The End

After getting a new chain wheel and chain for Marcin's bike in St. Petersburg we had no more problems with the bikes and quickly passed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The last days were very cold and rainy, so the riding was no pleasure. We were looking forward to getting home and doing something else for a change. And here we are. With many nice experiences and memories, hundreds of photos and a few additional kilos on the hips. No surprise after sitting for four months and 25.000km.

It was a great trip. And now it's time to move again.

Kazan and St. Petersburg

I forgot to say that we had more problems with Marcin's motorbike, but with the help of some angels in the beautiful cities Kazan and St. Petersburg we could solve them and keep going. More about this when we get home and our fingerrss are no longer frozen.

Racing home

We left Russia yesterday and Estonia just a few minutes ago. We should be in Bytom in two days. Would be great to have more time in the Baltic states, but it is already so cold here that we are happy not to be here any later.

Russia is sooooooooooooooo big...

... and so nice. We really like this country and its people. It is totally boring and terrible and absolutely no fun to ride on the bikes on this Russian Autobahn towards the West with its terrible traffic, but whenever we stop we meet nice people. In Tomsk we met my friend, ate great food, were lazy and had our first and only Russian banja session - this time it didn't burn! Also we did some little things on the bikes and after relaxing days we moved on to Omsk. Waiting at traffic lights not knowing where to drive someone from the car next to us asked if he could help us. And this nice guy not only let us use his internet in his office, but also took us to a friendly biker and mechanic, who did a lot of nice things to our motorbikes. They are running a let better now. I don't think we we would make it home without this help. Also he invited us to stay in his house, which we did and had a really nice evening with him and a few more guys. Photos of all this soon... then 500kms later Marcin's chain... this rear wheel with teeth.. i have no idea what is in English - it lost all teeth and he couldn't ride any further. The first car that passed us was a truck. Marcin was screaming and waving his arms (I think he was just having a fit) and so this truck stopped. Since they were on their way home and it was empty, these nice people took us to Ekaterinburg. I rode my bike another 120 kms to Tiumen following the truck, then I was frozen from head to toe and had to give up. So we put my bike besides Marcin's and comfortably rode to Ekaterinburg in the warm truck cabin. Since the hotel close to the BMW center asked for an ridiculous amount of money we decided to spend the night in front of the BMW center. The next morning we were welcomed with tea and coffee.. how nice. The people there were really helpful and friendly. Since it would have taken at least 4-5 days to get this new part from Moscow we finally got a similar one from a different BMW motorbike. They made it fit onto Marcin's bike and we could leave the same day! So we made our way to Kazan. Yesterday Marcin's bike started to suddenly switch off when riding. We don't know why it is doing this, but he is putting in new spark plugs right now and hopefully it stops doing this afterwards. Otherwise we need a new plan. If the bikes keep running we'll ride to St. Petersburg and on towards Estonia.