There are many amazing day trips from Kyiv that one can embark on and every trip offers something for various types of travelers. If you’re into USSR history and the history of Ukraine, you definitely don’t want to miss out on this nuclear missile base tour from Kyiv. This is a guide that details how […]
Category Archives: Soviet History & Architecture
Ukraine, Inspiration, Soviet History & Architecture
Slavutych, Ukraine: The Soviet City Built for Chernobyl Refugees
I have witnessed the Chernobyl disaster go from being a globally-recognized mass tragedy to a clichéd source of trite tourism where travelers go in with their cameras hugging their hips, all ready to shoot the perfect photo (which has inevitably been taken 3,790 times already that same month) for bragging rights about how they visited such a creepy […]
The Metro Systems of the Soviet Union were elaborate and a source of pride for the now exanimate nation. Coming from a nation whose public transportation networks are so undeniably terrible, I am always impressed with Soviet metro systems as they are fast, efficient, inexpensive, and have competently served numerous cities for decades. The Kharkiv […]
Ukraine, Soviet History & Architecture, Things to Do
Duga: The Russian Woodpecker inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
The Soviets never did anything in an unostentatious manner. Not even radars that were supposed to be kept a secret from the rest of the world. Such is the case with “Duga” (meaning “arc” in English), commonly known as the Russian Woodpecker. I have long had a desire to travel to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. […]
Most travelers familiar with Eastern Europe are aware that the farther east you head in any of those countries, the more ‘Russified’ the place becomes. This doesn’t necessarily stand true for Central Europe or the Balkans, two regions often classified as Eastern Europe (and it kind of bothers me), but rather for Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, […]
I remember the moment that I booked that train to Kharkiv from Kyiv’s central station. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I knew I had wanted to head east and Kharkiv just seemed like the obvious option. I booked my ticket a few weeks in advance on the ‘fast train’, but I never […]