Category: Blog

(Along the Southern Bug River in Mykolaiv)

Mykolaiv is a major city of southern Ukraine, pop. 500,000 as of 2008, located on the Buh (pronounced boog) River, about 65 kilometers inland from the Black Sea and 120 kilometers east of Odessa. Mykolaiv is known as the city of shipbuilders and is the main shipbuilding port of Ukraine and indeed all of eastern Europe, as it also was for the former Soviet Union. There are three major shipyards where all manner of boats are made, both commercial and military, as well as the Admiral Makarov University of Shipbuilding. The city also plays a major role in the engineering, metallurgy, and food industries.

Mykolaiv is not a place that is going to show up as a major attraction on anyone’s tourist map radar. It’s primarily a working class city without a whole lot to recommend it as a travel destination in and of itself. There are no geographically scenic areas and not really a lot of history in terms of castles and such as you find in other areas of Ukraine. The city is relatively young for this part of the world, founded in 1789 for the express purpose of establishing an inland seaport and shipmaking town, and it’s been that ever since. But if for some reason you find yourself in Mykolaiv and wondering what to do with your time, there are certainly things to do and see that are worth checking out.

(The Shipbuilding and Naval Museum)

Continue reading “Mykolaiv (Nikolaev)” →

(Kamianets-Podilskyi Castle)

Kamianets-Podilskyi is a city of 100,000 people in western Ukraine situated on the Smotrych River, and while it may not count as one of the country’s main tourist attracting cities, there is one big draw worth your attention. Kamianets-Podilskyi castle is an ancient, imposing stone edifice originally constructed in the 14^th century and as is usually the case, reconstructed, remodeled, rebuilt and added to several times over the centuries. It is by far the primary – some might say the only – reason for out of towners to come to the city of Kamianets-Podilskyi.

(K-P castle entrance)

Getting to K-P is best accomplished by bus, which is the method we chose. It was about a two and a half hour ride south from Khmelnitskiy, accompanied all the way by an annoying pop music soundtrack over the radio courtesy of our bus driver. This happens a lot aboard buses in Ukraine, where the passengers are subjected to an unending barrage of whatever the driver’s musical taste encompasses. In cases like this I always try to remind myself it could be worse. At least it’s not country-western.

Continue reading “Western Ukraine Part 3 – Castle in the West: Kamianets-Podilskyi” →

Situated in the southwest corner of the country, the Carpathians are the only mountain range of significance in all of Ukraine, with the exception of the Crimean mountains ringing the southern tip of Crimea. The Carpathians (Karpaty in Ukrainian) are a lovely, densely wooded range of medium altitude which remind me of the lower reaches of the Cascade range of the northwestern U.S. minus the higher, glaciated peaks such as Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker.

(Grand Chateau in the Carpathian Mountains)

Second to the Alps in size and altitude among European mountain ranges, the Carpathians stretch 1500 kilometers (930 miles) in a descending arc to the south and east. They are actually a chain of smaller ranges beginning with the Tatras of the Czech Republic running through Slovakia and Poland, becoming the Central Carpathians of Hungary and Ukraine, and ending with the Eastern Carpathians of Romania. They top out at around 2,600 meters (8,500 feet) hold no snow year round, and contain no glaciers.

The greater portion of the Carpathians – fifty-three percent – lies south of the border in Romania, but approximately eleven percent of the range is within the confines of Ukraine. For me, just the name Carpathians – and especially the Transylvanian region in Romania – conjures images of dark and forbidding castles clinging to the peaks of stormy crags, and a certain historical personage by the name of Vlad the Impaler, the real life inspiration for the most famous vampire of them all, Dracula. These legends arose many centuries ago, of course, fueled by the imaginations of the locals and passed on in folk tales and songs.

(Railway station in Carpathian village)

Continue reading “Western Ukraine Part 2 – The Carpathian Region” →