Russia

Yesterday we arrived in Russia. After only 4 hours and endless filling in of forms (in Russian only) we were finally allowed to cross the border, after a nasty border officer forced us to pay him 50EUR! Not nice, and next time I will not pay, but after 4 hours of filling in the same forms again and again, because always something wasn't right we gave up... just after the border heavy storm and rain welcomed us. When I stopped at the side of the road, it was raining so heavly that I unfortunately didn't see the police that was waiting close by... so Marcin was led to the office, where a rude guy asked him to pay 200EUR (we did nothing at all wrong). He wanted to take of his number plates from his bike (but we strongly opposed to that) and I had to wait outside in the rain with several other police guys. But they were really nice those guys, and while Marcin was being tortured (noo.. he just had to sit and wait really, the guy thought that would make him pay this ridiculous amount of money, but we have more time than them :) ) I had a quite funny time outside. One of them spoke a little English and they were quite curious, one had even lived in Munich for a while (but spoke no German!?!). So in the end I think they told the other guy to let us go... Marcin wasn't so happy, but I think it was a funny event. Anyway, after hanging out there for quite some time we had dried and the rain stopped, so we went to Rostov-na-Donu and here were are now. We asked a nice person at the side of the road (with bad traffic jam) where we could possibly find a hotel. And he took Marcin with him to make phone calls and well, it was all too expensive so we ended up staying with him and his family. It is amazing how nice people are here and everywhere along the trip. Sure some funny ones as well, but in general most people are nice and want to help. In Ukraine we did some food shopping and as always when we stop somewhere some young guys walked up to us and asked some questions about the motorbikes. The standard questions are how fast they can go, and the second question is either how much petrol they use (if older person asking) or how much they cost (if younger person asking). Well, one of the guys was particularly happy to look at the bikes and after talking a little he asked us to stay with him for the night. Shortly after this his mum walked out of the shop, and she was really really nice, so we decided to stay and it was extremely nice. We left the bikes on their property (with a watch dog) and went for a little walk around the small town. When we were just on our way home, the nice mum called to say the house was burning. And it was! She was heating the Banja (sauna) for us, which was right in the house, and unfortunately the wooden walls started to burn!!!! Firemen came with a water hose and it was of course huge excitement, smoke everywhere...... in the end I think it was only a not too big part of the wall that burnt, but well.. we felt really sorry, because somehow it was because of us.
Tomorrow we will leave Rostov and ride towards Kazakhstan. Maybe to Volgograd first, but then it is not that great to go to larger cities with the motorbikes, because we can never leave them anywhere without one of us watching them. And to walk around in heavy motorbikes clothes is not that comfortable. So I guess on this trip we'll take time to drive slowly and see everything on the side of the road, rather than walking around. And hopefully in Central Asia hotels will be affordable, so that we can leave the bikes every now and then and do some sight seeing together. Apart from that, the motorcycles are running well so far. I dropped my bike in the mud once. That must have looked quite funny but I got a heart attack (almost) because it felt like ice skating on a 280 kg heavy ice skate, that will squeeze you if you are unlucky enough to get some body part between the thing and the ground... well, it wasn't bad at all, but I really dirty afterwards :) Since the people we are staying with are expecting us to be home soon I better go.