Travel in Poland and Ukraine in August
 

I'm sorry if this is vague, but I'm sort of at the 'conceptual' stage of planning my summer holidays (i.e. I'm only just musing about what to do :D) I'm not really sure of how long I want to take (lucky enough to have 3 weeks' compulsory paid holiday in August, but I probably can't afford to go for 3 whole weeks) or exactly what I want to do! I am in my late 20s, female, and will be travelling alone. I have a lot of experience travelling by myself, I'm pretty confident & while my Russian is now pretty abysmal (to be honest - I will try to brush up before going) and my Polish and Ukrainian non-existent, I managed to survive in Russia for 2 months, so I think I can handle myself okay. I am looking for a bit of sunshine and beach time, but at heart I'm a culture vulture, so I'm definitely looking to soak up some history, art, theatre etc. as well.

One idea I have is maybe:

Day 1 - Fly Paris - Gdansk. Base myself probably in Gdansk with trips to the beach.
Day 4 - Train (overnight possible?) to Warsaw
Day 6 - Train (overnight possible?) to Lviv
Day 8 - Train (overnight possible?) to Kyiv
Day 12 - Fly back from Kyiv (possibly via London, might sound crazy, but I don't actually live in Paris and that looks like it might actually work out cheaper to fly Kyiv-London-Tours than Kyiv-Paris-train to Tours. I will have to look into that further once I decide on a basic itinerary)

Any advice on transport would be great & also suggestions maybe if I were to shorten the trip, what would you take out? I'm thinking perhaps I could leave Warsaw for another time. The Poland leg is basically because I'm craving some beach time & I have vicariously fallen in love with Gdansk from reading The Tin Drum!

Option 2 would probably be shorter, flying straight to Kyiv for about 4 days then overnight to Odessa for 3 days or so. From what I gather, Odessa and its environs seems like it might be a bit more "challenging" for a solo female traveller, but I don't know what your thoughts on that may be.

Thanks for any suggestions, I just recently found these forums and I think they're wonderful!

If you want beach time why not go to the Crimea and do the whole trip in Ukraine? Or to the Black Sea resorts in Romania or Bulgaria? I was very disappointed with Warsaw but loved Lviv. And I have a hard time seeing ANY northern European destination as a good place for beach time, summer or not. See http://wilhelmswords.com/eur2006/index.html for my TR on Ukraine.

For train timetables see bahn.de and for loads of info on European train travel see seat61.com

Hi; For me, I love how the old town of Warsaw was rebuilt. Consider, I am usually a person who looks for towns/cities that were not heavly damaged in WW2. But, while I never wanted to visit Warsaw, on our second trip to Poland, we visited Warsaw and and saw the dedication on restoring the old city. Wonderful. We are not into beach time, so canno't comment. This June will be our 32nd trip to Europe and would vist Warsaw again. But, I am Polish. Visit this site for downloads. Richard www.inyourpocket.com

The trouble with the renovation of the old town in Warsaw is that all the buildings now look the same, and therefore fake. A real old town has buildings in many states of (dis)repair, built from all sorts of materials. While I can understand applauding the effort, I found the result at best sad.

WE AGREE TO DISAGREE. RICHARD

Thanks for your responses. As I said, I am considering doing the beach portion in Crimea, but I have heard that beaches on the Baltic coast are underrated, I want to visit Gdansk in any case, and I don't like very hot weather, even on the beach - about 26-28 degrees is perfect for me. I was a bit hesitant also about doing a trip from Romania/Bulgaria overland to the Ukraine (I am pretty fixed on going to Kyiv) because of the whole Transnistria thing. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it looked like it could be more hassle than I really want to deal with. Although I suppose there are probably ferries too.

Skipping Warsaw would probably be more because I think it would be a more accessible destination to do at a later date than because I think it wouldn't be necessarily worthwhile. The whole reconstruction thing does make me think twice though as well.

Any more ideas would be appreciated!

I haven't been to Kyiv, but I would urge you to go to Lviv as well. The Transnistria thing was a pain, but more in terms of worry ahead of time. It wound up costing me 20 euro, which I looked on as an informal visa fee (although I'm sure it went to the official and not to the government, such as it is). But that was in 2006, I haven't checked recently, what do the posters on Lonely Planet say? I think the trick is to look poor and not to show them any money other than what you actually wind up paying.

>Train (overnight possible?) to Kyiv
Yes, 7 trains go from Lviv to Kyiv overnight.

I recommend you to book tickets beforehand, especially if you want to go from Kyiv to Crimea or Odessa. Here in Ukraine, we buy them a month before, otherwise all the tickets will be sold.
Traveling from Kyiv to Crimea by train is horrible: no air conditioning, all windows are closed, it's like traveling inside an oven. It's much comfortable to go by plain - it takes a little more than 1 hr. Again, if you buy the ticket beforehand, you get it much cheaper. For example, WizzAir charges about the same price as you'd pay for train, if you buy it a month before.

Thanks for your input. It's proving quite difficult to buy tickets outside Ukraine, but I'll see what I can do. Unfortunately some issues have come up so I don't really have the time for holiday planning any more :(

For buying tickets try http://www.travel-2-ukraine.com/ - I found them reliable.

There are two overnight trains from Lviv to Kiev. These times aren't exact, but I remember one leaving at 9 and another at 10. One is a "fast train", puts you into Kiev at 6 AM, another is the regular trains, get into Kiev around 8 AM. You can buy at the train station, if you are traveling on a weekday, you can easily buy same day.
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