Trip To Boryslaw

If you plan a roots trip to Boryslaw you need to arrange the following :

• • Travel Arrangements

  • Weather Forecast

  • Guide

  • Places to visit

  • Maps

  • Navigation

  • Accommodation

Travel Arrangements

Boryslaw is located about 120KM from Lviv so this would be the ideal airport to land in.

If you are arriving from Israel, at least until July 2010, Visa was required at a cost of about 130-150$. As of July 2010, Visa should not longer be required - you should verify this.

Arriving by plane :

If you are traveling from Israel, there are no direct flights to Lviv so you'll need either to fly through Warsaw or Kiev.

Arriving by car :

You can also cross the border to Ukraine from Poland via the border near Przemysl, Poland. There is also another border passing few dozen kilometers north.

Passing the border with your car can be a real nightmare. There is a long line of cars waiting to pass and it seems as if nothing is moving. It took us 4 hours to cross the border. 2 hours at the polish side and then 2 more hours at the ukrainian side. Same when coming back to Poland. I don't know if its always like this, but I certainly heard few more feedbacks saying the same.

Weather Forecast

Guide

I highly recommend a local guide called Tanya Firman who is both an excellent guide and a wonderful person. She speaks fluent english and knows all the relevant places to see in Boryslaw & Drohobycz.

If you wish to contact her :

Email : chevra@ukr.net

Phone : +380503152039

Places to Visit

You can see the My Trip page to see the places you can visit while in Boryslaw.

In case you have additional personal places to visit like the old house, you can use the maps section to try and locate the places

Bare in mind that almost all the old buildings from that period were destroyed either by the Nazis or later by the Russians so you should be very lucky to find your old family house. The cemetary in Boryslaw was destroyed in 1959 by the Russians and it became a market.

Maps

As you can imagine, Boryslaw is not exactly a main attraction for tourists so finding maps especially if you are looking for old locations is not so trivial.

If you have an address of a place from pre-war poland period you should take into account that the name was probably changed 2-3 times since (Polish->Russian->Ukrainian). Also some of the streets do not exist anymore. 

I'm putting this map section to help you match the old names and new names :

For Drohobycz there is a nice interactive map here

Navigation

Navigating in this part of Ukraine is not that convenient as there are hardly any signs or road numbers. If you have a GPS you can use IGO which has a map of Ukraine available. You won't be able to navigate in the streets using it, but you will be able to find your way on the roads. 

Accommodation

I got recommendations for the following places :

Hotel Three Sons & Daughter

Villa Kristina

Geneva Hotel

Oscar Hotel