Russian German Friendship

After my lovely stay in St.Petersburg I was driving in more or less a straight line to Perm and Ekaterinburg, and the road was leading me trough the Russian countryside with is poor appearence compared to the Cities which are wealthy like in Europe. All people are very kind to me but especially on the countryside it’s hard for to get in contact with them because I sadly doesn’t speak Russian.

The streets are getting more interesting but the parts which are unpaved are transforming to a bikers nightmare when they are getting wet and I have to balance for kilometres in my first gear over the slippery ground.

Also just a short stop at the street side can be dangerous when the ground looks stable but isn’t after days of rain.

In the evening I want to search myself a nice camping place when I see this nice view in the light of the setting sun. Right in this moment showing up two motorcyclists from Moscow and ask me to join them to a nice spot for camping. This was the beginning of some funny coincidences when fortune tells what to do. After the night of drinking we decided to drive together for some days, but the fork of Alexeys bike was leaking oil so we had to search for a service station first. Therefore we were afreight that it will be hard on a Sunday. But we were just on the road to the next town a Car stopped next to us when we have to go for a short toilet break, cause he saw my German number plate. He could recommend us a great mechanic which was willing to help us on a Sunday. The mechanic could fix the fork and recommended us a great camp yard.

On the camp yard they showed me a real Russian banja. A banja is the Russian version of sauna. We had together shashlik and were visiting a monastery and a Ice cave.

And of course have a lot of motorbike fun between.

Next we met Oleg which was introduced to us from the mechanic some days before. A crazy skydiver and motorcyclist. By the way if someone wants to learn skydiving or just wants to try it, I can introduce you to Oleg, too. He is a great man. Oleg liked our funny motorbike constellation and joined us for a ride and showed us some places a foreigner is never able to find. Fore example this village which was build from German prisoners in the second world war and it’s obvious that the houses are build in a German style of building. Later on this evening we were going without Oleg hiking to a great place were we set up our tents and drink beer, vodka and cognac till the beautiful sunrise. On this evening they destroyed me completely and I had such a hangover that also the refreshing bath and a tea from a nice local didn’t helped to get me fit again. After a day of relaxing shashlik and banja and just less alcohol we were able or better sayed allowed to drive our motorbikes again. On this day Oleg joined us again and showed us around to some churches and tolled about the history of those places and the difficulties in the Soviet time.

This night we were staying together at a nice river were we had a boat trip in the evening sun, around the islands in the river.

On the next day we were driving just on unpaved roads and also completely offroad. So we were staying on one point in the middle of a diamond mine. Perhaps I sill have some of the diamonds in my tires.

Later on we wanted to camp on the top of the mountain in the background but it was raining and very cold so we decided not to do it. But before we had to get Juries tire fixed.

Sadly the vacation of my two friends were coming to an end and so they had to drive back to Moscow. I hope they will visiting me in Germany and I can also introduce them to our culture.

So I was driving again further in direction of lake Baikal and was crossing after 7600 kilometres the boarder between Europe - and Asian continent to do my laundry in Ekaterinburg.