Travelling to Ukraine by car

On the road

Each journey begins with the first step

Somebody once said, "each journey begins with the first step". My journey began after barely sleeping, a few minutes after 5 a.m. and it began with the first step off my dad's couch, where I'd fallen asleep.

It was early morning and of course I knew it was a bad idea to travel during the day because there would be so many people at the border, but I was simply too exhausted that night and I couldn't wait to get to L'viv. So I set off by car, hoping that it was not going to be too bad. I neither wanted to get stuck in Vienna's nor in Brno's rush hour - and that worked out fine. 

Route from Vienna to L'viv (picture: screenshot from Google Maps)

The feeling of being on the road

After a year of working at least 60 hours per week (plus additional study-time), being on the road felt amazing to say the least. I was not responsible for anyone, nobody was waiting for appointments,  nobody was going to call or text me with something "super important" for a whole week. There were just I, my car, and the road. I could, in theory, have gone wherever the hell I wanted to. Once again, I chose to go to L'viv, where my friends and family were waiting for me. 

A continent without borders?

I was born 30 years ago in the heart of Europe. I remember border controls from a very, very young age, when I went to Hungary and the Czech Republic with my parents but the rest of my life, I never really had to worry about crossing a border. Living in mainland Europe means taking your passport and driving until the road ends. You wouldn't notice you're in a different country unless you didn't see slightly differenly designed road signs every few hours and perhaps listen to the news in different languages on the radio. There are no borders. We are free people and I appreciate this so much that I am failing to put it into words.

Waiting in Poland

Crossing the border from the EU to Ukraine is always a bit adventurous. Maybe even annoying. Yes, definitely annoying. I had a lot of fun at the border too. But it's always awkward and you cannot expect people there to speak English or German. Or even be friendly, for that matter.

So after queuing in the wrong line for one hour and being forced to listening to Despacito because the driver in the other queue had turned up the volume so that they could probably even hear it in Ukraine, the Polish guard sent me back to the right line to queue for another one hour and a half. I wasn't too annoyed - I could almost see Ukraine from where I was. Almost. Well, at least I knew it was there. 

Once I got past the traffic light, which I had anticipated for an hour and a half, I thought everything was going to be fast and I'd be in Ukraine for (late) lunch. Instead, the queuing continued. I am not quite sure what took them so long because the girl (about my age) just checked my passport, my car's documents and had a very quick look through the stuff I had with me. "Quick" as in she opened the car, looked at the stuff for a few seconds without even touching it, and then I was allowed to close it again. She also checked the chassis number - that was it. I drove on - 30 metres, where everyone was queueing again. It was raining cats and dogs so I guessed that the Ukrainian guard, who is usually standing outside, handing out "control talons" (small pieces of paper which help them check who has gone through which controls yet), must have gone inside to wait for the rain to stop.

Waiting in Ukraine

Finally, the rain stopped and the queue started moving again almost instantly. As if the end of the rain had pressed some kind of switch. The girl from the border control was back, handing out the "control talons". Needless to say: more queuing followed instantly. But the brilliant thing is: border crossing is never the same. There are some basic things like the "control talon", passport control, and customs but the procedure varies greatly - it can be anything from having a friendly chat with the guards while they search your car and being glad they do your job to having a copy of your documents made so they could archive it. 

"The copy is six hryvias." (Annotation: that's around 0.20 €)
"I only have Euros on me at the moment."
"Then it's one Euro." 
The things that can happen at the border... This time, they didn't even ask for the address and the man who "searched" my car only asked me what was inside the boxes. A bit confused, I was waiting for someone to really search my car but he never came. In the meantime, a middle-aged French couple, both of them deaf, who could see I was more or less capable of communicating with the authorities and I seemed to have gone through most of the check, approached me to compare the "control talons". They were still missing two of three stamps. I tried to tell them not to worry and that one was the guy who was going through the queue to check cars and that the other one was from the customs control. I kept waiting for someone to search my car when suddenly an elderly couple from Ukraine, who had heard me speak their language, told me that eveything was done and I should follow them. So I did and the gates opened for me - I was finally in Ukraine, "at home", after 14 hours of driving and waiting and hoping.

Epilogue: the kindness of strangers

Generally, I must say that Ukrainians are always helpful at the border - the travellers are always helpful, the guards at least very often. And what I like about queuing, or what makes it less annoying, is that most people there are very relaxed about it. They'll leave their cars and talk to each other, listen to music, have a picnic. They will, of course, be a bit sarcastic about the whole process, but overall, it's not as bad as it may seem. You may even make new friends there.


Comments

Popular Posts