Fancy some summer romance in Lviv? Green mountains in the Carpathians? History in Chernivtsi? The cosmopolitan patina of Odesa? City surroundings in Kharkiv? Black Sea beaches in southern Kherson and Odesa oblasts, in Skadovsk, Koblevo, Zatoka, Lebedyovka or even further south?
With the plummeting hryvnia doubling the cost of traveling abroad, a domestic vacation in Ukraine has never been so attractive. And there’s a lot to attract – urban landscapes oozing history, picturesque canyons, green mountains, and white beaches. Ukraine has it all right at home.
What is more, since hosting the European Football championships in 2012, Ukraine has had a small but new fleet of modern intercity trains that can get you from Kyiv to the east, west or south of the country within five to seven hours at some 100-110 kilometers per hour point-to-point, and at a reasonable price.
As in previous years, the State Railways, Ukrzaliznytsia, has added overnight trains to popular destinations to meet seasonal demand. For instance, no less than five sleepers daily will connect Lviv with the Black Sea city of Odesa until the end of August, with a travel time of 10 to 12 hours.
And this summer, for the first time, regular Intercity+ services have been added to help meet vacation-time demand, with extra trains from Kyiv to Kharkiv, Odesa and Lviv now running.
The Intercity+ service between Kyiv and Odesa has doubled, to two trains per day. The travel time is 6 hours and 54 minutes compared to 8-9 hours for the overnight sleeper trains.
The service between Kyiv and Kharkiv, which usually consists of three pairs of trains running daily, now has an extra two trains on weekends, which leave Kyiv on Fridays and Sundays, and return to the capital from Kharkiv on Saturdays and Mondays. The Intercity+ service between Kyiv and Lviv, which usually consists of two pairs of trains running daily, also now has two extra trains on weekends, which leave Kyiv for Lviv on Fridays and Sundays, and return from Lviv to Kyiv late on Fridays and Sundays, arriving back in the capital early on Saturdays and Mondays.
The additional Kyiv to Lviv Intercity+ service on Friday is timed to allow a rare early weekend connection to the Carpathians and Bukovina. Departing Kyiv at 12:05 p.m., it arrives in Lviv 5:10 pm., just in time for its passengers to catch the 5:18 p.m. regional train bound for Chernivtsi, which stops in Ivano-Frankivsk at 7:58 p.m. and Kolomyia at 9:31 p.m.
This summer has also seen the introduction of a Trans Ukrainian Night Express connecting Kharkiv with Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk, which actually makes it practical for residents of Kharkiv to take a short weekend break in the Carpathians – even though they’ll still spend a combined 29 to 31 hours on the train. The 1,205-kilometer route from Kharkiv to Ivano-Frankivsk takes 14 hours and 40 minutes to travel. From Aug. 15 there will be changes, with added stops, which will increase travel time to 15 hours and 50 minutes.
Even so, that’s still five hours faster than taking the old overnight service plying the 1,120-kilometer route from Kharkiv to Lviv, which takes 20 hours and 57 minutes – which meant it would take more than a day to reach the foothills of the Carpathians from Kharkiv.
How to buy train tickets
Check the schedule at www.uz.gov.ua/en/passengers/timetables, or go straight to the online ticket sales system at www.booking.uz.gov.ua (domestic tickets only).
Both sites are available in Ukrainian, Russian and English, and international credit cards are accepted for payments.
Type in the first letters of the station’s name, wait a bit for a drop-down list to appear, and pick the name on the list. Make sure you select from the drop-down list, as the systems won’t recognize the input if you go to the bother of typing it all out in full yourself.
When using the English version, make sure to enter transliterations of the station names in Ukrainian, such as Uzhhorod, Lviv, Kyiv, Odesa, Myrhorod, Kherson, and so on. Choose train and class, and then choose wagon and seat/berth. In the Seat available column grey Cyrillic letters indicate tickets’ class.
| Type | Class | Arrangement | Price range | |
| Л | Luxury | 1st, berth | 1 + 1 compartment | Hr 450-900 |
| К | Compartment | 2nd, berth | 2 + 2 compartment | Hr 200-400 |
| П | Open compartment | 3rd, berth | 2 + 2 + 2 | Hr 100-200 |
| C1 | Seater | 1st, Intercity+ | 2 + 2 rows | Hr 500-700 |
| C2 | Seater | 2nd, Intercity+ | 2 + 3 rows | Hr 200-400 |
| C3 | Seater | 3rd, regional | 3 + 3 rows | Hr 50-100 |
If the train type or class you want don’t appear, that means it is sold out. Free seats do, however, often appear as pre-bookings are cancelled during the day before departure – 24 hours before, eight hours before, and two hours before. So even if the train you want appears to be sold out, it’s worth checking back at the website at these times. Tickets also become available online if passengers change their travel plans and cancel bookings.
Unfortunately, neither the train schedule nor the booking site are able to handle an itinerary that involves a change of trains, and so passengers must purchase separate tickets for each train, and juggle all the departure and arrival times in their heads to make sure they can make connecting services.
If direct trains from, say, Kyiv to Odesa or Lviv are sold out, connections involving a change of train in Kozyatyn-1 or Vinnytsya might be an option, but one will have to search for each service separately.
Most trains accept electronic tickets, no print-out needed. Bring a passport and a charged gadget able to display the ticket information, which is in the form of a QR code.
Intercity+ trains come with 220-volt sockets by their seats, while most sleeper trains feature low voltage sockets in the corridors. However, these often are not working.
Kyiv Post staff writer Johannes Wamberg Andersen can be reached at [email protected]
