Alla Tyutyunnyk
"Upwards" newspaper

There were no compartment (kupe) tickets to Kherson at the tickets-desk of Kiev Southern Railway station on March 21, 2003. The cashier recommended to try the salon of improved comfort. I needed two tickets, but not an improved comfort, but they refused to let me in the salon before I pay 30UAH. I tried to figure out which exact service costs this much money - the employers showed me soft armchairs and informed that there were showers in the salon.
At 8.20am I came up to the window of the stationmaster and asked for the registrar of complaints. When the stationmaster learned the reason for my complaints she invited me to her office, seated me and asked to wait till the management staff meeting was finished. She promised to ask for tickets from the booking office. Approximately in an hour the direction called her and said that booked tickets were only for people with disabilities.
I decided to ask the direction why there are no tickets at the ticket desk, but there are some in the salon and why I have to pay 30 UAH. The first deputy head of the station, Mrs. Valentyna Petrivna Likhman said, "The salon has nothing to do with the station. It is a firm of the Ukrainian center of railway passenger services. The center sells tickets all over Ukraine and they themselves decide how many tickets to sell and at what price to sell them". -"Are you saying that there is a company on the territory of your railway station, which is selling tickets while your ticket desks don't have them and you have nothing to do with it?" - "Don't make a scandal and don't disturb me while I am working" she said.
I had a suspicion that the improved comfort salon is just a tool that someone is using to get extra profits. Not long ago the speculators were such a tool - they could get tickets a bit more expensive when tickets were not available at the ticket-desks. We must think, at that point the direction of the station had nothing to do with them as well.
But if we suppose that the ticket deficit is artificial, how will I prove it? And suddenly I had an idea: I have to get a certification, that at this particular day and time there we no tickets at the ticket-desk and then buy these same tickets at the salon and pay 30 UAH more. Then I will be able to complain to the department for protection of consumers' rights, prosecutor's office, and antimonopoly committee in Kiev and human rights NGO.
From 9.35 till 10.00 I had been trying to get a written confirmation that there were no tickets for the Kiev-Kherson train. Unbelievably, but everyone refused to give me such a confirmation: neither cashiers, nor stationmaster, nor the ticket desks administrator Mrs. Lyudmyla Volodymyrivna Sokolynska. Everyone suspiciously asked me "What for?" Moreover, my persistency caused a storm of aggression from Lyudmyla, who literally swept me away from her window.
At 10.11a, I met my colleague who arrived from Kherson. Now there were two of us and we decided to finish this case.
When the ticket desks administrator Mrs. Sokolynska read our complaint (in two copies!) "We are asking to certify, that on March 21, 2003 at 10.30am there were no tickets for the train #620 Kiev-Kherson" - she threw away both papers and kept screaming for five minutes "I am not giving you any confirmation", "I don't have to" We kindly asked her to write it down on one of our complaints and sign the paper. The complaints were coming in and out of her window. Lyudmyla Volodymyrivna sent us to the stationmaster, to the station head, but it turned out that we had already been to all of these people.
At 10.50 we started writing a protocol that the ticket desk administrator refused to provide us with the necessary confirmation. When we finally found one witness, who was one of the passengers, Lyudmyla Volodymyrivna grabbed the complaint and ran away somewhere.
Having returned to her place, she spent some time on the phone. The microphone dynamics were off, so that we could not hear her conversation. Then a respectable lady came into her room and silently glazed at us. Then both of them disappeared somewhere, called somewhere…
At 11.15am Lyudmyla Volodymyrivna gave us the writen confirmation through her window, but she victoriously announced "There are already tickets at the desk. There is a whole additional car to the train - 36 tickets!!!"
We went to the cash desk - and really, the computer showed 36 free spaces. It took us 3.15 hours to get an entire car.
But we still could not understand - if the Ukrainian center for railway passenger services sells tickets, and the Kiev railway station has nothing to do with them (as Mrs.Likhma stated) - where did the additional car come from? We did not ask at the Center. Finally we decided to write a request to the prosecutor's office: may be they will clarify the situation. Plus, there is a salon like that in Kherson, too, and the entrance is paid, too. And there is no tickets at the ticket desks, either.