Thursday 7th November – Kiev

• Morning arrival in Kiev and check into our nearby hotel.
• For those arriving early enough, we’ll meet up with our local contact who was a veteran of the Euromaidan revolution and begin a city walking tour of Kiev, seeing where the revolution raged, where Lenin fell and talk about what has changed and the future holds for Ukraine.
• OR
• An optional trip to a shooting range where we are able to experience firing some high calibre Soviet-era guns this will also be combined with tank driving, where you will get behind the wheel of an original, Soviet era tank! (extra charge).
• We meet up at 18:00 in the evening and go out for dinner and drinks at Palata No 6, one of our favourite places and recently featured in the list of “10 places to drink in before you die”. Be sure to try the shot requiring you to wear a straitjacket and be set on fire…
• Overnight in Kiev.

Friday 8th November – Chernobyl

• We got up nice and early to get on our comfortable AC minibus to the Chernobyl exclusion zone. On the way there,we stop for breakfast at a well stocked gas station as well as watch a documentary on the disaster.The journey to the first checkpoint will take around two hours.
• On arrival, we go through the entry procedure and processing of our permits. This can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to one hour.
• Visit the village Zalissya, the main square of the town of Chernobyl.
• Lunch at the Workers Cafe (no produce is grown on site).
• Visit the Dock, local shops, Monument to the Firefighters, exposition of the remotely operated machines, hills of the buried village Kopachi, rustic kindergarten, panoramic angle of NPPA and the new sarcophagus, the Stone Road sign of Pripyat, Bridge of Death, Lenin Street, the main square of Pripyat, supermarket, Amusement Park, School #3 (with gas masks), and the olympic swimming pool.
• Visit Duga 3, nicknamed the “Russian Woodpecker,” a Soviet “over-the-horizon” radar at its base “Chernobyl 2.”
• We will also try our best to visit some sights we cannot mention online.
• Transfer back to Kiev
• After a short rest we’ll head out for an evening meal and some drinks.
• Overnight in Kiev

Saturday 9th November – Odessa

• We’ll grab our bags for an early start and board our comfortable minibus heading deep into Southern Ukraine.
• We’ll grab breakfast on the road at a well stocked gas station.
• After a few hours on the road, we’ll begin our infamous ICBM Rocket Base Tour.
• If the Missiles were launched from this top secret Soviet base, the target cities were New York, Chicago, London and Paris and after about 30 min and one button the world as we know it would have been gone!
• We will take you deep inside the missile control rooms underground and allow you to push the kill button and start the launch sequence for the nuclear missiles. Please be aware that this is a functioning military base and the elevator to the control room can only fit three people at a time so there will be a waiting period.
• If possible we will try to meet a former Soviet officer of the base if he is around.
• Afterwards we’ll tour around the mass of discarded Soviet military equipment on site from tanks, guns and fighter jets to nuclear missiles. You can photograph everything and climb on whatever you want!
• Group 1 take the bus back to Kiev and end tour.
• Group 2 continue onto Odessa and we will check into our hotel

Sunday 10th November – Tiraspol

• Breakfast in Odessa, followed by a tour of the infamous Odessa Catacombs which stretch for hundreds of kilometres and were used by partisans during WW2.
• Free afternoon to check out downtown Odessa.
• At 16:00 we will meet our fixers and departure for the 3 hour bus ride to Tiraspol, capital of the breakaway, rebel republic of Transnistria.
• On arrival in Tiraspol, we register with immigration and KGB/MGB before transferring to the local version of the Soviet Inn tourist hotel. This is the quintessential Soviet experience in the region’s original tourist hotel.
• We go for dinner at a local institution and then head into the cellar of a club called ‘Mafia’ to try out some Russian style karaoke!
• Overnight in Soviet Hotel.

