Uzhgorod Ukraine advice?

I see that Uzhgorod is near the border with Slovakia. We have never been to Uzhgorod, but we have been to Ukraine twice. In 2011, we did a tour of Ukraine, Russia (including a river cruise) and the Baltic states. We spent four nights in Kiev and loved the city and people there.

In 2014, we did a cruise that ventured into the Black Sea and we visited Odessa, Sevastopol (we had plans to visit Yalta but the weather did not permit our visiting the city. Sevastopol is in Crimea and now absorbed by Russia.
We enjoyed our visit to Odessa and Sevastopol.

Ukraine still has a long way to go to recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Communism left the country in a deplorable condition. I haven't been to the Western part of the country, but I understand it may be a little better off than what we saw in Kiev and Odessa.

We love the Ukrainian people.

Also never been to Uzhhgorod. But have spent some time in Ukraine. Love the people and tourism is fascinating. I have had Uzhhgorod on my radar for a while, and have planned to see it as part of a tour of the Ukrainian Carpathians ... starting in Lviv. You can get to Lviv nonstop from a number of cities in Europe. I got there nonstop from Istanbul (Houston - Istanbul - Lviv). My visits to Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv were in 2016 and 2018. I didn't see anything deplorable; nothing worse than Budapest 10 years ago. Language wasnt a particular problem and the cities were cleaner than a few I have visited in Germany. But it's Eastern Europe and culturally it is different than the West. But in general, unlike much of the West, they love Americans and appreciate the tourism.

Kyiv is very well connected and you can get cheap flights to places like Budapest.

I was going to suggest Lviv as well, for your point of entry. It is a pretty mountain area where you could also stay for several days. My daughter was in Ukraine for Peace Corps, but closer to Crimea (Russian speaking). I flew into Kiev for my visit, my family also is from Ukraine (central). Most internal travel is by train or bus, if you were intending to see other areas. We went together to Russia (Moscow, St Petersburg and the "Golden Triangle" using a tour service). So you might consider Lviv- Kiev (overnight, a full day to see its main sites)-Moscow? If Russia is of interest.

Like the others, I have never been there, but it indeed looks it is best reached from Lviv. The train planner of the Ukrainian Railways (use the spelling »Uzhhorod«) gives several daily direct services.

I went to Uzhhorod earlier this year. That's the spelling that seemed most useful online, though you may encounter others on various websites, including possibly variants beginning "Uj", which I think is the French approach.

I traveled to Ukraine on the ground from Hungary, which I had been visiting. Uzhhorod was my first overnight stop. I opted to spend the night in Debrecen in eastern Hungary (attractive place) so I wouldn't be so far from the border when I started out on the train the next day. From that direction, the quickest path seems to be the train from Debrecen to Zahony (Hungarian town near the border) then a small bus of some sort into Ukraine. I think the RR gauges are different in Hungary and Ukraine, and you may wait many hours in Zahony for a train to Chop. It's much faster to go outside and try to find a bus headed to Uzhhorod, or at least to Chop, where you can get a bus to Uzhhorod. You can expect some of those buses to look like rattletraps. Be sure you know what the possible city names look like in the local alphabet, though they may also be shown in ours (for the benefit of Hungarians); I don't remember.

If you have to change buses (vans) at Chop, it would be best (maybe mandatory) to have some Ukrainian currency to pay the second driver. I wandered off in search of an ATM, not having had the foresight to seek information online in advance, and I found one a couple of blocks away. It was the first of many Ukrainian ATMs that wanted to charge me a fee. In this situation, I didn't really have a choice, so I paid the fee. After that I allowed extra time to find ATMs that did not charge fees. (Be sure your bank knows you are traveling to Ukraine so it doesn't block your card.)

Uzhhorod is an attractive, though I would say not spectacular, place. You can certainly enjoy walking around for at least a few hours. Check TripAdvisor for local museums and other attractions. There's a nice walk along the river.

One of the challenges of smaller cities in Ukraine is the condition of the sidewalks. If you have a wheeled bag, you may be lifting it over obstacles quite often. I stayed at the Hotel Boutique which I recall as fine but not a boutique hotel by our standards. The hotel is a good walk (perhaps 3/4 mile) from the point where the bus dropped me off--most likely near the train station. This was the only small-city Ukrainian hotel that was able to give me a map of the city, for which I was grateful. I think the person on the desk spoke some English.

You'll definitely want to have a paper or electronic map in hand to find your way around, because you cannot assume that too many people will speak English. The second language in that area may be Hungarian.

My notes show that I had dinner at a place called A Priori, where I had chicken and grilled vegetables.

