this is natural selection, I mean the society has been losing it's idiots this way. :lol: Seriously, driving from city to city here is a bit dangerous, I understand you, it's a bit better in Belarus, though. Here are almost no autobahns, and drivers do drive as if they were on an autobahn. :blink: Well, tankmen drinking vodka right at their tank... did you make shots? I've never seen such a thing. Ukrainian army seems to be the coolest! :) By the way, you could cross from Ukraine to Romania with no visa problems, why did you consider Moldova instead?

Oh, old ladies selling goods (mostly potato, berries, mushrooms, right?). Nice... Here they got too lazy and may be too organized to keep this road trade :) , so it's mostly common in Belarus and Ukraine. Well, I'm waiting for the pictures of together Lenin and Carlo, would you post some here? :) Sure you should visit Russia and St.Petersburg! The experience will be probably a bit different (Ukraine is generally more provincial and rural while St.Petersburg area is quite industrial and highly populated), but with the same funny stuff you like. :)

When I was driving the Hyundai in Crimea a lot of old Ladas and Volgas overtook me, so I suppose mine was slower! But it was mainly due to: automatic gearbox (I hate it!), air conditioning, 4 people with 4 big backpacks inside. When I rented a Daewoo Lanos with NO optionals it was much faster... but many Ladas kept on overtaking me, often just before a blind bend! :D Yes, drivers are totally crazy, but I saw just a couple of accidents in these days... in the meanwhile I was stopped by the police for driving too fast (120Km/h on a 70Km/h street, like all streets in Ukraine!) but I corrupted the cop with 15?! :D

The idea to go to Moldova was when I was in Odessa and couldn't find any way to go north (no bus, no train, no cars on rent). From there there's no crossing to Romania, and anyway Moldova was more on the way to Lviv and I was seriously interested to see the Trasndnestr "unofficial" Republic in Tiraspol, but then we found a terrible night bus to Kiev where I arrived at 4am... (but could "see" the 2 Moldovan GSM networks on the way)

Old ladies selling goods are very nice, in Kiev they sold also cigarettes one at a time, not the entire pack, really funny! :D There are also many just begging, they are very poor and with the old soviet pension they cannot survive.

The pic with Lenin is on one of my friends camera, but he's in the country now. Maybe I see him tonight otherwise you'll have to wait for next weekend! :D Anyway it's strange how in Crimea all street names are still the Soviet ones and Lenin's statues are still at their places, while in Odessa they are still all Russian speaking but all streets have Tsarist names and no Lenin anywhere, while in Kiev they have mainly Ukrainian names and still no communists around. In Lviv names are more Polish and Ukrainians (heroes Shevchenko and Ivano Franko are everywhere), while on the road from Lviv to Kyiv you can find some other "soviet islands" like Zhytomir which really looked like in CCCP times with "father Lenin" still on the huge and empty square! :D


ROAMING
I used my Wind card just for data with the Mega300 option and my K600i. Wind tended to use UMC network whose GPRS was terribly slow so I put Kyivstar on the favourite networks and worked perfectly in the capital. It worked well also for good part of the train journey to the south, while in Crimea it was quite slow (UMC was almost non existant as GPRS). In Odessa it was very slow while in Lviv a bit better.
On the street from Odessa to Kyiv there was a strange situation: my friend with TIM was with no network and when I tried to register on a Moldovan network my phone stayed with no network as well. Very strange since there were 3 Ukrainian and 2 Moldovan nets in that place. When it went back to Kyivstar GPRS was impossible to be used anyway. My Kyivstar simcard on the other phone always had network.

Generally speaking, in towns and main streets there were always UMC, Kyivstar and Life :) networks, while Beeline still have to improve a lot out of the towns. Golden Telecom is present only in Kyiv and Odessa. With Wind I could use UMC and Kyivstar only (and GT, but it had no GPRS). Kyivstar has anyway by far the better rural coverage, but in "normal" places probably UMC has better reception. Kyiv's underground is usually covered by UMC and Kyivstar (maybe also by the other 3, I don't know).