Monday 11th November – Tiraspol

• For breakfast, we’ll head to a great, Ukrainian restaurant in Tiraspol. Be prepared to wash away your hangover as they’ll well known for handing out complimentary shots of pepper Vodka, whether it’s 9:00am or not!
• We’ll then kick off our city tour of Tiraspol and stop at the flea market in Tiraspol, here it’s possible to buy all kinds of Soviet antiques for rock bottom prices. You never know what you will find!
• Walk down the main street called October 25th street which has a billboard of former President Smirnoff: The warlord who turned president for almost twenty years. We’ll see the embassies of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the foreboding HQ of the infamous Sheriff organization and stop at a bookshop to pick up some Russian and Transnistrian nationalist paraphernalia, a mug with Putin or a fridge magnet of ICBMs firing across the atmosphere, why not?
• We’ll then stop at the impressive House of the Soviets, built in Stalinist style with a large bust of Lenin outside.
• We’ll mix with students at the Dolce Vita cafe, an inexpensive place with great buffet style food and the eatery of choice for students at nearby Tiraspol university.
• We’ll then transfer to the other end of October 25th street to see the North Korean style statue of Russian General Suvorov. Surrounding it are the flags of Russia, Transnistria and the breakaway brotherhood states of Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia.
• Have you picture taken in front of a giant crest of Transnistria featuring the hammer and sickle!
• Visit Parliament, housing one of the biggest statues of Lenin outside Russia.
• Visit the Eternal Flame Memorial complex dedicated to the Soviet-Afghan war, WW2 and the Transnistrian civil war. Check out the battle damaged T-34 monument to WW2, it’s permitted to climb on it and get an awesome photo.
• We’ll then switch it up and board an old Soviet ferry without an engine and cross the Dniester river to see how the village people live across from Tiraspol. This is an area truly lost in the USSR!
• We’ll visit a still functioning palace of culture with an enormous head of Lenin outside, pockmarked with Kalashnikov bullet holes after Moldovan troops symbolically executed him during the civil war.
• We’ll then visit a stunning and completely self sufficient monastery complex that has to be seen to be believed. We know many of the priests there and sometimes they allow us to sample their incredible homemade wine, however, this is subject to whether the one priest with the key is available on the day.
• We pay a visit to a local store which hasn’t changed since the USSR and still uses an abacus to calculate the total. Here we’ll stock up on $3 Kvint Cognac (One of the best Cognacs in the Soviet era), $1 Vodka and local smoked cheese.
• We then head to a stunning viewpoint and Soviet obelisk that was one of the most brutal battlefields during WW2. In the Russian speaking world, it’s respect to the dead to raise a shot of Cognac or Vodka in their honour and we’ll do just that!
• Return to Tiraspol and head for dinner at 7Fridays, a Tiraspol institution!
• Afterwards we can head to one of the countries few nightclubs and try our hand at Russian karaoke!
• Overnight in Tiraspol

Tuesday 12th November – Tiraspol

• After breakfast we Transfer to Bender, one of Transnistria’s biggest cities and a site of fierce fighting during the civil war. We enter one of the largest outdoor markets in all of Transnistria. Guests will be able to shop and buy anything they want at very, very low prices. Also, many opportunities for old world type photos. This is a true old school, Russian market. Expect pigs heads, spices and everything imaginable for sale.
• We leave the market and continue walking down the main street until we reach the main church in the center, well renovated and a favorite place for couples to get married. Here you can buy inexpensive Russian Orthodox jewellery and icons.
• We’ll check out the city hall which has been left exactly as it was during the civil war and is still filled with bullet holes.
• We continue walking down the main street until we arrive at Lenin Park. We view the main fountain, the bust of Lenin before going into the local cinema which is largely unchanged since Soviet times except Mission Impossible is playing instead of Soviet propaganda.
• We continue to walk down the main street until we reach the train station, renovated and well maintained. It seems like a ghost town because only a few trains stop here, and there are almost no passengers. Besides the train station is an old Soviet train from WWII with the hammer and sickle on the front.
• We’ll have lunch in the town at a local cafe called CCCP, this is designed to create a sense of nostalgia for locals and is packed with original Soviet memorabilia and great food.
• We head to the river to check out ‘The Great October’ theme park. There are old amusement rides including bumper cars and mini ferris wheels here. A scene right out of the 1950’s, it may look abandoned but the rides are still operating and are very cheap.
• After Bender, we’ll board our bus for the short two hour journey to Chisinau, the capital of Europe’s least visited country: Moldova!
• Check into the local Soviet era hotel and head out for dinner and drinks at an incredible steakhouse.
• Overnight in Chisinau.

Wednesday 13th November – Chisinau

• After breakfast we’ll start our city walking tour of Chisinau. We’ll visit the abandoned National Hotel, see one of the most stunning monasteries in the city which was thankfully spared destruction under Communism, see the infamous city prison which has been declared a breach of human rights amongst other things.
• We’ll see the enormous World War II Memorial and climb some tanks and surface to air missiles at the Military Museum!
• Visit the local flea market, great for antiques and Soviet kitsch!
• Lunch at a local Soviet style canteen followed by free time in the city.
• Dinner and drinks in the evening at a local Moldovan restaurant.
• Overnight in Chisinau

Thursday 14th November – Chisinau

• After breakfast we’ll board our bus for the thirty minute drive to Cricova Winery to see the wine making process and to of course sample a good amount of Eastern Europe’s best wine! This is one of the most fantastic wine cellars you are ever likely to see. Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel have wine collections here and on display is wine liberated from Hermann Goring during the last days of WW2. Yuri Gagarin famously spend two nights getting drunk in the tunnels and claimed ‘’it was easier to get to space than to pull myself out of Cricova winery!’’.
• Free afternoon in Chisinau.
• We’ll meet up in the afternoon to grab our bags and souvenir wine and head to the station for the 16:55 train to Bucharest. This is an old school Communist era 4-berth sleeper and still has the made in the DDR plates on some of the walls!
• During the night, we’ll pass border control and the train will be lifted off the tracks to change wheel gauge
• Overnight on the sleeper train.

Friday 15th November – Bucharest

• Arrival in Bucharest around 6:00 am
• We will wish each other farewell as we have breakfast at the station
• End of tour. YPT can help you organise further arrangements in Bucharest or international connections

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