Friday 3rd November – Kiev, Ukraine (Group 1)

• Arrive at your convenience into Kiev – the capital city of Ukraine which is well connected from many countries
• For those who arrive early we can arrange an optional visit to a shooting range or to drive a tank, or both!
• Pre-tour meeting will be held at the lobby of our centrally based hotel at 6:00pm to discuss tour itinerary and to meet your fellow travellers and YPT guide.
• Go out for dinner and drinks at Palata No 6, one of our favourite places and recently featured in the list of “10 places to drink in before you die”. Be sure to try the shot requiring you to wear a straitjacket and be set on fire.
• Overnight in hotel.

Saturday 5th November – Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – Kiev

Morning

• Wake up nice and early and board our comfortable AC minibus to the Chernobyl exclusion zone. On the way we will stop for breakfast at a well stocked gas station as well as watch a documentary of the Chernobyl disaster. The journey to the first checkpoint will take around two hours.
• On arrival, we go through the entry procedure and processing of our permits. This can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to one hour.
• Visit the village Zalissya, the main square of the town of Chernobyl, “Fukushima” memorial, Statue to Lenin, the abandoned Synagogue and the only active church in the zone.

Afternoon

• Lunch at the Workers’ Café (no produce is grown onsite).
• Visit the Dock, local shops, Monument to the Firefighters, exposition of the remotely operated machines, hills of the buried village Kopachi, rustic kindergarten, panoramic angle of NPPA and existing sarcophagus, the construction site of the new sarcophagus, the Stone Road sign of Pripyat, Bridge of Death, Lenin Street, the main square of Pripyat, supermarket, Amusement Park, School #3 (with gas masks), and the Olympic swimming pool.
• Visit Duga 3, nicknamed the “Russian Woodpecker,” a Soviet over-the-horizon radar at its base Chernobyl-2.
• We will also try our best to visit some sights we cannot mention online.
• After a long day of exploring we board our bus for the drive back to Kiev.
• Arrive in the capital at 6:00pm and refresh in your hotel room before meeting up and heading out for dinner and drinks
• Overnight in Kiev hotel.

Sunday 6th November – Kiev – Odessa

Morning

• Load our bags onto the bus and hit the road to Southern Ukraine with a breakfast stop on the way.
• Our first stop will be one of the most incredible sights of Ukraine – a recently-decommissioned Soviet ICBM base located in the wilderness of the Ukrainian steppe. After a simple touch of the red button, the missiles from this top-secret Soviet base would have easily reached New York, Chicago, London or Paris within 30 minutes and the world as we know it would have ended!
• We’ll complete a fully guided tour of the base and even descend into the original control room and have the chance to set off the launch sequence that would have launched the rockets.
• Around the base are hundreds of tons of discarded Soviet military equipment from missiles and tanks to fighter jets and anti aircraft weapons. You are free to film and photograph whatever you like.

Afternoon

• Lunch of traditional Ukrainian dumplings and tea at the base
• Continue our way to Odessa, arriving in the late evening to check into our hotel located within the Arkadia district.
• Dinner in one of the many restaurants surrounding the hotel.
• Overnight in Odessa.

Monday 7th November – Odessa – Tiraspol, Transnistria

Morning

• Group 1 members: tour includes – YPT is able to arrange post-tour accommodation or advice for ongoing transportation
• Group 2 members: Meet our local Odessan guide who will take us away from the charming side of the city and show us the dark side of this city.
• This is the ‘Odessa Depression’ tour, prepare for abandoned Stalin era factories, abandoned Soviet brothels and nightclubs and the killing ground of hundreds of victims of the Odessa mafia.
• After seeing the dark underbelly of Odessa, we will give you the chance to explore this famous Black Sea city at your own pace. Downtown offers a range of attractions ranging from the famous Potemkin Steps that were a prominent feature in the famous Sergei Eisenstein silent film Battleship Potemkin. You may wander the lively and charming pedestrian street called Deribavoskaya which is a great place to find great street food, souvenirs, and see local street artists. There is also a quirky smuggling museum that focuses on crime and smuggling in this port city through the centuries up to the current day.