I enjoyed Ukraine a great deal. Aside from the aforementioned sidewalk situation, which is really only noticeable if you happen to be pulling a wheelie bag, there were three issues:

• Ground transportation through the country is quite slow. There are lots of buses (comfortable between the really big cities, rather rough otherwise, as are some of the highways), which are often faster than the rare trains. The trains often run at very odd hours from the tourist's perspective.

• The comfort stops used by inter-city buses have pit toilets. They are kept very clean, but if you're on a bus for 8 or 10 hours, that's a lot of pit toilets.

• You will be hard-pressed to find a tourist office. I saw one (very helpful) in L'viv. I didn't find one in Kyiv (the capital of the country!) or Odesa, much less in Uzhhorod, Ivano-Frankivsk or Chernovtsi. So do enter the country with the information you need to decide how to spend your time and how to get around. Allow a lot of extra time when heading to a train station (probably no English spoken).

Otherwise, Ukraine was reasonably easy to visit.

Acraven, I am a bit jealous. What did you think of Chernovtsi and did you get to Kamianets-Podilskyi?

I am planning a fishing trip in the region after the thaw next year....

Oh, yes, even in Kyiv there were some "interesting" restaurants. Co-ed were not uncommon as were the infamous Turkish Toilets. I didn't have any significant trouble with language, but then I stuck to the cities for the most part. If the person waiting on me or the person I asked, didn't know English someone who did was only a few feet away and was either summoned or jumped in to help.

Acraven, you are tougher than I am. For me one of the wonderful benefits of Ukraine is the cost. Doesn't mean i will spend less, it means I will get more for what I do spend. So I saw Ukraine with guides and drivers and never messed with the bus or the train; both not too efficient by every description I have heard. But you can fly from Kyiv to Odesa or Lviv for not much more than a train ticket from Prague to Vienna. A good guide with a car is $100 a day or less. The guide in Kyiv brought wine, snacks, food, etc every morning and we talked for hours about life in Ukraine, etc. Priceless.

I was captured by everything about this beautiful country that its become the principal recipient of my charity givings each year.

Part of travel for me is picking up bits of information I never knew that I didnt know. So i enjoy this sort of thing.

For the spelling of Uzhhgorod (Ukrainian vs Uzhgorod in Russian); Ukraine has been battling the world to get them to accept the fact that the national language of Ukraine is Ukrainian; not Russian.

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Even Google Maps only recently started accepting this and still gets it wrong a lot. Go to Google maps and put in Odesa (Ukrainian) and the city is spelled correctly on the map, but the pop up window that tells you about Odesa says "Odessa". Same with Kyiv. Imagine if that same thing happened with Beijing and Peking? There would be outrage across the globe.

There is a video on YouTube that explains the difference with Kyiv and illustrates it is pronounced a bit different from the Russian world too. https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-kyiv-kiev/28478117.html

So, if out of curiosity you want to know the proper Latin spelling of the various cities go here:

http://www.mapofukraine.net/travel_info/list-of-ukrainian-cities-and-towns.html

But when booking flights on any of the booking sites, the Ukrainian city of Kyiv is still spelled as the Russian Kiev.

James, I liked Chernovtsi best of the three smaller, less touristy places I visited. There was an art museum, and the city has a lot of pretty architecture. What I didn't realize prior to my arrival is that it is quite a hilly city. I managed to book myself a room in a small place down at the bottom of a hill. I swear it was accessed via a ravine. I had quite the slog every time I headed out to see something. It was about a 15-minute walk to the nearest food source (a little corner store) and probably the same to the nearest bus stop. However, I didn't use any city buses is Chernovtsi; they always looked totally packed. It was pretty lucky that the hotel was so far from the bus station (where I arrived from Ivano-Frankivsk) that I decided to take a taxi. Normally I would have set out on foot, and that would have been a big mistake in this case.

I didn't get to Kamianets-Podilskyi. Just not enough time. Photos look really intriguing, but without a car I think it's an awkward part of the country to get to.

I should have mentioned in my earlier post that bottled water is recommended throughout Ukraine. It's available in every food store and is quite cheap. The fizzy variety is often unpleasantly salty, so I recommend the still water. Lemonade is often available in restaurants, but it is typically made with the salty fizzy water, so it may be an acquired taste. The fizz is pleasant, though.

