In the Ukrainian-Slovakian-Czech triangle

My last stop in Ukraine was Uzhhorod, a city in the southwest of the country. It is located in the Transcarpathian region near Slovakia and Hungary. The city gets its name from the Uzh River, which divides the city into two parts (the old and new sections); Horod just means "city". Before then, the city was known as Ungvár, an Hungarian word.

Today it belongs to the Ukraine, previously it belonged to either the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia or Hungary. The Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church is based here to which about 650,000 believers belong.

Architecturally, the historic centre of Uzhhorod is reminiscent in many ways of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. A great example is the baroque Greek Catholic Cathedral. In addition, in the administrative buildings and in the outskirts there are Soviet and post-Soviet prefabricated concrete slab buildings on the one hand and new, private residential buildings on the other hand.

Meeting a local friend

I paid less than €6 for my 6-hour train ride from Lviv to there. In Uzhhorod, I met a young local woman, Bogdana, I know through a music platform. The communication with her was more adventurous than I thought, as she spoke little English. I had to laugh when she pronounced "ok". Normally you pronounce it as two separate letters like "o k". Instead, she said it as one continuous word like "ok".

A peaceful autumn walk to the ruins of an old castle

The next day I went with her to Kamianytsia, where the ruins of the Nevytkse Castle are located. In the 13th century this castle was first mentioned as a dungeon for the Hungarian King. Now only ruins are left. It is located 12 kilometres north of Uzhhorod.

I liked this place, because there were hardly any people there and we hiked up the hill by ourselves through the colourful autumn forest. The hill originates from volcanic activity and stands at a relative height of 122 metres. From above we could see the river panorama of the village and it was absolutely quiet. I tried to take some pictures of my companion, but it was almost impossible for me, because she could not stay still.

We ate lunch down by the river, she had prepared some sandwiches and cakes.

Exploring Uzhhorod

Afterwards we drove back to the city and visited a fortress with an integrated museum. There was also a small medieval village with autumn decorations with many Hungarian tourists strolling through. We walked further through the city and there was absolutely nothing going on. The city has only 115.000 inhabitants. Although it was Saturday, most shops and restaurants closed early. You hardly saw any tourists here.

On our walk we encountered many small mini sculptures, which are spread all over the city. They were all made by the Ukrainian artist Mykhailo Kolodko. We walked a few kilometers along the river and by the end of the day we had taken over 30,000 steps. In the evening we had dinner in a poor vegetarian restaurant that tasted so bad that I couldn't finish my meal and they mixed up our orders.

Leaving Ukraine

The next morning she accompanied me to the train station, very nice of her! From there I returned to Lviv for the next day's journey to Poland. In total I spent around 1 mont in Ukraine.

Ukraine is in my opinion a great country to visit. If you are more in search of authentic experiences instead of famous sights and don't want to spend a lot of money, you should go to Ukraine. The young, English-speaking Ukrainians are usually super friendly, whereas the older ones in particular can be incredibly rude. The country is still relatively unexplored by tourists, with the exception of Lviv and Chernobyl. With the visit of the latter place I visited a dream, where else you can see such a post-apocalyptic scenario like in Chernobyl, where you are reminded how small man actually is.