Afternoon

• After lunch we’ll meet back at the hotel to collect our bags and link up with our fixers who will transfer us to Tiraspol, Capital of the breakaway republic of Transnistria.
• On arrival at the border we will cross the no man’s land between Ukraine and Transnistria which is an infamous smuggling route and we register with immigration and KGB/MGB before transferring to the local version of the Soviet Intourist Hotel. This is the quintessential Soviet experience in the region’s original tourist hotel.
• We go for dinner at a local institution and then head into the cellar of a club called ‘Mafia’ to try out some Russian style karaoke!
• Overnight in Soviet Hotel.

Tuesday 8th November – Tiraspol

Morning

• For breakfast we’ll head to a great, Ukrainian restaurant in Tiraspol. Be prepared to wash away your hangover as they’re well known for handing out complimentary shots of pepper Vodka, whether it’s 9:00am or not!
• We’ll stop at the flea market in Tiraspol, here it’s possible to buy all kinds of Soviet antiques for rock bottom prices. You never know what you will find!
• We’ll then walk down the main street called October 25th street which has a billboard of former President Smirnoff: The warlord who turned president for almost twenty years. We’ll see the embassies of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the foreboding HQ of the infamous Sheriff organization and stop at a bookshop to pick up some Russian and Transnistrian nationalist paraphernalia, a mug with Putin or a fridge magnet of ICBMs firing across the atmosphere, why not?
• We’ll then stop at the impressive House of the Soviets, built in Stalinist style with a large bust of Lenin outside.

Afternoon

• We’ll mix with students at the Dolce Vita café, an inexpensive place with great buffet style food and the eatery of choice for students at nearby Tiraspol university.
• We’ll then transfer to the other end of October 25th street to see the North Korean style statue of Russian General Suvorov. Surrounding it are the flags of Russia, Transnistria and the breakaway brotherhood states of Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia.
• Have your picture taken in front of a giant crest of Transnistria featuring the hammer and sickle!
• Visit Parliament, housing one of the biggest statues of Lenin outside Russia.
• Visit the Eternal Flame Memorial complex dedicated to the Soviet-Afghan war, WW2 and the Transnistrian civil war. Check out the battle damaged T-34 monument to WW2, it’s permitted to climb on it and get an awesome photo.
• We’ll then switch it up and board an old Soviet ferry without an engine and cross the Dniester river to see how the village people live across from Tiraspol. This is an area truly lost in the USSR!
• Visit a still functioning palace of culture with an enormous head of Lenin outside, pockmarked with Kalashnikov bullet holes after Moldovan troops symbolically executed him during the civil war.
• You’ll then visit a stunning and completely self sufficient monastery complex that has to be seen to be believed. We know many of the priests there and sometimes they allow us to sample their incredible homemade wine, however, this is subject to whether the one priest with the key is available on the day.
• Pay a visit to a local store which hasn’t changed since the USSR and still uses an abacus to calculate the total. Here we’ll stock up on $3 Kvint Cognac (One of the best Cognacs in the Soviet era), $1 Vodka and local smoked cheese.
• We then head to a stunning viewpoint and Soviet obelisk that was one of the most brutal battlefields during WW2. In the Russian speaking world, it’s respect to the dead to raise a shot of Cognac or Vodka in their honour and we’ll do just that!
• Return to Tiraspol and head for dinner at 7Fridays, a Tiraspol institution!
• Afterwards we can head to one of the country’s few nightclubs and try our hand at Russian karaoke!
• Overnight in Tiraspol

