RUSSIA

"Is this the Russia that you love?" asked Sue after we'd come to Voronezh and spent the night in the train station.
To me it was a typical clean and slightly noisy night on the road. Been there, done that. To Sue it was a lesson not to enter a city after eight. Later Sue got to know the toilets, the Siberian mosquitoes, the poverty of the people, the many things one can buy from the side of the road. Sue found out that Russian hotels sometimes do not accept tourists, and how bad can the asphalt actually be. Sue found out that in the Siberian Nowhere there are very advanced towns like Novosibirsk.

I have been travelling in Russia for three summers now and am not surprised anymore. The people are poor when you look on the outside, they drive noisy and smelly cars, without any conditioner but the open window, still if you take a glance inside, Russians are very rich in their soul. Even without any academic degree life has given them the experience no higher educational facility could ever provide.

Serafim was 51. He had spent four years in prison. He had worked as a gold-miner in the taiga, been a carpenter, built train stations in Moscow, worked as a farmer and was now driving trucks in the areas where there are no roads - just the destinations. As we parted with Serafim in Kurgan, he took the road north to Nadim which is close to the Arctic Ocean.

Every Russian has to be able to fix his car because:
1. It breaks down once too often
2. There is too often no alternative of getting outside help: no service would come as far as you can go in Russia, moreover, most of the time the phone has no connection in between Siberian towns.



Driving on the broken asphalt we have heard unbelievable stories of off-the road conditions. Going through the rivers and driving in the fields is easy compared to driving across the ice blocks in Yakutia during springtime. The cars have to drive from one floating ice block to the other to reach the other shore.

These are just few moments from our road here to Novosibirsk - everything is ahead!

Yes, this is the Russia that I love!