Where to go: Antonivka village

Things should be taken with:

• — a train ticket;
• — an entrepreneur (to help you understand a spicy Polissian dialect);
• — a person with good knowledge of mushrooms and berries;
• — a desire to enjoy the picturesque Polissia landscapes behind the train window during four hours trip.

This is the oldest (from the XIXth century), the longest (in Europe), the narrowest (among the similar trains), the slowest (40 km per hour), the noisiest (particularly on Wednesdays, when people go to the market) and, of course, the friendliest (at any weather) narrow-gage railway route «Antonivka-Zarichne» which is about one hundred years old. This train is more known as a ‘cuckoo’ and ‘Polissian tram’. For the local inhabitants this train is perhaps the only connection with the outer world. People use it for travelling to work, to school, to the open market (on Wednesday) and even for gathering mushrooms. Also this train is very popular among the foreign photographers, documentary films’ directors and exotic trips’ fans.

Saying you cannot live further without discovering the reasons why the train was called a ‘cuckoo’, what is the width of the narrowest-gage, without indulging the thrilling story of the train transporting the diamonds and further disappearing from all schemes and railway maps of the former USSR for more than twenty years; saying you cannot resist the desire to travel in a tiny train wagon savoring the lovely landscape through its windows, relishing the local folk lore and staying at a Polissyan guest house for a night — if it is really so, do not hesitate and choose the railway route by the ‘Polissian tram’.