ENTERING A WAR ZONE | Overnight Train Journey From Budapest To Kyiv

ENTERING A WAR ZONE | Overnight Train Journey From Budapest To Kyiv

Well, good morning from Kleti Station here in Budapest. I just put my luggage in storage uh because my train direct to Kiev is not leaving until 10:40 p.m. tonight. So, today I do plan on going to see the famous thermal springs that they have here. I have a boat cruise booked for like 6:00 p.m. for the sunset. And uh I will have to get dinner because my mom told me last night um that there is no restaurant car on the train. She went back to Kiev uh just about a month ago. And I’m absolutely shocked that for a 20our train, what do you mean they don’t have a restaurant? But I digress. I mean, it should be fine. Uh I think I hope I have everything I need. So, uh, to get the day started, let’s go grab some breakfast. [Music] [Music] [Music] All right, we made it to Cafe Brunch Budapest, which had great reviews. And of course, they have my favorite, eggs, benny, avocado toast. They got it all, y’all. I am so excited for this. I saw that they had eggs imperial as it’s called, which is, you know, smoked salmon benny, but with trout caviar. I’m actually a pretty big fan of caviar and have never had it on an eggs benedict. So, let’s give it a go. I also can’t tell you guys how excited I am to get to Kiev and be able to, you know, eat all the Ukrainian, Eastern European food that I um grew up with. Caviar being one of those things because in Canada it is like stupid expensive whereas in Eastern Europe you can actually find it for a pretty reasonable price. So, going to put some caviar straight on there with a little bit of everything. Let’s try it. I’m a fan. I’m a big fan, actually. Usually the way we eat caviar is just with bread, butter, and then caviar. That’s my favorite way. But on eggs benny, amazing. Welcome to Budapest, my friends. This is a city where history, elegance, and culture meet on both sides of the river. Once two separate cities, Buddha and Pest were officially united in 1873, creating the capital of Hungary that we know today. The Danube River still divides them with hilly historic Buddha on one side and flat, vibrant pest on the other. Sadly, I didn’t have enough time to explore all that I wanted to, but I really enjoyed walking the center of the city and grabbing some delicious coffee and cake at the famous Gerbod Cafe. What I most wanted to see though was the historic Seeni, if I’m saying it correctly. Uh, thermal baths that are one of Budapest’s most iconic landmarks. Opened in 1913, Seeni was the largest medicinal bath in Europe because just below it, there are natural hot springs that pump up more than 6 million lers of mineralrich water every single day. Visitors from around the world come to soak up in its healing properties, said to relieve joint pain and increase circulation. There are three beautiful outdoor pools and some smaller indoor pools with saunas to explore as well as a full range spa. One important thing that I want to mention though that I did not know before coming here is that you should bring your own towel and sandals because it is compulsory to have them outside and they do not let you rent them at the spa but only buy them for an extortionate price. Other than that, I had an absolutely amazing time and we’ll actually put a link in the description of the easiest way to get your ticket ahead of time for these baths because you should definitely um do that as well as the fabulous boat tour that I did later on in this video. Absolutely incredible experience, guys. Would 100% recommend the thermal baths here. It’s actually a much bigger area than I was expecting. And sadly, I wasn’t able to film the whole indoor portion with like the saunas and multiple indoor pools. There’s even a beer sauna where you can drink. So, if you get the chance, highly recommend uh coming. You could easily spend a whole day here. But I do have my boat cruise starting at 5:30. So, I think I’m going to grab a coffee somewhere and then have a nice long 1h hour walk down to the docks. [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] Hey, [Music] hey, hey. [Music] Well, this sucks. The one Hungarian restaurant super well-rated near Kleti station is too popular. They’re all fully booked. You had to have a reservation. So, there goes my dinner plans. I do have a secondary option, but you know, it feels very not Hungarian. Um, there’s a lot of really good Vietnamese uh, restaurants in this area. So, I think just for the sake of convenience, I am just going to go to what is nearby. But yesterday, I tried Hungarian food and it was amazing. [Music] [Music] Y’all, I’m so freaking cold right now. The temperature feels like it dropped like 10 or 15°. I’m so grateful that I packed my winter coat in my luggage, which I’m about to just um take out of the storage locker. But yeah, I still have like an hour until my train leaves. But I need to get into my comfy clothes cuz that’s what I’m going to sleep in. I need to take off my makeup and just get anything I’ll need for basically the next 24 hours in