Airports, busses, border crossings, and checkpoints

After the nerve-wracking experience of hastily packing up and moving all of my belongings, as well as tying up loose ends in my Lexington, KY apartment, traveling to Ukraine from the United States (and especially from Poland onward) has been an even more insane roller-coaster. 

Surprisingly, the parts people are usually anxious about – TSA, luggage drop off, layovers, and seating went without a hitch.

I started getting really anxious during my transatlantic flight from Chicago to Germany, because my layover before the flight to Poland was going to be dangerously short, at a time when I would be passing European passport control. Yet again, even this process took only minutes (at least for now, soon Europe will require visas from American citizens). 

I made it to Krakow, Poland about 15 hours after flying out of Cincinnati. My luggage made it with me, regardless of a few questionable items (whiskey, military grade helmet, and a couple hundred caffeine stickers). 

It was the busses that proved to be the hardest part of the journey. I would have easily taken on TSA in Ukraine, but air travel in and out of Ukraine has been impossible for almost 3 years. The 4-hour bus ride from Krakow to Lviv, across 2 border crossings, could easily turn into 12 hours. The chance that I was going to make it to my next bus from Lviv to Kherson on time was almost 0.

In that case, not only was I going to have to sleep at the bus station overnight waiting for the next bus, but a different bus route would take another 24+ hours to take me to my destination. I swore up and down that I will not find myself in these damn busses again.

Getting angry at everything that brought me to this point in life (lack of air travel because of the Russian invasion, the fact that I, for some reason, went to America in December and have to deal with this again, and even the fact that I am traveling to a South Eastern town so far from the Polish border), I, nevertheless, made it to the bus station with half an hour to spare. At this point I was only another 15 hours away from Kherson.

This border crossing experience differed from the one I had when leaving Ukraine last time. The Polish side didn’t even make us get out of the bus – they just collected our passports, took them, and ran them through their system for about half an hour (every time the passport leaves my hands, my americanized brain panics with thoughts of human trafficking). This time Ukrainians also simply had us get out of the bus, show our passports one by one and get back in. No baggage check.

Let me tell you about the last time! When leaving Ukraine by bus, we spent 2 hours on the Ukrainian side waiting, getting out, and getting our belongings scanned. Then 5 hours on the Polish side, where the vehicles were not moving for hours at a time, getting luggage scanned, and a short interview in Polish about the purpose of travel. In total, 7 hours on the border, with long periods of complete lack of moving of ANY vehicles, and long periods of standing outside, while our luggage and passports were checked by the border workers.

I can honestly say that I enjoyed this experience much more. While I put myself through an unnecessary amounts of stress about the possibilities of running out of time and the consequences of it, everything turned out fine. I will be much more careful in scheduling my layovers between airplanes and between busses next time. I feel like I aged during these hours at the border, although it was a comparatively easy one, with unrealistic amounts of luck. 

My luck became a little less obvious once we made it to the city of Mykolaiv, the final point of travel for our large double-decker bus. Because Kherson is at the frontline within the artillery range, large busses can attract too much attention and become a target for the civilian-hunting Russians. Also, only 5 people from the original bus were going forward to Kherson. So we stopped at the bus station within one-hour drive from Kherson and switched to a small bus for within-city travel. As I was letting my friends and loved ones know that I was almost home, we stood at a stop for a whole hour.

Then, within few kilometers of my destination, we were stopped at the military checkpoint at the entrance to Kherson. These military checkpoints serve two goals – weed out any undesirable travelers and catch any military-age men who should be drafted. Undesirable travelers include not only any Russian citizens, military, or suspected collaborators, but also lost foreign volunteers or visitors. Kherson’s authorities have been limiting foreign travel for the past year, to avoid taking on responsibility for any foreign casualties. At this point you must provide or fill out documentation, explaining why you are entering, where you are going, who you will be working with, and for how long. It is also sort of like a waiver, where you are signing your understanding that your presence in the city can lead to an injury or death. You must be prepared to fill out this information and speak to the military police in Ukrainian or Russian, which, luckily, was not an issue for me.

I finally arrived at my destination after 15 hours of flying and 26 hours on the bus. I hugged my friends and loved one, still a little shaky from the understandable unfriendliness at the checkpoint.

You gotta really want to be in Ukraine to make it through these trials. If I didn’t have to renew my passport soon and if I wasn’t afraid of an AC-less summer, I would’ve stayed in Ukraine until air travel renews!!

Also, for anyone interested in repeating my adventure but with less stress, please go through Moldova! It’s closer to Kherson (or odessa, if you want a relatively safer experience in the country) and I think it might be less busy than the Polish airport and border. Plus since it’s not in EU, it won’t require a visa in the future. Make sure to make contact with local authorities and/or volunteers, to be able to prove that you are allowed to be there, and that you fully understand the risk you put yourself under.