Eastern Europe

Well here is finally some blog.

We left Volgograd in Russia and went towards to Ukrainian border in the south by the black sea. On the way the police had to stop my and say goodbye by fine for $100 for driving on 101 km/h in a 90 zone. So stupid but nothing you can say about it. Our last night in Russia we got invited to a party that few guys were throwing for one of their brother that was wisting them from Moscow. It is so funny in Russia that people don't talk or don't even try to talk to us normally, but after few drinks they get so interested about those strange foreigners. And they treat us like kings, buy heaps of drinks and food, and we have to drink and eat it all.

Ukraine is so similar to western Russia, we talked about the only difference we did see was the large number of really beautiful ladies we experienced in Russia did not exist in Ukraine in so great quantities. We had decided we wanted to sleep by the black sea. After quite a bit of search and directions from locals we found the perfect camping spot just by the sea. But this spot did not turn out to be as perfect as it looked. In the evening we got eaten by the flyes and in the morning we woke up really early because it was so hot and the tent was full of small ants. They had got in the tent in the motorcycle gear we had left on the ground while pitching the tent. Next day I my rear tire lost air just before the Moldovan border. I had driven through the tire and the tube. This was the tire we had put under in Mongolia but we had our old tires from SE Asia for spares. Ukraine was also really hot, definitely the hottest country we traveled in Europe. We also drove through the most polluted city we have been through there, half of the city was just large factories producing clouds of smoke.

We arrived into Moldova quite late and decided to head to the capital which is 80 km from the border. The border crossing went good. We just had to pay the immigration officer some beer money to fill out the forms for us as they were all in Moldovan! We left the border and after maybe 10 km we got to a bridge that was guarded by soldiers with machine guns, and they also had some military vechles on the bridge so it was just one way bridge now. But after the bridge we came to the first road intersection. On the other side of that intersection the police and the army had some buildings by the roads. First a police officer stopped us and wanted to see the drivers license, he then pointed us to go to some other officer. He was a passport inspector and finally he pointed us to go into a building and that guy wanted to inspect the registration papers for the motorcycles. We got out of this without paying but a little further down the road another police check point. We got stopd and a "nice" officer pointed us to come in with him with our papers. He checked our passports and then pointed to a amount we had to pay. We ended paying him and when leaving he said we would need to go across the road to get our drivers licence registered. That guy took my license hammered some random stuff into the computer and then asked for 10 Euros. We payed him half of that and did off course not get anything back. As we finally got to the city the police stopped us one more time there. But they gave up on us very quick as we always started to talk about something else instead of continue searching for our driver licence. After checking into the most soviet hotel we visited in our trip we got inspected by the for the final time after dinner when walking home. As you need to carry your passport all the time in Moldavia we both had our passports this time. First the took Viggos passport he took Vissos passport and started writing info in some paper he found in the car while he was once in a while asking, beer money for police, beer money for police. Viggo just no beer money tonight. Then he took my pass and did the same exept this time the standard was higher. He asked for Cognac money for the police Cognac money. They are so pathetic, go lower than hungry people in many places. But apart from this Moldavian people were really nice and the country was more beautiful than Russia and Ukraine.

Getting into the EU in Romania was nice and easy. This beautiful country recently got into the EU and the first thing they seem to have changed there is every second person is wearing high visibility west now. It is a bit odd seeing old farmer with hat on his horse wagon in high visibility west. The EU also seem the have shipped large loads of asphalt as most of the roads had new. They were also starting construction on some large highways. But it was nice to see the horse is still so much used in Romania. We drove a really nice route trough the northern part of the country. This is definitely a country we can see us wisting again.

Now we are in Sönderborg in Denmark at Sighvaturs Viggo cousins place. We are going up to Hanstholm to take Norrænu in the morning. We will sail to Faeroe Islands and arrive in Iceland on Thursday 9 AM. But we know it is going to be some struggle to get the bikes through customs because they do not meet the EU requirements. But those bikes have been imported from the US so I'm sure it will be OK. We have therefore decided to drive to Reykjavik on Friday, not Thursday.

Now we are finally world famous back home as we came in the newspaper, see it here and here.

Well it will be nice to be home soon,

Take care,Ingo