my backpack. All right. So, with this system, they actually give you an actual key. this. [Music] All righty. She’s heavy. All right, let’s go. I don’t know if you guys can see on the screen, but at 2240 that says train number 10 to Kiev Vagal um is departing from or actually they don’t have the platform up yet, but yeah, kind of crazy to see the train number. [Music] All right. So, I have my thermal leggings. I have a bunny hug. I have super warm socks. And somewhere in here is my makeup remover. Just as I was coming over here though, um, another scary thing that Ukrainians are literally always living with. Uh, got an air raid alert. Uh, literally 30 minutes ago. Thankfully, it just said all clear now. But I downloaded this um app called Kiev Digital. It usually is used for like public transit, but it also has air raid alerts. So, just in the 3 days, in the 3 days that I’ve had this app, um there have been like five or six air raid alerts. Absolutely terrifying. And that is technically what we are going into tonight. Oh my gosh, guys. The train is all ready here about an hour early. I don’t know if we can get on. Looks like everybody’s still standing um outside. But yeah, I’ll give you a closeup here in just a second. But this is one of the older Ukrainian train models. So, I’ve definitely taken quite a few of these back in the day. More domestically in Kiev, they do have really good highspeed trains now as well, but it looks like um for this path, they are not operating. So, it’s about half an hour before the train leaves and it looks like we’re starting boarding. If you guys had watched my last video, I was actually talking about how these tickets were actually super hard to get. Um, you really should book ahead of time. So, today I’m going to be in a room of 4. And unfortunately, I have the top bunk. Being it was almost 11:00 p.m. when we pulled out of the station, everybody basically went straight to bed because the border checks were expected to be close to the morning. Sadly, we reached the Hungarian border much earlier than expected at 3:51 a.m. And right as I turned my phone back on, there was another air raid alert in Kiev happening. Luckily, the Hungarian border only took 30 to 40 minutes. That’s pretty standard. But it was the Ukrainian border a couple of kilome down that was way more intense. I mean, understandably so. They do have to do their due diligence in this time with security and me being one of the few foreign passports on the train. I did actually get quite a few questions, but nothing too intense. It wasn’t until 9:00 a.m. that we left, so around 4 hours to cross the Ukrainian border. I can’t tell you the exact emotion I felt as the train first started moving through Ukrainian territory. It was a deep feeling of nostalgia, but also sadness. As the hours went on, we passed through some absolutely beautiful scenery and the west of Ukraine, the fall colors in the Carpathian Mountains were absolutely stunning. Now, as I had said before, there was no restaurant car on the train, but they did sell some snacks and drinks, so that was nice, but I was very grateful that I did bring my own food this time. It was around 2:30 p.m. that we reached Lviv, which is the largest city in Western Ukraine. And there a lot of people actually ended up getting off. I still had six hours to go towards Kiev, which is north central in the country. So I actually ended up going back to bed because I had only gotten 3 4 hours max during the night. Luckily, I was able to fall back asleep and I woke up about an hour before we were pulling into the main station in Kiev. It felt so crazy that after almost 4 years, I was finally here and I knew my mom and uncle Dimma were waiting for me. [Applause] [Music] So good to see you. [Laughter] Don’t be interested. Uhhuh. [Laughter] And look how busy it is, guys. We even look right there. There’s people from the military as you can see like that guy. It is busy cuz yeah obviously there’s no flights uh going so trains is the main uh form of transportation in between countries and also domestically. So the train stations are very very busy. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. [Music] Yeah. [Music]

Going to Ukraine during the war is not something I would recommend unless you have a very good reason for doing so and you understand the risk that comes with it. But for anyone who is curious of what it is like to cross by overnight train from Budapest, this is the video for you. Join me as I spend the afternoon exploring the city and then get on the train late at night for a 20hr journey to Kyiv.

Ukrainian charities I recommend donating to:
Food Distribution: https://www.foodfoundation.com.ua/
Rebuilding Demolished Homes: https://www.bur.org.ua/en/
Saving Animals From Front Lines: https://uanimals.org/en/
Prosthetic Limbs For Those Injured During War: https://www.protezfoundation.org/

Budapest Tours I recommend:
Szechenyi Thermal Baths: https://gyg.me/ycYrNdnZ
Evening City Cruise: https://gyg.me/O52q9zeg
Food Tour: https://gyg.me/6mLBdQi1

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