The Pokrovsk-Pavlohrad-Lozova Suburban Train

Suburban trains are not only a transport link between towns, but also a fascinating chance to travel to interesting places on a day off, to feel the union of nature and the steel highway. Trips by electric train have their own features: no crowds, no traffic jams, and the fare is cheaper. The Pokrovsk-Pavlohrad-Lozova suburban train links three regions - Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv.

 

Pokrovsk railway station. The Pokrovsk-Lozova suburban train

Avdiivka. Your home is where your heart is

The home of each of us is not only walls and a roof, it is a place of permanent residence, a quiet harbour, the native hearth where a person feels protected. Our home is the family nest, the domestic fire, the reliable rear in which the history of a family and even of whole generations is made. We say "My home is my castle", meaning the settled way of life and family traditions, a father's admonition and a mother's blessing. We hurry home after work, study and holidays, knowing that within our own walls we are loved and understood. The residents of front-line Avdiivka have a special attitude to their home, one suffered through and lived out in losses and partings.

 

Avdiivka, 15 Vorobiov Street. A long-suffering building

The Oak. Patriarch of the Forest and Natural Monument

A mighty oak, an age-old oak  

Stands there beside the ravine. 

It has flung out its leafy forelock, 

Its brow touches the cloud.

Its boughs have been bent since time began, 

Its bark is as if of steel. 

In the forest, from afar, to the grandfather 

The trees are bowing down. 

(Mariia Pryhara) 

In the forest, among birches and poplars, it stands out with its mighty trunk, its curly crown and its carved leaves.

Lviv. Enerhetychna Street. A monument oak. Trunk girth 5 m

Where the Kazennyi Torets river begins

"A river begins from a small stream" - everyone knows the lines from the children's song. So where does the Kazennyi Torets river, an important blue highway of the Donetsk land, take its beginning?

 

The Kazennyi Torets gully. A pond in the bed of the Kazennyi Torets river. Pokrovsk district, Donetsk region

Avdiivka. The Worked-Out Sand Quarry, a Recreation Zone

In the industrial Donbas, not rich in water resources, a worked-out sand quarry on the eastern side of Avdiivka has become a popular place of rest.

Avdiivka. The sand quarry

Lozova. The Druzhba Arboretum, a Green Friend

In modern towns, wholesale construction leaves less and less space for the green islands that produce oxygen and create saving shade. Ukraine has 57 arboretums, most of them created 20-40 years ago on the site of old forest parks. The Druzhba arboretum in the town of Lozova, Kharkiv region, was founded in the 1930s, and over its almost 100-year history it has changed its structure, its name, its status and its popularity.

 

Lozova, Kharkiv region.  The Druzhba arboretum

Slovianka. Villages of the Dnipropetrovsk Region

Slovianka is one of the oldest villages in the Dnipropetrovsk region. It received its name in 1777, when, on the instruction of the governor of the Azov province, the settlement of the fertile lands on the bank of the Byk river began. Slovianka lies 125 kilometres from the regional centre. Before the Mezhova district was abolished, 14 km of asphalt road separated the village from the district centre. After the amalgamation of the communities, the residents of the Mezhova area have to cover more than 100 kilometres in 2 hours to reach the district centre of Synelnykove. There is no bus service between the settlements.

Slovianka, Dnipropetrovsk region

Closed Schools. Abandoned Temples of Learning

For thousands of school leavers, after a many-year marathon of dictations and tests, the last bell has sounded as a leitmotif. Saying goodbye to their school and their teachers, yesterday's pupils have stepped, with dreams and hopes, onto the new starting stage of adult life. However each person's path in life turns out, through all the rises and falls, achievements and failures, we are all bound by an unbreakable invisible thread to our school, our teachers, our friends. The wise word of a teacher is always with us, and their blessing before the long road. At different moments in life we return in our thoughts for an instant to our own school, climb the school porch and enter the classroom where there was so much that was important and essential. Reunions of classmates and teachers are often held within the walls of the alma mater, and a wonderful immersion into the times of happy childhood and youth takes place. 

Not all former pupils have anywhere to come back to, because their schools are not only closed but destroyed by mismanagement and indifference.

 

Mykolaivka, Donetsk region. An abandoned school

Climbing a Terrikon. The Summit of a Miners' Barrow

Terrikons in a mining region have always been symbols of the miners' settlements; without them the industrial landscape of the Donbas is impossible to imagine. These "dark barrows" lure conquerors of summits and lovers of contemplating town panoramas from a bird's-eye view. Climbing the newer waste heaps carries a danger - the rock mass goes on burning out, giving off gas and forming voids. The little old extinct volcanoes of long-closed mines are conquered constantly; the ascent has become an ordinary walk to a rock peak, and enthusiasts have created their own kind of health trails.

 

The terrikon of mine No. 5-6. Myrnohrad, Donetsk region

Myrne. The Mennonite Water Tower, Heritage Without Status

You can see it from the H-32 road, and it is impossible not to notice when driving the Novoekonomichne-Malynivka stretch. The only surviving water tower built by the German Mennonites on the territory of the present-day Pokrovsk district of the Donetsk region rises like a watchtower outpost on the western side of the small village of Myrne, in the Malynivka village council.

 

The water tower in the village of Myrne, Pokrovsk district, Donetsk region