Anyway, Opera Mini did a great job as usual, as well as SMSbug. Kyivstar Ace&Base prepaid card is quite expensive but has the best coverage. The special prefix (815) for calling at cheaper international rates works with both mobiles and landlines, but with the mobiles you pay much more (and they don't tell it on the site, as far as I know). I wanted to buy a Life card, but my Ukrainian friend obliged me to buy Kyivstar, and I never want to say no to a woman! :D

P.S. In Ukraine they seem to be really crazy about mobile phones and there are shops everywhere, really MUCH more than in Italy (where I thought we were the craziest in this subject).
Here's a little example in Lviv:
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/2...7538gn4.th.jpg

The very strange fact in Ukraine is that Kyivstar is almost monopolist with over 90% of customers, if I'm not wrong. Anyway competitors seem to have started quite a war with commercials and new offers.
Expecially Beeline (which uses its name in latin alphabet here) is doing a great effort to make its new brand stronger (it was WellCom till not much time ago) and there are commercials really everywhere: all the trash bins and panks in public parks are in yellow-black stripes, they have almost no single brand shops (I saw just 1 in Odessa) but they are sold in any mobile phone shop and many kiosks too.
In bigger towns there are girls (or sometimes boys) at every corner with a chair, an umbrella and a table which sell refill cards of the 5 operators (as well as some public phone prepaid cards).
Life, UMC and Kyivstar have some single-brand shops too, UMC ones are very beautiful while Life seems to be the next candidate to become Vodafone due to their colours and nice shops! :) Kyivstar has no reason to be everywhere in shops since they already have almost all customers! Golden Telecom is almost non existant, really a strange operator.
At Kyiv Boryspil airport there were UMC and Kyivstar commercials already on the tunnels from the plane to the air station suggesting to roam on their networks.
There are no 3G networks at all, while there's a CDMA network but no one seems to know it and there are no official commercials, just some phone shop has some stickers with the "CDMA" word and no commercial names.

Wow, that's extremely detailed :)......thanks, Effendi!!

I don't understand "no train"? I checked a timetable at poezda.net and I found 3 direct trains a day from Odessa to Lviv. Do you mean that all the trains were 100% booked?

Well, it seems that in order to get from Odessa to Romania it's necessary to cross Moldova anyway unless there's a ferry border crossing in the delta of Danube :unsure: .
You told before that you needed a visa to enter Moldova. I heard that Moldovan visas are not required from Polish citizens and I thought that the same may apply to all the EU citizens.... After all, going to Transnistria/Pridnestrovie might be even more difficult. AFAIK the train traffic via that strange territory is suspended and I have no idea about their visa policy - after all, an appropriate amount of euros or dollars would be the key :P

Soviet influence is also visible in the names of the cities like Kirovohrad (named after Sergey Kirov, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Kirov) or Dniprodzerynsk (named after Felix Dzerzhinsky, one of the most infamous Poles ever :censored: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_E...h_Dzerzhinsky)


And how about voice roaming with Callblue (AFAIR it's the only international SIM you have with free incoming calls in Ukraine)?

I think it's this one: http://www.cdmaua.com/ua and its commmercial name is just "CDMA Ukraina" :D

As far as I can understand this text:
http://www.cdmaua.com/ua/standard/ad...direct_numbers
this operator is rather a landline one - it uses landline numbering ranges and dialling rules. I think it's someting like Sferia CDMA http://www.sferia.pl/ network in Poland (however, Sferia has no entry on celluar-news.com whereas CDMA Ukraina does :) http://www.cellular-news.com/coverage/ukraine.php )

BTW, Ukraine closes its NMT-450 network on 31st Aug: http://www.cellular-news.com/story/18901.php

Exactly, that's the problem (also with buses, but a bit less): all "inter-city" trains are 100% booked much in advance in Ukraine and it's impossible to buy them in advance if you are not in Ukraine. Also you cannot buy a ticket from Odessa to Lviv if you are not in Odessa! A friend of mine could book us the Kyiv-Simferopol train 1 month before we arrived and we were already in 4 different "kupe", but she couldn't book the other trains.

Also cars for rent shoud exist, Hertz and Europcar have their offices there, as well as Sixt and Avis (not everywhere), but they had no cars for weeks!
It's really hard to move in Ukraine, expecially in Summer and by the sea (but also in Kyiv we got the very last car from Sixt).

Oh, what a detailed report! Thanks a lot! I see you are still being impressed by this trip. Don't have much to ask since you've already told almost everything. :) Anyway, I'll just write some info from almost this side of border.

You know, I find 15 Euros to a cop to be too much, I guess a local could have corrupted him with 3 or 4 Euros, but I'm probably wrong. Anyway, this is 'normal' both in Russia and Ukraine, that's why drivers are not afraid to get penalty. Also, some funny tricks allow to avoid a penalty ticket or another cop corruption, such as long range headlight flashing. Flashing a few times in 1-2 seconds from a car going on the opposite side means cops are near in front of you and behind the car that flashes that has already seen them, so you should decrease your speed. :P This used in the whole exUSSR, AFAIK, so keep in mind. ;)

It's a surprise for me there's no crossing between Ukraine and Romania to the south of Moldova, I'll keep it in mind. I thought there could be a bridge or ferries... Well, I guess you should have not tried entering Transnistria since it's quite strange separatist region using old Soviet time ideology, so I'm afraid you would have been sent back or even got arrested for a while. I don't really know which visas they need to allow entrance. I may find this info if you need it again, though.