Wednesday 9th November – Tiraspol – Chisinau, Moldova

Morning

• After breakfast we transfer to Bender, one of Transnistria’s biggest cities and a site of fierce fighting during the civil war. We enter one of the largest outdoor markets in all of Transnistria. Guests will be able to shop and buy anything they want at very, very low prices. Also, many opportunities for old world type photos. This is a true old school, Russian market. Expect pigs heads, spices and everything imaginable for sale.
• We leave the market and continue walking down the main street until we reach the main church in the centre, well renovated and a favourite place for couples to get married. Here you can buy inexpensive Russian Orthodox jewellery and icons.
• Check out the city hall which has been left exactly as it was during the civil war and is still filled with bullet holes.
• Continue walking down the main street until we arrive at Lenin Park. We view the main fountain, the bust of Lenin before going into the local cinema which is largely unchanged since Soviet times except Mission Impossible is playing instead of Soviet propaganda.
• We continue to walk down the main street until we reach the train station, renovated and well maintained. It seems like a ghost town because only a few trains stop here, and there are almost no passengers. Besides the train station is an old Soviet train from WWII with the hammer and sickle on the front.

Afternoon

• We’ll have lunch in the town at a local café called CCCP. This is designed to create a sense of nostalgia for locals and is packed with original Soviet memorabilia and great food.
• We head to the river to check out ‘The Great October’ theme park. There are old amusement rides including bumper cars and mini ferris wheels here. A scene right out of the 1950’s, it may look abandoned but the rides are still operating and are very cheap.
• After Bender, we’ll board our bus for the short two hour journey to Chisinau, the capital of Europe’s least visited country: Moldova!
• Check into the local Soviet era hotel and head out for dinner and drinks at an incredible steakhouse.
• Overnight in Chisinau.

Thursday 10th November – Chisinau

Morning

• Breakfast at hotel
• We’ll start our city walking tour of Chisinau. We’ll visit the abandoned National Hotel, see one of the most stunning monasteries in the city which was thankfully spared destruction under Communism, see the infamous city prison which has been declared a breach of human rights amongst other things.
• We’ll see the enormous World War II Memorial and climb some tanks and surface to air missiles at the Military Museum!
• Visit the local flea market, great for antiques and Soviet kitsch!

Afternoon

• After lunch, we’ll give you the chance to explore the capital city of Europe’s least visited country at your own pace. This is a great chance to visit the national museum of Moldova, walk out of town and see the brutalist architecture masterpiece that is the partially abandoned Chisinau city circus (also the first circus in the entire USSR) or see the impressive Komsomol monument from the Soviet-era.
• We head for dinner at Dublin Irish Pub, as they say you have not seen a city unless you visit its Irish pub.  For the more sophisticated they also serve fine Moldovan cuisine.
• After dinner you can either head back to the hotel for rest, or join us for a brisk stroll around the vibrant pubs and clubs of Chisinau
• Overnight in Chisinau

Friday 11th November – Chisinau – Overnight train to Bucharest

Morning

• Breakfast at hotel
• Board our bus for the thirty-minute drive to Cricova Winery to see the winemaking process and to of course sample a good amount of Eastern Europe’s best wine! This is one of the most fantastic wine cellars you are ever likely to see.
• Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel have wine collections here and on display is wine liberated from Hermann Goring during the last days of WW2. Yuri Gagarin famously spent two nights getting drunk in the tunnels and claimed ‘’it was easier to get to space than to pull myself out of Cricova winery!’’.

Afternoon

• In the afternoon, you’ll have the chance to pack in any sights you wanted to see before we leave Europe’s least visited country. Perhaps visit the bustling Central Market which is a great opportunity for unique photography and to pick up some last souvenirs.
• We’ll meet up in the afternoon to grab our bags and souvenir wine and head to the station for the 4:55pm train to Bucharest. This is an old school Communist era 4-berth sleeper and still has the made in the DDR plates on some of the walls!
• During the night, we’ll pass border control and the train will be lifted off the tracks to change wheel gauge
• Overnight on the sleeper train.

Saturday 12th November – Bucharest, Romania

Morning

• Early morning arrival in Bucharest (depending on customs).
• Check into the hotel for a short rest.
• Group 2 members: tour includes – YPT is able to arrange post-tour accommodation or advice for ongoing transportation
• Option to extend your adventure further into the Eastern Bloc as our concurrent Eurasian tour explores Communist-era Bucharest before heading deeper into the Balkans and the former Yugoslavia!

Read More