The Motherland Calls (and beyond)

It’s a long way south to see a statue. Was it worth it, you bet it was. I said before on facebook that it made the Statue of Liberty look small. In face it’s slightly smaller than liberty, but, The Motherland Calls is not on a plinth. Anyway it’s a bloody impressive statue.

The Motherland Calls

The hall of remembrance

Every hour they change the guard. Impressive!

I asked in the hotel if it was near. Yes she said, 5 minutes away. She thought I meant by car, I walked!! I ended up scrambling up through the gorse and trees every which way until I came out at the back of the statue. I caught a taxi back.

The bike loaded with the off road tyres 

The next two days were spent getting to Ufa to meet up with Uwe Remmers a German guy I had met through Horizons Unlimited who said he was going the same way as me at the same time and we could support each other through Mongolia.

Samara by the sea (or the Volga) but a beach never the less 

Lovely promenade in the evening.

The monument of Glory built to honor the local aviation workers

Rain that evening and the next morning made the bike and me very dirty with all the road dust and muck from the trucks. We managed to get to the Hotel the same evening and had no problem getting aqainted. He speaks perfect English and as travelers we have no problem finding things to talk about.

Uwe with his bike and we met a Egyptian guy, Sharif Loutfi riding to Tokyo on this Goldwing!!

We did a couple of the sights the next day as well as getting the bikes cleaned and ready to go.

Hands up who doesn't know this guy??

Salavat Luaiev, very popular in 1774

 Popular wedding day on the Saturday. He then picked her up and put her on my filthy bike in that dress!!

All through the small Russian towns and along the roadside wherever the traffic has to slow down there are people selling things. Some days it can be sleeveless warmers and garden gnomes and other days it can be home made honey or preserved fruits and berries, one day it was samovars. Whatever it is it’s the same thing all day. How much of it they sell is difficult to say as you very rarely see anyone stopped at the stalls.

The next four days  through Chelyabinsk, Omsk and Novosibirsk to Barnaul have been heavy going. 650–700km per day. I was asked if I was going so hard for a reason, but no the truth is that there are very few towns in between these places and the ones we stayed in have nothing much (as far as I could see) to make stopping any longer than overnight necessary. Time will be better spent in the Altai region and Mongolia which should be more scenic. The only relief from the open plains and wheat fields is when you cross over the Ural Mountains and enter the Asian side of Russia. Enjoying it is not that easy as all the trucks have to slow down, and then it becomes a game of dodgems with the traffic coming the other way to make any sort of progress.

our truck stop accommodation for the night

This is pretty much the view for hundreds and hundreds of Km 

In Novosibirsk the Opera House

And our hotel which may have looked "interesting" from google earth but it was very nice

On the way out there was this train museum. Unfortunately it wasn't open

So we are now in Barnaul. We have a nice apartment for two night and we are going to try to get the off road tyres fitted at a bike shop rather than struggle with them ourselves. The next post might be a while away as we will be entering Mongolia and who knows what awaits us there??

Hotel in Barnaul


In this area??

Into Russia!!

The whirlwind continues. We landed the next morning in St Petersburg, the ferry ride was very good with a very nice dinner on board and a smooth ride which didn’t provoke any sea sickness.

Not the nicest first view of St Petersburg

 Once they let us onto the car deck it was a simple process of driving round to the customs and waiting. There was only about 12 cars & bikes so our turn came quickly and the customs officials were extremely helpful in helping me fill out the necessary paperwork for the bike. 20 minutes and we were through. Apart from the girl not giving us the piece of paper to get out of the port everything was fine. She chased us to the gate and looked very sheepish as she handed the gate keeper  the necessary pass.

10 km ride through the crazy traffic was enough to get us to the hotel and even though it was so early they let us check in, gave us a big coffee then started ringing around to find insurance for the bike. By 16.00 I had the insurance and we planned the next days sightseeing around the city.

St Petersburg

The church of the spilled blood

It was cold

The Hermatage

It was bitterly cold in St Pete’s, but we rugged up and managed to walk into the main town centre and see some of the beautiful sights there. Modelled on Venice by Peter  the Great the canals and rivers intersect the city to give a wonderful calm to the place. We didn’t have the time to queue for the Hermitage Museum, but saw enough to satisfy our curiosity.

