East or west home is the best! Probably this is the perfect proverb description for our nation. Recently Ukraine has become more and more attractive for tourists because of its hospitality principals and its sustainable development creating an attractive image for being visited by tourists who share positive experience and impressions.
Interesting to know that branding begins with the values inherited by Ukrainian mentality and in its turn it is shared in all huge Ukrainian cities. Branding is meant to point out special Ukrainian features: freedom, dignity, democracy, and frankness. These values define "cultural code" of the country. Describing the understanding of the "code" within the country we may regard every city independently, because every place is unique in its spirit and consistency.

So, let's plunge into Lviv city that attracts everyone with its atmosphere of intimacy and coziness. While promenading across the streets you must be attracted by its accents of a variety of gastronomic restaurants and their authenticity.
The special atmosphere is created by the exclusiveness of different cafes and freshly roasted coffee beans, where while enjoying the amazing flavor you can feel the eternity of life.

Being surrounded by an architecture of ancient city and supervised by the local authorities you can be embraced with a spirit of past centuries. And even Lychakivske Cemetery where the famous Ukrainians like Ivan Franko and Solomiya Krushelnitska are buried doesn't seem to be frightening but is rather regarded as an open-air museum. Undoubtedly you will not be the only one visitor because group tours are very popular to that place. Since 2007 about 700.000 tourists have visited Lviv whereas now this quantity has risen up to 2 million people. With the advent of new mayor Andriy Sadovyi the city center was refurbished and tourists have begun coming to Lviv admiring the new changes.
Opposite to the treasuring its ancientry Lviv enters industrial Kharkiv with its turbulent development. The first capital of Ukraine is aiming to reach the maximum grade of megapolis life.

There are no reconstruction options instead we may observe global rebuilding of the whole city-appearing of new museums, premises, bridges and even a zoo eco park. It is highly recommended to start your tour from the Historical Museum. It is not an ordinary museum, but a museum inside the museum. Architects surrounded the building with a glass sarcophagus and it appeared that this heritage building is guarded outside and preserves in itself the ancient antiquities.
Read: The Renaissance of Ukrainian Feast Traditions
The next sight experiencing the global changes is "Arrow" square that was completely restored and got the first pedestrian bridge across Lopana river. A breathtaking fact is that this bridge is a replica of Erasmus bridge located in Rotterdam. The old Kharkiv park should also be spoken about, cause it was reborn and nowadays because of its modernity and correspondence to European standards is named a Ukrainian Disney Land. The Kharkiv touristic privilege that makes the city more attractive is pleasant price policy for foreign guests. The first capital of Ukraine will definitely surprise you with prices for hotel booking, restaurant bills and entertainment. Where else you can have amusement ride for only UAH 40 (1,4 euros)?
And just in a few stone's throw away from Kharkiv city is placed the famous and highly popular resort - Mirhorod. The resort is modernized every year in order to correspond the high standards of quality, service and treatment procedures. Mirhorod resort is annually visited by tourists from Europe, USA, Canada, Israel, Cyprus and many other countries.

Going on with the topic of rest and relax it is worth to speak about cultural code of Odesa city that is the most popular Ukrainian resort by the Black Sea as well as it strongly keeps its first position of being the most picturesque and special city in the country. Apart of attractive and impressive architecture of National Opera, museum of contraband, monument to an orange you may also enjoy walking on the principal promenade Deribasivska street laid with the Italian paving stone blocks. The city garden placed on Deribasivska street is considered to be the opened museum. Here you may see the monument-chair created by Gambs, famous for "12 chairs" novel by Ilf and Petrov.
Inside the garden there is the most exquisite and probably worldwide known Perfume Fountain, which every hour mists special essence of French perfume selected by Christophe Lakaren. Odessa is also called "small Paris" because of many historical events and personalities there. A well-known fact is that in 19th century duke Richelieu became the town governor. And even nowadays this city attracts the French spirit by organizing a variety of cultural events like Francophone Festival and "French spring". Odessa has always been attractive for tourists, especially with its eventual tourism, such events as Jazz Koktebel and Odessa cinema Fest are visited by many celebrities of world cinema and music. In 2014 more than 800 000 people visited the city while after the Crimea annexation in 2015 almost the number was 2 million guests. And the quality of rest stayed on the high level the same as the dwellers hospitality. Joyful and kind Odessa dwellers continue developing the city and it means that you will be pleasantly surprised with the variety of activities as well as its Europeanization.

Telling about cultural codes of the cities with their personal we move to Kyiv city, the city that attracted 513,1 thousands of tourists in first six months of 2016, it combines the wisdom of centuries with majesty of kings and urbanistic buildings that in high gear are penetrating into the vintage architecture. An architectural illustration of such phenomenon may become the much talked about Theatre at Podil, the personal opinion about which can be made after visiting this exuberant piece of architecture.
Still there are many of really attractive and fabulous architectural curiosities such as for instance those interesting sculptures that are placed at Parkova Alley passing to Andriivskiy Descend. We also want to attract your attention to one of Kyiv's ornament - Vozdvizhenka, an ancient place of artisans but nowadays with an accent of modern aristocracy. The diversity of architectural forms really makes the heart soar and creates the atmosphere of distancing from noisy megapolis.

Reconstruction and preserving the dead and abandoned premises is fully embodied in Art-factory Platform, located on the left bank of Kyiv. Ex silk plant has transformed into creative cluster for youth and platform for conducting mass cultural events such as Festival of Street Food, Gogol Fest, Courage Bazaar and "stars" concerts. There is a variety of workshops, galleries, showrooms of young designers and even a food court on the territory. Platform has also become an attractive business site.
The most pleasant for all Ukrainians is the fact that all cities are developing not only locally but under the auspices of the Ministry of Infrastructure. Speaking about Branding it is necessary to say that Ukrainian tourism has its special brand style that definitely marks the hospitality of our country and is symbolized with a brand element of smile.
So, Welcome to Ukraine!
Victoria Vlasova
Photo: Shutterstock.com, depositphotos.com