Here is a link to official website of Ukraine Railways http://www.uz.gov.ua Right now it is only available in Russian and Ukrainian, so it's not going to help
much, unless you can speak or read the language, hope that is going to change in
future. And you can't buy the tickets at their website straight away, Ukrainian Railways
have developed separate system for that.
To buy the ticket online you would need to go to another webiste http://www.e-kvytok.com.ua The website
interface claims to support 3 languages including English. But to my great disappointment
I found out that they only managed to translate few words, so it's really very hard
to navigate around the website.
Step 1. Switch to English. See the picture below.
1st thing you need to do is switch the language and that's the easiest step so far.
Step 2. Registration. After you click the "Sign
up" button you will be offered to accept the user agreement. Accept it and click
"Continue" button.
Step 3. Fill registration form. Make sure you enter
all information correct. There will be an e-mail sent to your address with automatically
generated password. It will be possible to change the password later when you edit
your profile after you log in.
Step 4. Log in. Now after you have registered you
can go back to the main page and log in using your user ID and the password that
was sent to your e-mail. Click "Planning the trip" tab button to get to the section
where you can select your destination... Why they couldn't translate that I really
don't understand!
Step 5. Select the route. This part can be a little
difficult, so I will try to explain it in a very detailed way. Please, note that
Ukrainian Railways start to sell tickets only 45 days in advance. You would also
need to get the ticket at the ticket office at least 1 hour and 30 minutes before
the train departure. After you go through the proccess at the site, you will have
a reference number for your ticket, but you still need to get it printed at the
railway station. Anyway, right now you can press "Calendar button" to choose the
travel date.
Step 6. Select departure station. Type in departure
station and click "Find station" button. It should be in Russian, so you need to
know the spelling of the city. Another strange thing in Ukraine is that station
name is not always the same as the city name! Also some cities may have more than
1 station. In the picture below you can see that there are 2 stations for Kiev,
usually you just select the one on top of the list. After you selected the station,
click "Select station" button.
Step 7. Select arrival station. The process of choosing
arrival station is similar as selecting the departure station. So you just do same
thing. Type in arrival station and click "Find station" button, click "Select station"
button after you found the station you need.
Step 8. Check the seats. Now after we have put departure
station and arrival station we can check if there are seats available, just click
"Check the seats" button to do that.
Step 9. Select a train. As you can see there are
3 trains available from Kiev to Odessa. The table below shows departure time, arrival
time, travel time and type of seats available. All trains are overnight, it means
that you can sleep on a train during your travel. Lux is considered to be the best
type of seat, there are only 2 people in a cabin and not much noise for that reason,
sure those tickets are most expensive. Next goes a compartment with 4 seats in a
cabin, in the table of seats 1st you can see lower beds and 2nd are upper beds,
so you share it between 4 people, it is always possible to buy all 4 seats in a
compartment, so you will have your own private space. Last type of seats is called
platskart, no closed cabins, just beds around the car, those seats are not nice
at all, so try to avoid them! Click train number 009K to select it, I like it as
it has reasonable arrival time 9:36am.
Step 10. Select a car number. Now we need to click
car number, I choose number 5, that is lux with 2 people in a cabin, the price for
a ticket is 344.71 UAH, that's about 43 USD.
Step 11. Booking tickets link. After you clicked car
number there is a small window with 3 links showed up. You need to click the 1st
link in a window to select your seat in the car.
Step 12. Selecting a seat. Now you can see the seats
in a cabin. Available seats are in green color, reserved seats are marked in red.
Select cabin number in a car and click the number of a seat you would like to get.
After you click it, the seat number will get black and will be shown in a grey box.
Now you just press ""Issue a ticket" button.
Step 13. Pay. Just click "Pay" button to proceed.
As soon as you get to this step you have 15 minutes to click that button, otherwise
the session will be terminated.
Step 14. Put card details. After you clicked "Pay"
button you get to processing center, finally it has multilingual interface where
you can select English. This is pretty easy step, you just put your card details
and click "Proceed" button.
Finally. Your order number. Now you are taking back
to e-ticket site and can review your order details. You can print it out or just
write down your order number, make sure you don't make a mistake when you copy it,
I suggest you just print the page. Below is the example of other tickets I was buying
in past. With order number you still can't get on a train! 1st you need to go to
ticket office and show them the order number and they will print you the ticket,
no extra cost for that. In case you have some questions, you can contact me at alex@ukraine-women-for-marriage.com
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