You are right about the poverty and small pensions... They are smaller in Ukraine than here, which is making old women to act this way. Too bad. :( You easily figured out the difference in Ukrainian regions, and the difference in their local ideologies. Yes, Lviv (here we call it L'vov in Russian, may be you heard this variant too) is the most Western city in Ukraine, which is quite expected (it was in Poland till the World War II and used to be under the 'western' influence). Kiev (sorry, Kyiv :) ) is the capital, which is getting quite modern and developed, but the province... It's the oasises of Soviet time standing still both here and Ukraine. It's like different countries. Additionally to that Crimea is more 'Russian oriented' (they don't want to study Ukrainian, there are more Russians etc.) that is in fact old time nostalgia too, that's why they keep soviet names. JFYI, in big Russian cities communist street names are mostly replaced with 'tsarist' ones except of the names given to the places built during the Soviet time. However, they are still remaining in the provincial regions. Something similar, right?

Well, don't forget about the Lenin & you pics! :D

The same as here. Now you understand why I used to answer the questions like "I'm going to Russia, how can I buy a SIM there?" with something like "Just go to a nearest dealer shop and buy whatever you want!". :) However, here are some problems with buying a SIM for a foreigner (registration stuff, you need to show them a stamped migration card), while there are no such problems in Ukraine, right?

Trains are full during summertime, you are right. Many Ukrainians and Russians going on their vacations to Crimea by train, that's why Crimea direction is 100% booked. You need to order a ticked a month before your trip. :( It's quite easy to book a ticket online here in Russia, including trains going from Russia to Ukraine, so may be it's possible to book a ticket on the same train within Ukraine (something like from Kyiv to Crimea on the train going to Crimea from Moscow through Kyiv, but I'm not sure). Anyway, they won't deliver you a ticket abroad. :( Here I booked a ticket from St.Petersburg to Lviv (in fact there was a separate single ticket from Lviv to St.Petersburg, not return ticket!) with no problems 3 weeks before departure (I'll go to Croatia though Lviv and Budapest in September), but there were just a few places remaining free, though. And... 4 tickets in 4 different 'kupe's - this is crazy! :(

About soviet names of streets they are still present in Crimea only (which is an "independent Republic" inside Ukraine), while in Odessa (which is Russian speaking as well, but not autonomous) they have tsarist names everywhere (but all signs are in Ukrainian only).

For prepaid sim-cards you don't need any registration, you can buy them everywhere, just pay! :)

About the fine+corruption I think I payed "a lot" and the cop knew that since I was a foreigner and used to very high fines (if I were in Italy I would have payed at least more than 300 euros plus suspension of the license for some months...), that's why he wanted me to decide how much to pay. Anyway 15 euros for me were more than fine and for him too! :) About the flashing I perfectly knew that, it's the same in Italy, but in that street there was no traffic at all, that's why I was driving faster and no one could flash me about the cops!

About the Urakianian/Russian names I know, L'viv and L'vov, Kyiv and Kiev, Odessa and Odesa (really big difference! :D) and so on... it's the easiest way to understand if you are speaking with an Ukrainian or a Russian! :D Anyway there are quite big differences betweene the 2 languages, Ukrainian seems to be more similar to Czech and Polish, after 1 week I could "hear" the difference between the 2 quite easily.

Train tickets were sold out in any direction, not only Crimea. Also going to Lviv was impossible. We only found a ticket to Kiev with 2 days in advance, but we needed it 1 day before, so at last we took a terrible night-bus.

Anyway, waiting to see Effendi with the Father of the Country, you can enjoy most of my pictures HERE.

With a little but important preview! :thumbup:

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/4048/img7297vt1.jpg

Here it's me with "father" Владимир Ильич! :D

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/8141/leninoo4.th.jpg

Looking at those pics you had from Odessa Brings back memories.l I was there last year,as well as being in Kiev. I noticed you had some ladies in your pics. you can't help ,but notice how pretty they are. :D I had to go back and look at my pictures , and try to get another trip to the Ukarine. :thumbup:

Oh, I didn't publish the pics with me and my female friends! :D Anyway Ukrainian and Russian girls are incredibly beautiful, lucky Asick! :P

Oh, yes... :P By the way, I wonder what Lenin holds in his hands there. Is it a mobile phone? :lol:

Yeah, it's rather big, it should be an analog phone! :D