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In progress
These trips from April 2024 on, are not trips to Ukraine any more, but travels in Ukraine and the occasional short trip to NL to arrange some things there or take some things back before I can arrange sending egverything I have in NL to Kremenchuk (see WHS: Home/projects in Ukraine: Come visit! If you are lucky, you will see a rocket or drone! ;-)).
I travelled back to NL on 7 January. First a marshrutka to Kiev, then a train to Przemysl (PL). The train is the best way to travel across the border, much nicer than in a bus, where you need to waqit longer and takle your baggage to be chgecked. On the train the border checks are done in the train and they come to you! :) On the train I sat in the wrong seat apparently (it was not clear from the booking information which seat I had, I thought actually at time of booking that I did NOT have a window seat, but the guy said I was sitting in his seat and mine was at the window. Oh, good, better tfhan I rhought :) I got talking to him, a student studying in Poland. I was curious to hear his views about life in Poland vs Ukraine and told him my views of Ukraine. He seemed impressed by the positive points that I mentioned which he hadn't considered before. This is so with many people in Ukraine, they don't realise the good points of their country. I first had a meeting to talk about such things in Zhytomyr in 2017 in an English language club, where I failed to make anyoen there see my pooint of view and the leader of that group, some anti-social guy who had lived in Canada saif when I told him that I had travelled in Ukraine a lot that "and you don't like it", to which I replied "I love it!". I wanted to have a talk to discuss this topic also in 2018 in Kharkov but nothing had been arranged by my former friend.
In NL I spent about 2 weeks sorting out more things, taking stuff to and taking other stuff from the storage that I rent, also took some things out of storage to get rid of, and selecting what to take back to UA. I also thought about taking my old PC with me but in the end decided to just take a few things such as DVD rewriter, DVD+RWs, 2 hard disks, 2 SSDs, and leaving for another time the old PC itself and MO drive, MO disks etc.
I took a large travel bag, a large military bag, and a back pack, with an old Macbook pro given for testing, a brand spanking old S9+ from a relative to replace my backup Sony XZ as second phone, various tools, general and some specific for my bicycle, a lot of Dutch food for a few parties, some discuses and a measuring tape for discus throwing, pocket lamps, soldering station, parts to modify pocket lamps (optics, LEDs,etc.) and more. In total it was 61 kg! I was a bit surprised, as I hadn;'t weighed it when I left. But I had a bagage weighing tool with me so I checked while travelling. The main bag was 36 kg, the military bag 14 kg, back pack 11 kg. It was verfy difficult to put the main bag on the overhead rack in the train from Berlin to Przemsyl, but I succeeded :)
I took this route: 4 trains instead of the route I used a few times before which was: bus from Alphen a.d. Rijn to Amsterdam/Schiphol, then from there train to e.g. Amsterdam Sloterdijk, bus (Flixbus or Sindbad) to Wroclaw, train from Wroclaw to Przemysl, train from Przemysl to Kiev, marshrutka from Kiev to Kremenchuk. This time I went: Train from Alphen aan den Rijn to Arnhem, train for Arnshem to Berlin hbhf, train Berlin to Prezemysl, train Prszemysl to Kiev, meet a friend in Kiev, later in the afternoon train to Kremenchuk. Total time about 48 hours. Would have been 6 hours or so more taking the bus from Amsterdam to Wroclaw... It was hard to sleep because I had to switch trains too often which means I had to stay alert, whereas with 18 hours on a bus from Amsterdam to Wroclaw, sleeping is much easier, no need to stay awake (unless you need to switch buses) though on the train it is much nicer to sit than in a bus, in this case that is not an advantage. On the train from Przemysl to Kiev I could sleep, and on the train to Kremenchuk too. I had a lot of luggage and on the train to Kremenchuk the guy in my coupe offered to help me take the military bag out of ther train! I don't ask but people often help anyway.
A friend asked at what time I would arrive and he came to help me take my stuff to the apartment where I am staying until I can move into the house (for now I'm letting the seller stay in the house until he arranged everything to move, and I will take the time to arrange a lot that needs to be arranged to set up your life in a different country which is easier to do in the city of Kremenchuk, than 10 km outside of the city (well, 10 km from the centre of the city, from one of the edges of the city it is about 6 km).
Last modified: 2025-3-4