Eight Hours in Hell: A Daytime Train Journey from Kyiv to Lviv

There are journeys that linger in memory like a poem or a painting—etched with charm, soaked in nostalgia. Then there are others that sear themselves into the mind as pure ordeal, a fusion of sweat, noise, claustrophobia and disbelief. My eight-hour daytime train ride from Kyiv to Lviv was firmly in the latter category: a nightmare carved in steel and upholstered in faded blue polyester.

It began with the promise of comfort. I had booked what was clearly marked as first class, trusting in the remnants of Soviet infrastructure to deliver me across the war-scarred country in relative ease. A seat, I imagined, with a window, legroom, perhaps even a socket to charge my phone and watch the quiet green plains roll by under the summer sun. Instead, what greeted me on the platform was the stifling stench of hot metal, and a conductor vaguely gesturing toward a carriage that appeared to have been condemned several decades ago.

First class, it turned out, was a euphemism. We were packed into a second-class compartment built for four but clearly designed by someone unfamiliar with the dimensions of adult humans. The air conditioning unit—an item frequently alluded to on the Ukrainian Railways website—either never existed or had long since been claimed by the black market for parts. Instead, we had a window that opened just wide enough to let in the dust and diesel from every passing station. The sun bore down like an angry god, and within minutes, our clothes were plastered to our backs, our knees brushing awkwardly under a fold-out table barely wide enough for a water bottle.

Sleep was impossible. The heat kept us alert, like insects pinned under glass. Conversation died early, flattened by a communal recognition of misery. A bored child whined for most of the second hour. By the third, someone had opened a tin of sardines and the entire compartment smelled like brine and surrender.

Internet access, once a luxury and now a staple, was almost wholly absent. The signal dropped somewhere outside an unknown town and barely returned before Lviv. I stared at my phone, hoping for a miraculous reconnection that never came. With no news, no social media, and no maps to track our limping progress across the westbound rail, the hours began to expand. There is something cruel about losing access to time in an enclosed space. No clocks, no connection, no announcements. Just the rhythm of the wheels, the occasional jolt of a poorly aligned track, and the quiet suspicion that you might never actually arrive.

Attempts to sleep brought no relief. The heat made stillness unbearable. The seats were too firm, the window too bright, the occasional sudden stop too jarring. Even closing my eyes seemed an insult to the body’s desire for fresh air. The boredom became existential. There was nothing to do but exist in that moment: an animal in a cage, legs folded, sweat rolling down the spine, jaw clenched against frustration.

Outside, Ukraine unfolded as a mirage of beauty and indifference. Villages passed like memories—dusty roads, golden fields, sunflowers nodding as though they knew. But we were prisoners of that compartment, exiled from the freedom of the landscape we traversed.

When we finally lurched into Lviv station, it was not triumph but a slow collapse. We peeled ourselves off the vinyl seats, limbs tingling, faces ashen. The air on the platform was cooler—barely, but enough. I felt the paving flags of the station under my feet like a revelation. I had aged, perhaps not visibly, but spiritually. The journey was over, but its imprint lingered: in the salt marks on my shirt, in the ache in my knees, and in the simmering sense that comfort is never guaranteed, even when paid for.

In war-touched Ukraine, where heroism is often demanded and luxury rare, it may seem petty to complain about a train ride. But there are small agonies, too, that speak to the experience of surviving the everyday. This was one of them—a passage through heat, confinement, and inertia. A reminder that, sometimes, even the road to safety can feel like a form of captivity.