My First Trip to the Ukraine

I won´t lie and talk about the Ukraine like about my dream country. The main reason to drive there is a very advantageous price of petrol. It´s true for many people from my neighbourhood. The neighbourhood in this case means an area until 100 kilometers from the Slovak-Ukrainian borderline. 10.15 UAH/1 litre. Thanks God for this petrol!

If we speak about the cheap purchases, we must mention alcohol. And chocolate sweets, too. And no journey is complete without the obligatory purchase of cigarettes in a duty free shop. Now I have to look like dealer :) In fact only thing which I´ve bought is chewing gum. See at the picture and the interesting flavours, namely tropical fruit, mango and lime or something like that. There is Orbit for Ukrainian´s market. Don´t buy it! It tastes good only first two minutes.

Chewing gum

All time I have to think about Ukrainians. They need a visa to visit all countries in the European Union. Actually, Russia is the only country in the world where they can travel without any close checking. I think so. And few kilometers from their homes they can see a different world. I´ll come back to explore the local culture.

I blame myself till today that I didn´t take a camera. I´ve seen something interesting. There weren´t gas pipes under the ground but around 3 metres in the air. It looks very ugly among houses in the village. The digging of the canals must be very costly there :)

Finally, this country has given me much only during one day. I´ve learnt something useful into the rough life. Now I´m a little ironic. I stood in a convoy of cars two hours till at last the Ukrainian custom control´s or passport control´s employee came to the car. I was ready and didn´t want any problems like the next boring waiting. So, I showed quickly our passports and a registration book of the car.

She opened passports, looked into the car and told: "For coffee?"

For coffee? What? There are just some sweets on the back-seat. Why coffee? I don´t drink coffee.

"No coffee, only sweets." I told loudly.

"For coffee in the passport.." She told again.

And then my front-seat passenger poked into me and whispered that she wants 0.50 euros. See here! She didn´t want to do a chit-chat with me. Like my naive person.