Time For My Summer Trip!

[Effendi]

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! 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?!

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! 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! 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!


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!