The Ukraine

kiev is apparently the greenest city in europe, thats all i know.

And who will have won
When the soldiers have gone?
From the lebanon
The lebanon
The lebanon
From the lebanon

from the Lebanon.

Nah, Mikey, I haven't been there either. Soz.

at any rate yr post has inspired me to try and tag on Kiev to my russian trip in september - should be ok travelling from Georgia to Ukraine, in terms of visas etc.

Przemysl (the town on the Polish border you'd take a bus to or from) is quite nice, too. Very quiet.

lviv is great, but it's really just like a smaller prague or krakow - definitely worth doing if you're "doing" ukraine or in that part of the country, but you sound like you're going the other direction.

i've never done the ferry to georgia thing, so i can't help you there.

odessa was my favorite city, although i can't honestly explain why.

all that said, crimea is definitely the "pearl" -- see how convenient it is for your plans. you can take an overnight train from kiev if you can't find a flight in.

(and stalingrad is in russia. you knew that right?) post here if you have more questions -- happy to try to help.

meet me there!

i speak russian for a start!

was meant to be georgia and ukraine, but travel russia - georgia - ukraine too much of a headache, and not enough time. given that the whole point of my trip is to go to georgia, this is pretty dumb.

I'm planning a trip in November. I just did a 'dry run' to Bulgaria and found the Cyrillic script more of a barrier than the language. Would advise doing a mapping of Roman to Cyrillic so you can at least interpret signs / notices etc phonetically.

How easy is it to get from the Polish border to Lviv? Hmm, perhaps that's more of a Thorn Tree question.

or do you mean in terms of transport links?

agree with learning the alphabet - i couldnt imagine getting around without being able to read the signs (its got to be easier spending a bit of time learning it as opposed to trying to recognise the characters when matched to those in the guidebook etc)

i've also heard that crimea is the most gorgeous place in the former ussr

X-post - I meant transport links. The cheap and fairly direct way seems to be to fly to Rzezsow in Poland (I've been and it's a nice small city), then get a train to Przemysl, a bus to the border and then another bus onto Lviv. It's cheaper than flying to Kiev and then getting the train up to Lviv.

need more time, a black sea round trip would be decent. sochi (on the russian bit) is pretty sweet, and yet still identifiably russian

ambrose, i cant go until mid october. but im still deciding whether its a good idea for me to go alone. ive done a lot of independent travel all through china and syria and jordan, but there was still a well-worn tourist trail in those places with backpacker'y places where i could meet other travelers and with people who spoke some english. i kinda feel that ukr, georgia wouldn't really have that? i don't know. also, i look very robbable and have a fear of russian mafia types

if i go, i would probably try to fly into odessa and spend most of the time around the crimea. also, i read about a really interesting monestary or something on a moutaintop or something - which yes, sounds vague, but its supposed to be something special... i dunno. i should get a lonely planet.

i'm guessing i'll end up in morocco or tunisia, and not ukraine & georgia though.

I don't think most adults speak English, and I spoke Russian whenever possible there, but you can get around somewhat (which I learned because I could not really get around with Russian at the time). I don't know about backpackery places but there's at least an English bookstore in Tbilisi where other travelers go (with really overpriced internet access), and it's a small country, so a lot of the Peace Corps people from surrounding regions can be found in bars in Tbilisi on weekends.

you will be a lot safer in ukraine than morocco, i'd bet. (not that morocco's not great) the weather will probably have turned by october, though.

suddenly intrigued by this country

always been intrigued by Odessa, really want to see the Potemkin Stairs
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Potemkinstairs.jpg/800px-Potemkinstairs.jpg

the local rudeboys probably push each other down there in prams

thanks to ITV i've discovered Prokofiev was Ukrainian, so their coverage hasn't been totally in vain

yeah didn't know that

he was from donetsk, the city that had the most famous day in its history today, so i guess he was 'ethnically russian' or russophone or one of those things

really ukies don't fuck with anything west of the don

rejected c+ display names - the dnieper don

ehh east xp

The Potemkin stairs aren't quite as impressive as you'd imagine but Odessa's a glorious city. It's the most ridiculously jovial place i've ever been.

i enjoyed my kiev trip back in 2007, although it was only for a couple of days. had the slight annoyance of elton john hijacking the main square on the saturday night.

and be warned if you go, the ATM's are a bit raw. They work eventually but you have to keep trying.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Ukposter.jpg

"Son, join the school of Red commanders, and the defense of the Soviet Ukraine will be ensured."

i guess that hairdo there is a classic generation-transcending ukrainian look.

http://h11.abload.de/img/untitled-15mqjvk.gif

yeah i was thinking of him

the cossack look hasn't endured so well tho

spoke too soon

http://phototraveling.enriqueaviles.com/2010/04/11/a-ukrainian-folk-musician/

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Ukrainian_cossack_leaders.jpg

Default folk dress tends to be Hutsul (as it's seen as more Ukrainian) but you do get the occasional Cossack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jqgQPa5zag

I saw Ukrainia! at Winnipeg Folk Fest a couple years ago. Great band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMnS_2GgNYY

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Sviatohirsk_Monastery_%28Donetsk_Oblast%29.jpg

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/05/ukraine-war-of-words-russian

I remember being told that they changed the name of the currency to "hryven" partly to fuck with Russians who can't say the letter "h".

It hasn't reached the level of the absurd situation in Estonia where shops, even in areas where 96% of the population are Russian-speakers are forced to label everything in Estonian, but it can be a pretty tense issue in the West of the country. Almost everyone will understand Russian but many pretend not to for political reasons. You get much less of that in Kyiv, as most people speak a combination of the two languages, but it does create awkwardness at times.

The food giant Mars is under fire from animal welfare campaigners after it emerged that one of its subsidiaries has been sponsoring bear-baiting competitions. Pet food manufacturer Royal Canin said it was "horrified" to learn that it had sponsored a contest near Vinnytsia in Ukraine earlier this year.

Footage taken by Four Paws, an international animal welfare organisation, shows dogs being set on a chained brown bear over a two-hour period. As a small audience looks on, the dogs attack and bite the bear – which is unable to defend itself because its claws have been removed and it is chained to a tree.

idk however disturbing it's also blackly hilarious that not only are there people in europe backwards enough to go to bear-baiting competitions, but they are sponsored by dogfood companies

so does ilx just not care about ukraine? cause bbc is fucking obsessed.

It's called a search function, we have been talking about it, and there you go:

ok what the fuck is happening in the ukraine