an industrial city of rockets and satellites

Dnipro, also called Dnipropetrovsk, lies 400 km southeast of the capital Kyiv in central eastern Ukraine. It is named after the river on which it is located.

With almost 1 million inhabitants, Dnipro is the fourth largest city in the country. It was one of the most important centres of the nuclear energy, weapons and space industries in the Soviet Union and the headquarters of a large manufacturer of rockets and satellites. Because of the local arms industry, the city was inaccessible to the public and remained so until the 1990s. Even today the city is still an important financial and industrial center of Ukraine.

super rude Ukrainians

I had bought a bus ticket from Kyiv to Dnipro on the Internet. So I walked to the Kyiv bus station, which I thought was the departure point of the bus. Normally it is easy for me to find the right bus or place in other countries. But I couldn't find my bus in the Kyiv bus station...

I asked around and tried to find someone who speaks English. Impossible! Nobody there could speak English.  I checked with the staff on the other platforms. I only asked "Dnipro" and if they speak English. They just said "njet" (no) and started laughing out loud. In Ukraine people are either super friendly and will do anything to help you or are super rude like these sons of bitches who even laugh at you! You never know, it's like a coin toss.

I went to the ticket counter and the ticket seller wrote down the number of a platform from which the bus was supposed to leave. The platform was right next to the old Ukrainians, whom I had asked before and who had laughed at me! So all they had to do was point over to that platform! But anyway, I waited without success there as well.

Missing my bus

As a result I missed my bus. As it turned out the bus would have left somewhere else out of schedule. How was I supposed to know that? It was still early in the morning, so I was thinking about what I was going to do and had a coffee first.

I came across the BlaBlaCar app that other people had previously recommended. This carpooling app works great here in Ukraine.  I called the driver before. He spoke English, perfect! Irove to the meeting point by uber and we went with 2 others to Dnipro. The ride was very pleasant and the driver also had a good taste in music. He now lived in Dnipro, because his home Donetsk was bombed by the Russian-Ukrainian war.

chic center and beautiful river promenade

When entering the city I already saw the smoke from the chimneys of the many factories rising. After all, Dnipro is an industrial city.

Nevertheless the city surprised me positively. There are also chic corners, such as the centre with an architecture similar to London's Soho district. There I met with a local girl on the first evening, to whom the cool industrial atmosphere gave a very gloomy view of the world.

The next day I met a local guy called Oleg via CouchSurfing.  We walked along the newly made river promenade to a small island with a waterfall and he showed me the beach where you can swim in summer. The city is also full of abandonded buildings. More than 40 years since construction started on the Hotel Parus yet it has still not opened for business. Thus, the foundation walls still tower above the river,painted in blue and gold, the colours of the Ukrainian national flag.

More than 45,000 steps in one day!

Later we visited a short exhibition where there are remnants of the war. In Dnipro the injured Ukrainian soldiers of the raging war are treated. For lunch we went to Puzata Hata, a chain very popular among Ukrainians. There you can have a buffet-style lunch at a very reasonable price. I ate, for example, buckwheat and the various filled dumplings, Wareniki.

We walked a lot that day. In the evening we crossed the bridge over the Dniepr on foot. My pedometer counted over 45,000 steps that day. I don't remember another day I walked so much. Nevertheless I still had plans to go out in the evening, because it was Saturday. But when I saw that mainly Turkish and Arab men were lining up at the club, I turned around. Men from these countries come to Ukraine, mainly to have sex, and most of the time they have to pay for it.

In total I spent 2 days here before I moved further down south to Zaporizhzhia.