AFA Tour Preparation

First, follow all the normal advice for traveling internationally to a country where you do not speak the language, especially when that country is also a war zone.

Alright, here’s the good stuff.

AFA tours are introductions. These women are still women, with the same preferences, standards, and instincts as women everywhere. You are spending around $5,000 to get 300–400 introductions over the course of a week, but it is still on you to make a good impression.

So, before you book a tour, do yourself a favor:

1. Get in shape. I worked with a trainer.
2. Wear clean, stylish clothes. I hired a stylist.
3. Know your story. What kind of life do you provide? What are you looking for in a woman? Practice telling your story in 2–5 minutes so the right woman can imagine herself in your life.
4. Go to your barber and your dentist.

Communication Apps

The women here use WhatsApp, Viber, or Telegram. Download all three and learn how to add contacts smoothly before you arrive. You do not want to be fumbling with your phone when someone is giving you her number.

AFA Letter System

Don’t do it.

There is no real advantage to writing letters in advance. Worst case, you are spending money talking to a middleman. Best case, you are building a connection with the idea of a person, and that connection will probably not translate to real life.

No one on the tour had a good date with someone they had been writing to beforehand.

Getting There

The tour started in Odessa, but you cannot fly directly into Ukraine. You have to fly to Chișinău, Moldova, and then drive.

I had time before and after the tour, so I flew into Chișinău five days early and booked an Airbnb for two nights. I arrived early for two reasons:

1. To start adjusting to the local time zone.
2. To give my bags time to catch up if they missed a connection in Europe. (They did.) Europe often loses bags. My checked bag arrived the next day.

As soon as I had my bag, I asked the tour coordinator to schedule a private car, which I think was about $400 USD. There a bus in the guide, but a car is more comfortable and gets you through the border faster.

My driver was great. He had homes in both Ukraine and Moldova and regularly moved between the two. He did not speak much English, but we were able to communicate through Google Translate using my international data plan. He calmed a lot of my nerves about traveling in a war zone.

We breezed through the border and two military checkpoints, called “Face Control,” where they verify your documents and nationality. Make sure you can always prove your nationality with your passport or other documents. Ukrainian men are being conscripted from the street in some places.

My driver then gave me a tour of everything that had been blown up in Odessa, including a supermarket and several residential buildings. This reactivated my nerves.

Odessa

We stayed in the Londonska Hotel. It is the oldest hotel in Odessa and has a lot of old-world charm.

I arrived four days early, and for most of that time I was the only guest in the hotel. It was eerily beautiful, wandering around what felt like an abandoned palace after dark. There was no front desk staff because of the curfew, though there was a security guard who let me back into my room every time I locked myself out.

The hotel is well situated. You can walk to almost anything you would want in under five minutes: cafés, restaurants, a supermarket, a money changer. The hotel also has a fantastic gym and a full spa.

Under normal circumstances, I would say it is exceptionally well located. The only issue is that there is only about 400 meters of open space to the Port of Odessa, the premier economic hub of Ukraine, and therefore a very tempting target.

The first room I checked into had a view of the port. It had also been recently renovated because, a few months earlier, a drone crashed into the park across the street and blew it up. I moved to a room facing the inner courtyard.

I spent about three-fourths of my nights in Odessa visiting the shelter at least once. On three of those nights, I heard shelling and missile defense in the port. It was quite thrilling. But after a night or two, most people on the tour stopped going to the shelter.

That is the way of it. You get used to it quickly, and at some point you need to sleep.

Useful Safety Apps

1. Air Alert App This is the only reliable way to get alerts. The public air raid sirens play softly and only for 5–10 seconds. They will not wake you up.
2. Local Telegram Channels Ask locals — hotel staff, waiters, whoever — for the best current Telegram channel for air alert information. There are many, and most are run by the community. They will tell you what is in the air when an alert goes off, which helps you make a better decision about whether to shelter.

The Socials

Odessa Social

There were about 150 women at the Odessa social. The venue was well laid out, with a party floor on the lower level and a quieter upper level where it was easier to talk.

Kyiv Social

Holy heck. The Kyiv social was madness.

First, we got on a 7+ hour bus ride from Odessa at 6 a.m. The social started at 1 p.m., so we had about 15 minutes to check into our hotel rooms and get ready.

