Time For My Summer Trip!

[andy]

Originally Posted by AndreA

just called Effendi

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

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

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

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/

[Asick]

Originally Posted by AndreA

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

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

[Triband81]

Originally Posted by Asick

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

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

[Effendi]

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! 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!
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!

An exciting experience in another former Soviet country. I took some pics of Lenin's statues for Asick! 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!

[Triband81]

Where's that roaming report I requested ?

Nice to hear that you had so much fun.

[Asick]

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. 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. 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.

[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!

[Effendi]

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:


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.

[Triband81]

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

[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by Effendi

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).

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?

Originally Posted by Effendi

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)

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

Originally Posted by Effendi

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,

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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_E...h_Dzerzhinsky)

Originally Posted by Effendi

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

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