The buildings around the side of the Palace

The Venice of the North

Rural Russia is still as one might picture it. The old wooden houses line the side to the main road south to Moscow and while a lot are still occupied with some of the occupants selling fruit and preserves at the roadside to supplement their income, a lot have been left to decay and fall down. The traffic on this road is horrendous. It’s the main truck rout through from the Baltic states to Moscow. We spent the night in a small town called Torzhof and had fun trying to order something from the menu when nobody spoke any English. We ended up with a very nice meal though. The next day saw us battling the truck again and heading for Moscow while trying to organise some off road tyres for Mongolia. We arranged to meet Denis Panferov (the go to guy for tyres in Russia) at 14.30 at the hotel  About fifteen kilometres out from Moscow we ground to a halt with an hour to go before we had to meet Denis. Luckily a guy on a R1200GT came alongside and after a few hand signals and pointing at the booking.com sheet he led us into Moscow and right to the hotel. We made it with 5 minutes to spare. So to Alexander Politov a massive thank you.

 Alexander (left) and Denis a big thank you.

They say that New York is the city that never sleeps. Well I can tell you that it has a rival in Moscow, well at least in the bars below our hotel. Non stop from the time we got there until the time we left.

Red Square empty not something you see often.

St Basil's from the back

The State University

The walls of the Kremlin

The Bolshoi Theater

It took three attempts to see Red Square. The Friday night we walked down in the evening only to find that It was closed due to a concert and party for the secondary school leavers (which apparently  is a big thing here) and then the next morning we went back only to find that there was some military thing happening and it wouldn't be open until 14.00. We had to find Claire a case for her home flight so we braved the metro to go find somewhere. The Moscow metro is supposed to be the finest decorated stations in the world and although we didn't find the fanciest the ones we saw were impressive.

Finally into Red Square

Claire left on Sunday. I spent the rest of the day repacking and filling up my new found space in the panniers.

I fought the traffic out of the city on Monday morning in the rain. Not the best way to leave but everyone it seems was taking care, so that was a good thing.

Next stop Volgograd (ne Stalingrad)

The Baltic States

There’s a marked difference between the prosperity in Poland and Lithuania. As soon as you cross what used to be the border, it becomes a lot more rural, until you hit the capital of Vilnius where all the money is, and it shows, large cars, and around the hotel where we stayed, some expensive shops.

 Our Hotel

The pedestrian gate we went out of.

We stayed in an old Monastery (again) which was right in the old town and while the GPS was having fits about where we could and could not go, I ignored it and drove straight through the no entry signs to the place. I still don’t think they apply to motorcycles anyway.

Vilnius Cathedral

Like in South America this was a country a day through the Baltic the next being Riga. The high temperature we had all through Austria and Poland disappeared and the rain came too, not constant but some heavy showers that managed to soak us. We had chosen a nice hotel about 6km out from the centre on account of the fact that the centre hotel prices in Riga can rival the best in Paris or London, I kid you not! $160 for a crappy one bed room with a shared bathroom, up to $5000 for two nights in the better ones. We caught the bus into the city the next day and were pleasantly surprised at the old town centre again.

Riga Old Town

Statues of days gone by

 

Apparently St Christopher came from here

Commemoration today of the Latvians taken to the Gulags

A local brew which is supposed to be restorative. It tastes like cough medicine!!

Yesterday we started on the final leg up to Tallinn. No rain this time, in fact glorious sunshine most of the way but the temperature was only about 14 degrees and with the wind coming off the Baltic Sea it felt even colder. This hotel is only 100m from the ferry terminal and about 500m from the old town centre again. Although we were tired we made the effort to walk into town last night and we were both glad we did. I think Tallinn old town centre is the best we’ve seen yet with a lot of Medieval cobbled streets and spires. We found a nice restaurant in the centre of the old marketplace and after a good meal and a glass of red we wandered back to the hotel and flaked out.

Tallinn old town

The town hall

Time for Dinner

Originally Medieval, noice!!

 Panic this morning to find I haven’t packed the Russian maps for the GPS, so now sometime today I have to find a 2 gig SD card to put them on again while we are on the ferry tonight heading to Russia!!