I learn a little more with each trip — things to do, things not to do, places where you should or should not put your finger — or so I like to believe. When it comes to traveling overseas, to far off places like Ukraine, I think I still have a good deal of learning, but hopefully I’m slowly getting better.
Baggage Handling
I had thought my travel plans from last year were a bit of an anomaly, but perhaps that’s not so. Last year I was traveling on two separately purchased tickets: the first was to get me from Portland to New York/JFK, where I would then meet the tour group and they would take care of the rest. (Then I’d have my return trip from JFK, of course, but all on the one round-trip ticket.) After the tour got canceled, I purchased my second ticket to take me from JFK to Ukraine and back. Because of the situation, I had attributed some of the annoyances in last year’s travel to this dual-ticket set up.
I was being too generous.
This year I thought I was doing it smarter by getting a ticket that took me from Portland to Ukraine on one airline — though it was actually one airline and it’s affiliated partner. So my 2012 travel plan had me going Air Canada from Portland to Toronto to Munich, and then on Lufthansa from Munich to Donetsk. My return trip was just the reverse — Lufthansa back to Munich, and then Air Canada to Portland via Toronto. As it turns out, this wasn’t that much better than 2011 after all.
It seemed to start out pretty well: when I checked in at PDX, they were able to tag my bag all the way through to Donetsk. I wouldn’t have to claim and recheck it in either Toronto or Munich; because I was on two tickets before, I had to claim my bags at JFK and then check my bag for my next connection. (I also had to do that in Kiev, which I chalked up to switching from an international flight to a domestic one.)
Being able to hang out at the airports without worrying about my bag was definitely a good sign; sadly, it was a one-way sign only. Coming back, I had to handle my bag at every airport. Ugh, just what I had hoped to avoid! (After lugging my checked back around for hours at JFK and Boryspil last year, I really didn’t want to do it again.) Lufthansa wasn’t able to check my bag any further than Munich, but they didn’t offer any good explanation as to why. So I had to hang onto my bag during my layover in Munich, and then check it with Air Canada when it was time to go. In Toronto I also had to grab and re-check my bag, but at least this time I knew the reason: US Customs. International travelers going on to the US have to claim their bag, go through US Customs (where your bag could be searched), and then you drop it off to be routed to your flight to the US. It’s not terrible, but you still have to handle your baggage. (Fortunately, I travel fairly light, so I wasn’t having to claim or cart around a ton of bags, like some people did.)
So, baggage-wise, this trip might have been a little better than last time, but only by a bit. If I could get down to a single carry-on for an overseas trip, that would be awesome.
Layovers
Last year, I had about a 12-hour layover at JFK… and this was after a red-eye flight from Portland. Fortunately, JFK has a public lounge that you can buy a day pass for, so it really wasn’t all that bad. Longer than you want to be in an airport, but the lounge chairs were more comfy than those in the terminal. On the flight back, I had about an 8 hour layover, up from an originally scheduled 5 hour wait because, as I noted last year, JetBlue hates me. In Kiev I had three different waits, two layovers for domestic flights (about 9 and 4 hours) and the wait for my international flight home (about 3 hours).
So that adds up to about a day and a half, both coming and going. Let’s see how that stacks up to this year’s trip.
As with my bags, getting to Ukraine was far smoother than getting home. I had a 4 hour wait in Toronto, and just under 2 hours in Munich. All in all, not too bad. Coming back, though, was not nearly as fun. I was in Munich for 18 hours. (For some reason, I had it mind and had been telling people it was 12 hours; maybe I couldn’t face the truth.) Toronto wasn’t bad – only three hours, with most of that taken up by Customs. So, airport layovers out: 6 hours; airport layovers back, 15 hours.
Lessons Learned
Although I only have two trips (so far?) to base this on, it seems that going to Ukraine will never be too difficult. Even with the dual ticket stuff from last year, it was a relatively smooth journey. And this year was a breeze. It’s coming back that will always have challenges.
One big reason for the travel path I took this year was arrival and departure times in Donetsk. Although I was staying in Mariupol, their airport doesn’t have any commercial airline service. That means traveling from Donetsk to Mariupol (and back) by some other means — usually car, if you can arrange it, or bus, if you speak enough Russian to get around easily. The drive to/from Donetsk is about 2 hours, and most of the flights into Donetsk arrived late at night (i.e., 9 pm), and flights out left early in the morning (6 am).
The flights I had actually got me in at very reasonable hours — arriving at 4pm, and leaving at 6pm. This made getting to the airport much easier. I really didn’t relish the idea of leaving Mariupol at 2 am, so I could get to Donetsk by 4 am, in order to check in for a 6 am flight. So the times were good, but as I’ve noted above, the travel wasn’t as smooth as I would have wished.
The other issue I think I would try to avoid next time is passing through so many countries. Last year it was US to Ukraine, period. This year it was US to Canada to Germany to Ukraine. Going over I had to pass through Canadian Customs but not German. Coming back I had to go through German Customs but not Canadian. (I think that if I hadn’t had a huge layover and/or didn’t have to reclaim my bag in Germany, I might have avoided German Customs.)
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have any trouble at any customs point, and I think it’s kind of neat to know that US citizens don’t need visas for so many countries. Even so, I think I would try to avoid the extra-country stops on future trips. It would just make it easier.