MAGIC WORLD OF SLOVAKIA + VIENNA! (Sakums, departure 27.04.2013)

So, the tour "The Magical World of Slovakia + Vienna", departure 24.04.2013. The tour operator "Sakums" asked to publish reviews about the trip, but I would have published them anyway. I will be extremely objective and there will be both positive and negative points. Unfortunately, there are more of the latter.

Initially, the tour program indicated that the departure there would be through Uzhgorod and the return trip would be through Hungary and, accordingly, Chop. Based on this, tickets Kyiv-Uzhgorod and Chop-Kyiv were bought. This information was both on the tour operator's website and in the mailing list to travel agents. But a couple of weeks before the departure, it was discovered that the return trip would be through Uzhgorod. On the one hand, it seems to be not bad, the Slovak consulates have fewer questions the next time they apply for a visa about the legality of using the previous visa, etc. But why was it necessary to change the program and what prevented it from being compiled correctly in the first place? As a result, additional expenses of money for the Uzhgorod-Chop ticket as well as the loss of time for its purchase.

Information sheet arrived 3 days before departure. It is still unknown what the bus will be and the group leader's phone number is 1 digit more than it should be. The sloppiness of the one who typed the infolist is evident. A day later, a corrected information sheet arrived, which contained the correct number of the leader and the number of the bus. The bus, by the way, with the Hungarian registration. We were one of the first to book the tour, but for some reason our seats were in the middle of the bus. For those who booked later, the seats were ahead of ours.

And so, we arrived in Uzhhorod. We did not find the bus with the number indicated in the information sheet. It turned out that the bus broke down at the last moment and a larger capacity bus was waiting for us. This is not bad, but somehow punctures at every step start to alert, but oh well, a bus breakdown before the start of the tour is definitely better than it would happen on the tour. By the way, the Slovaks somehow strangely carried out passport control: first, a border guard came in, collected a dozen passports and left with them. Half an hour later he came again and took 3 more passports. And left again. Waiting, after which everyone was invited with things to passport and customs control inside the terminal. Apparently, they found something in one of the previous buses, and in the end they were playing for time in this way.

Kosice. Nice quiet town, the second largest in Slovakia. The tour went well, there was free time, we had a bite to eat. Moving from Poprad, settled in the TatraHotel. Quite a normal C grade, and the breakfast was on the level. For unknown reasons, at the reception we were told that the Aquacity water park is supposedly open until 19:00 on this day due to the holiday. We decided to walk around the city. Many cafes were closed, in the end we ended up with a hut near the water park. He still worked, but it was too late to go there. We ate well.

There was no excursion to the Demyanovskie caves that was promised the next day, initially this excursion was listed in the tour program, but it was removed from the information sheet. It was predictable: it was scheduled for Monday, and according to information from the caves website, there is a day off there. Moreover, the managers at first brazenly said that “the cave does not work during this period” (well, that’s right, Sakums planned an excursion there on the weekend, so they don’t work). After they were poked with this information by the nose, they began to talk about the fact that "there is simply nothing to do there." All in all, another lie. But we were promised more time in the Tatralandia water park. Tickets were bought for 3 hours. Did they originally plan to be smaller there? I liked the water park, despite the fact that not all the slides were working yet.

We settled in the hotel Hokejka, located in the town of Prievidza near the village of Bojnice, in which there is a famous castle. The hotel is brand new, clean, for unknown reasons listed as a one-star. As for me, it may well correspond to a simple C grade. Breakfast let us down, but what do you want from 1 star . There is a 24 hour Tesco nearby, as well as other shops.

Night excursion to the castle was interesting, no complaints. Daytime, I think, would not be so interesting.

The next day, the excursion to the Trenčen Castle was cancelled. We just took pictures against its background, walked in the forest park located near it and along Trencin.

The promised excursion to the Devin historical complex was canceled for unknown reasons. There are no words.

We settled in the Baronka 4 * hotel in Bratislava. The hotel is good, except for the location on the outskirts of the city.

The next day, an optional excursion to Vienna. I have already been to Vienna, so I personally did not see the point in this excursion, and decided to spend my free time in Bratislava. But those who went to Vienna were waiting for another puncture: the bus that was supposed to take them there was late for an hour. By the way, on tours that I went on before, the bus traveled with the whole group and accompanied and spent the night with the group along the entire route. Here the bus took the group to Bratislava and left for the base. Other buses came for the excursion to Vienna and for the return journey.

And so, the last day of the tour arrived. According to the schedule, we were supposed to be picked up at 9 o'clock, after which a sightseeing tour of the city, free time and at 12 o'clock departure to Ukraine. The bus arrived an hour and a half late. The bus had broken shelves, I'll post a photo below. I consider this a gross violation of safety regulations. If the luggage on the shelf fell on the heads of passengers, it would be bad. To save time, the tour was held in a very short form, just to put a tick that it was held, and even so, half of the tours promised on the tour were not actually carried out. We also left Bratislava with an hour and a half delay. And we went not through Slovakia with the entrance to Ukraine in Uzhgorod, but through Hungary with the entrance to Chop. This was motivated by the fact that the road in Hungary is better and, despite the fact that the road through Budapest is 35 km longer, we will pass faster. Well, also the fact that the Uzhgorod-Kyiv train leaves Chop an hour later than from Uzhgorod, due to which we gain ourselves another hour of time. At the same time, there were tourists in the group who left their cars in Uzhgorod and how to get there at night remained an interesting question. In fact, we got stuck in a traffic jam in Budapest and pushed through it for over an hour. And yet, on leaving Budapest, the driver waited 40 minutes for his director to give him money for diesel fuel and some documents. That was the real reason why we went through Hungary. It also turned out that the driver had never traveled to Ukraine before, did not know the road and did not know how to draw up the relevant documents at the border, it’s good that our team leader helped him with this. There was a long queue at the border, plus, due to the incompetence of the driver, it took a long time to draw up documents for a bus already on the Ukrainian side of the border.

It was originally planned that if we cross the border after the train has departed, we will catch up with it by bus and board the train at one of the intermediate stations. But, considering that by the time of crossing the border, the train was already 3 hours on the way, it was useless to catch up with it.

The travel agency bought us tickets for the Uzhgorod-Moscow train at its own expense, while there were few compartment tickets left, and those who lost compartment tickets were not compensated for the difference in cost. Those who needed to go to Uzhgorod were sent by bus to Uzhgorod. Well, and among other things, a lot of people had a transplant in Kiev. And that was the Saturday before Easter. In other words, there were no tickets from Kyiv. Someone stayed overnight in Kyiv in the waiting room, someone traveled with transfers, someone else got from Kyiv to their cities in some other way.

Conclusions: the organization of the trip by the travel agency is disgusting, many excursions were canceled, the tour of Bratislava is crumpled, the work of the transport company that carried out the transportation is also disgusting. This does not remove responsibility from the travel agency, because TO "Sakums" knew with whom they concluded the contract. As for the head of the group, Vasily Petriv, there are no complaints against him. He was a hostage of situations and, by virtue of his abilities, tried to solve all the problems and punctures of Sakums.

PS: I liked the rest, in general everything was super, but this is the merit of the group and the group leader, and not the tour operator.

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