The social had 240+ women attend. Kyiv also has a much higher number of fluent English speakers and women with US Visas. It was held in one moderately sized bar, so it was packed. There was no quiet place to sneak away and talk, which meant you were almost always talking to groups of women at a time.

I am an introvert, so this was draining for me. There was no way to even say hi to everyone who attended.

I ended up going on a date with someone from the website who was also at the social, but whom I never actually saw there. There were also many new women there who were not registered on the website.

Social Strategy

Everyone had their own strategy.

Mine was to focus on quality over quantity, so I took six numbers and then only contacted four women. Other guys left with 30–40 numbers, way more than you could ever meet during the tour.

The most economical range is probably somewhere in between.

Everyone you meet during the tour is included in the price. If you stay after the tour ends, you are back to paying AFA for introductions.

So collect contact information from everyone you think is attractive who smiles back when you say hi. That way, you will have plenty of potential dates to line up if your main “quality” connections end up not being available.

Things to Remember About the Women

1. You are more invested in the process.

You are planning a trip for months and spending thousands of dollars to come here. Many of these women were just invited to a party on Instagram.

They all have the obligations of everyday life. The economy and inflation in Ukraine are terrible. Many women are working two jobs to get by and have been living under constant stress for years.

They may not be super available for dates. Some may be dating just to go to a nice restaurant.

2. The right connection will survive complications.

It is like Love Island here. Everyone is dating everyone.

Do not sweat it. You will be dating multiple women, and they may be dating several of the men. You will probably find out about it because the guys all sit around in the hotel lobby and swap stories at the end of the day.

Do not stress. Chances are, neither of you will end up with the same woman, and you will both end up interested in different people.

The right connection has a way of sorting itself out.

3. Send flowers.

It is a thing here.

Flowers.ua lets you send flowers to someone with just their phone number. There are also flower stalls on the streets, and a good bouquet costs around $25–$30.

It is a real cultural signal here, and the women may wonder if you actually like them if you never bring flowers.

4. Watch for red flags.

Some red flags I noticed from women who may have been trying to take advantage:

1. She does not want to move away from a translator.
2. She picks a restaurant or café in a shopping mall.
3. She schedules a date that costs more than any date you have planned with her so far.

It is fine if she wants to schedule a date. Just ask how much she expects it to cost, and then see how well she sticks to that budget.

I am sure there are many other red flags, but these are the ones I noticed.

Results

Last I heard, we are on track for three, maybe four engagements from the roughly 16 guys on the tour.

One couple is already engaged. Another man has bought the ring and suspects he will propose soon. A third couple is dating exclusively and having early discussions. A fourth is proceeding more slowly.

It is interesting to note that, among the success stories:

1. All of the men had planned to stay after the tour ended so they could continue getting to know their favorites.
2. All of the women were in Odessa.

I think this says less about the women in Odessa and more about how the tour was structured.

We had four days in Odessa, three days in Kyiv, and then the tour ended back in Odessa. If you made a strong connection in Odessa, there was a bit of an “absence makes the heart grow fonder” effect.

With such a short time in Kyiv, it was difficult to schedule a second or third date with the same woman. Odessa was also where the tour ended, and it is annoying, expensive, or both to travel between Odessa and Kyiv. So, if guys had connections in both places, they tended to stay put where the tour ended.

Ok, so for a long time the State Department could pull the passport of a man with a large amount of back child support and did occassionally. I knew one guy who got his passport pulled back in 2018. He was an oil field construction superintendent, and he owed maybe $450k in child support for kids who were pushing 18. It was a mess.

Anyhow, now the Trump Administration is about to get serious with this effort: The revocation program, plans for which were first reported by the AP in February, soon will be greatly expanded to cover parents who owe more than $2,500 in unpaid child support — the threshold set by a little-enforced 1996 law, the State Department said.

Wow!

There are a lot of guys who will not even know they are short $2500. That is really not much money in the modern world.

Here is the article.

Read the article, and then if you even think you might have a problem, check and be sure you have a record showing you are clear. This is going to end up stopping guys from buying tickets and getting them pulled out of line for interrogation at passport control.

My friend who owed a fortune, he didn't know he owed anything, so check.

EDIT: No, I have no idea about how to find out if there is an old child support lien against you, but I will investigate and post something in the next few days.

This is a short video from a social by someone who was on the recent tour to Ukraine. They said it went awesome!

This appears to be at the very start of one of the socials. I am not really sure.

If you don't know what I am talking about check out this link: AFAmatchmaker