What It’s Like Spending 16 Hours on the ‘Kyiv Express’ to Ukraine | Invesloan.com

I arrived at the Warsaw Wschodnia station an hour before my scheduled departure, giving me time to relax and grab a bite to eat. After hanging out and watching people flood in and out of the station, I devoured a small sandwich from Caffè Nero.

It was evening, just a bit before 6 p.m. I got to the platform a few minutes early and walked to my assigned train car, showing my ticket to an employee of Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine’s state-owned rail company.

I boarded the train and walked to my sleeper cabin at the end of the car, right next to one of the two bathrooms.

The blue train was dimly lit, dated, and had a stale odor. My room was the size of a large closet, but I had it all to myself, and it felt surprisingly cozy. I hung my coat and took a few minutes to get settled and organize my things.

The room had a three-bed bunk, with the middle bed swung down to act as a backrest for the bottom bed, where one would sit (eventually, I raised the middle bed to sleep on).

Besides the only window, there were some hangers, a small fold-down chair, a ladder, a storage rack, and a small desk with a mirror that opened and hosted an electrical outlet.

It was a spartan space, certainly not the luxury train Western leaders have used to travel into Ukraine in the past, but it was sufficient for what I needed it to do.

The cabin was equipped with three plastic packets containing sheets, a pillowcase, and a towel. What looked like sleeping pads and pillows were on the top bunk, and blankets were on a storage rack. (I didn’t end up using any of them.)

The cabin also came stocked with two bottles of water, but I’d packed my own, along with some Pringles, biscuits, and Mentos to hold me over until I got to Kyiv. I figured there was a good chance I’d be up all night and get hungry.

The train pulled away from the station shortly after its scheduled departure time. By this point, it was dark outside. Around 15 minutes later, someone came by to check my tickets.

I used Google Translate to communicate with him, and he tried to speak English at one point. The only word I could really make out from the exchange was “Trump.”

My reporting trip came right after a contentious White House meeting between the US president and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and as the Trump administration was pressuring Ukraine to make unfavorable deals.

The train felt like it was traveling fast, though I had no idea what our speed was. They may have said something, but I don’t speak Ukrainian.

The journey across Poland was bumpy and loud. During the first three hours of my ride, I prepped for interviews in Kyiv, caught up on the news, ate some snacks, and watched a little TV on my phone. The cell coverage was surprisingly good at this point (it got worse).

It was dark outside, so I couldn’t see much of Poland beyond some scattered homes, buildings, and streetlights. Every so often, the train stopped briefly at a station as we inched closer to Ukraine.

Polish customs began a little after 9:30 p.m., nearly four hours into the journey. A customs officer walked down the hall to check passports and clock us out of the European Union. The train didn’t move for over an hour, but eventually, it started rolling again.

Ten minutes later, I received a knock from an employee saying that we had reached Ukrainian customs.

I handed over my passport to a Ukrainian soldier and got it back 30 minutes later with my long-awaited Ukrainian stamp.

By this point, with the time change (Ukraine is one hour ahead of Poland), it was nearly 1 a.m., and I was super tired.

Twenty minutes later, we entered a massive warehouse, where the train underwent preparation to switch from European tracks to the wider Ukrainian tracks built during the Soviet Union. Though Russia’s army has struck train tracks and rail centers, Ukraine’s rail lines have been surprisingly well maintained, with most trains running on schedule.

The next hour was filled with the unenjoyable, piercing sounds of machinery and the coughing and snoring that penetrated the thin walls separating my room and the one next door.

For the next few hours after we finally got on our way again, our train zipped across the Ukrainian countryside. I was in and out of sleep, but when the sun rose, I gave up entirely and took my first view of the eastern European country out the window.

As we approached the Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi station, the landscape slowly shifted from rural to urban, and we arrived in the Ukrainian capital just before 11 a.m. It was chilly and busy outside as I waited for a ride to my hotel.

Stepping out onto the ordinary-looking concrete station, I reveled in the fresh air before it dawned on me that I still had the same 16-hour journey back to Warsaw to look forward to.