The fizzy variety is only salty if it's designated "mineral water" (ua: вода мiнеральна, Ru: вода минеральная), which is naturally occurring water with high mineral content "mined" from underground aquifers.
All fizzy varieties of "Western" mainstream brands (Bonaqua, aqua minerale, etc) is basically purified tap water from municipal sources, with carbonation added. They are not any saltier than regular tap water.
If in doubt - anything in a .5l glass bottle is most likely salty; for plastic - read the label.

You can take a look at www.zakarpattyatourism.info

(Zakarpattia is the Ukrainian name for Transcarpathia, where Uzhhorod is located)

Also, Lonely Planet published a new edition of their Ukraine guide this past July, it has a few pages on Uzhhorod, as well as useful info about how to travel into and around Ukraine.

James, I was in Kam'ianets-Podilsky, but many years ago. The fortress is pretty impressive. One of my aunties used to live there - one block off the main street, she still had an outhouse in her garden, as did all her neighbours....

I left for my trip before the new Lonely Planet guidebook was available. The then-current edition had quite bad reviews; as I recall, readers said it didn't really seem to be very up to date. So I got hold of an older (cheaper) one and made do with it. What I had not counted on was not being able to find a tourist office anywhere except in Lviv.

Lots of tourist offices is an indication of lots of tourists..... one of the beauties of Ukraine is the lack of tourists. Lets enjoy it while we can.

On the subject of water, since I am not a big fan of carbonated water, I have learned; "if its PINK you can drink". Meaning 9 out of 10 brands of water come with Pink caps for still water and Blue caps for carbonated water. This held true in Ukraine too. But do be aware that the claim is that the carbonation helps kill bacteria....

As for the quality of the tap water, I bet its spotty at best. What leaves the primary supply is probably better than you would imagine, but once it hits the distribution piping I bet there are some real issues here and there. I did some work on a building in Eastern Europe a few years back and I was amazed by some of what I saw. So I stick to bottled water (or beer). Unicef does say its not that bad though: https://www.unicef.org/ukraine/children_25107.html

And I guess to be fair, its no worse than much of Western Europe 30 years ago.

I forgot about the water warning and drank the tap water in Uzhhorod for 1-1/2 days. It didn't taste odd (which of course means nothing) and I had no ill effects. But the locals seemed overwhelmingly to be drinking bottled water, so I decided it was prudent to follow their lead.

I didn't notice the difference in cap color; I'll pay attention to that in the future. I just looked for "negazovana" (or local equivalent) in all the Slavic countries.

Karen, you are right. Kyiv for a couple of nights is well worth the trouble.

Its a huge country. Traveling from Odesa to Lviv is about the equivalent to traveling from Houston to El Paso.

Fortunately Ukraine International Airlines isn't a half bad carrier, the flights from Kyiv to either Lviv or Odesa are in the $50 to $70 range and they have traded in their old Soviet manufactured stock for safer Boeing aircraft (and a handful of Embraer aircraft). Unfortunately there aren't any flights between other cities within the Ukraine. All trips within Ukraine must connect through Kyiv. Well, that's not 100% true, but the little carrier that does make a few intercity flights scares me......

But Kyiv is so good that spending a few nights is a plus.

Kyiv is also served by a half dozen of the big international carriers and a couple also fly into Lviv. Wizz also flies into Kyiv and serves Budapest (as does UIA)

Dang, now i want to move up my return trip!!!! Thanks Explorer!!!

"Drink Pink" rule most certainly does not hold true in Ukraine. The only pink cap I've ever seen there, if I remember correctly, was Vittel, most everyone else uses either blue or white caps.

And regular tap water is quite ok, too, except in spring, when water authorities chlorinate the heck out of it.

Wow! Thank you everyone!

You have given a lot of good advice (keep it coming... as I said, we’re in early stages of planning). You have given me a lot to consider.

I already have a list of places to visit in Uzhgorod from my father’s writings including roads named after family. Family lived there from pre-1500s up until early 1900s so we have quite a history in that area. The city was called Ungvar in my grandparents days, right up to the time they left they all left for North America.

But love the helpful suggestions because searching accommodations has been challenging.

Although I ‘ve been reading the local newspaper and viewing images both online, still difficult to research for travel there. Lonely Planet has never let me down on other adventures so thanks for that suggested resource!

Keep the advice coming! I’m going to need all you can share!

I realize that the previous post is almost certainly spam, but I want to be sure the information in it does not mislead potential visitors.

Uzhgorod is about 150 miles from L'viv. In Ukraine that is quite a distance--probably over 5 hours unless you have your own car.

And it is definitely not the case that "everything is almost the same as in Lviv".

Furthermore, you cannot fly from L'viv to Uzhgorod unless you charter a plane. There are no scheduled flights into the Uzhgorod airport.