Planning a trip?

[reb0118]

I usually help to plan the trips for our intrepid band of rail explorers. However, there has been some murmuring from the ranks with regard to the beer prices in Western Europe so I have been instructed to - "go east young man!"

I am thinking about Eastern Slovakia (Kosice/Kassa/Kaschau), Western Ukraine (Lwow/Lviv/Lemberg & Chernivtsi/Tchernowitz/Cernauti), & Moldova (Chisinau/Kishinev)

Does anyone on the forum have any first (or indeed second) hand info on these cities. Any info on the rail systems would also be appreciated.

Feel free to add comments of other Eastern European trips that you have done or may wish to do. Our last one was from Tirana, Albania to Timisoara/Temesvar, Romania via Podgorica, Bar (MG), & Belgrade/Beograd - a great experience.

 

[TCDD]

I travelled between Kosice and Bratislava back in June, stopping for a ride on the Tatra electric railway and at the pleasant town of Trencin. Fares are low, online booking is easy, and the food (and beer) in the restaurant car is good and cheap. Well worth the trip.
Chisinau I visited in August. The overnight service from Bucharest uses 'Russian style' sleepers with a bogie change at the border. There's a buffet serving hot food and cold beer. The city of Chisinau is nothing special but the station is immaculate with helpful staff. For an unusual day trip take the decrepit DMU service from 'Chisinau Suburban' (walk north by the tracks from the main station for 400 metres) to Bender, in the internationally unrecognised republic of Transnistria. Expect some interesting border experiences. From Bender there's a long trolleybus route to the 'capital', Tiraspol.
Attached is the DMU at 'Bender 2'.

 

[W-on-Sea]

I've been to Lviv (twice, in the mid-90s, and then again in 2005) and Chernivtsi (in 2005)...although my most recent trips were mostly by various forms of road transport (it having been terribly hard to get long-distance train tickets on-spec in Ukraine, as many of the longer distance services only ran once per day, and overnight, and in summer tended to be sold out in advance - although this may no longer be the case)

Lviv: has quite a lot to offer, in terms of restaurants/bars (The Hotel George is a great bargain, too.). Naturally you must try the national dish of Ukraine, salo (usually, if inaccurately, translated as "lard"), - the restaurant in the Grand Hotel is a good place to do so, and, while rather upmarket, shouldn't be bank-breaking. Go up the hill to see the castle, see the numerous old churches and cathedrals (I think the Armenian one is particularly interesting) - there's also quite a good outdoor museum of old Ukrainian houses/country life in times past not far from the town centre, too. The opera might be worth considering too, if you're remotely interested - that won't be bank-breaking, either... Last time I was there it was clear Lviv had a lot of (mostly German-speaking) central European tourists, and that it catered well to them.

Chernivtsi, as you probably know, is a lot smaller, and probably warrants a stay of shorter duration than Lviv. The university is really worth seeing, and probably the "drunken church" (with domes that lean at odd angles) too, but there isn't a great deal else. Best restaurant I found there was a Romanian one,in a basement, that didn't serve alcohol....

I'd highly recommend Kyiv/Kiev and Odesa/Odessa too - - although to my mind in (the broadest definition of) Eastern Europe, nowhere beats Tbilisi - although there, it's cheap, top quality wine, rather than beer, and quite possibly the best food in the region too...