We are back home in Sweden again! Not home in Stockholm but in Regna, a small village located 200 kilometers southwest of Stockholm. Our friends Staffan and Gunilla runs a hostel here and it has become a tradition to end our trips by visiting them at Regnagården. But we still haven´t talked any swedish. Staffan and Gunilla had a bunch of friends/relatives visiting from the States so we are still communicating in english. The only difference is that they actually understand what we are saying. That was not always the case in Russia and Mongolia. 🙂
Kazan…… Wonderful city. The last days in Russia was mostly just riding west to get us towards the Estonian border and the ferry home from Tallinn. We left Kazan and drove to Nizhniy Novgorod. Long ride. We stayed at Hotel Ibis and that was probably the biggest disappointment when it comes to accommodation during our whole trip. The area around the hotel was a construction site and it was hard to get to the hotel. And the staff was arrogant and not helpful. We needed some sort of parking permit from the hotel to park the bikes and the guard would´t let us through to the parking area before we had that paper. So I had to leave the bike and find my way to the hotel by foot and the staff made things terrible hard for us even when we had booked and paid for the room in advance. Took forever and a great line of cars lined up behind our bikes to get into the parking area. We parked the bikes finally but this was only the start of our troubles at Ibis Hotel. To make a long story short, if you ever visit Nizhniy Novgorod, don´t stay at Hotel Ibis. There are better places to stay.
The ride from Nizhniy Novgorod to Torzhok northwest of Moscow was even longer and the traffic got more and more crazy the closer we got to Moscow. Got very scared a couple of times. Close calls. I got angry at a police officer and yelled nasty things to him in english but I think Eva might write about that…… She found it amusing. 🙂 One thing that was not as amusing was that we passed a traffic accident an hour before we arrived to Torzhok later that evening. A car had collided front to front with a truck and there was not much left of the car. We saw a dead woman laying on the road and I guess she had gone through the front window of the car and it´s rather likely that she had not used the seat belt. Both me and Eva felt sick after having seen that. Not a nice thing to see and they just let her lay there on the road for everyone to see…… Perhaps they do that so that other drivers hopefully will learn a lesson. Don´t overtake other cars/trucks if you can´t see what´s further down the road and use your seatbelt….. And respect the speed limits. Seems to me that quite many russians leave their brains at home when they drive their cars….. At least around Moscow and the bigger cities.
We were soo tired when we arrived to Torzhok. Crashed in bed. Long ride the next day too when we should drive from Torzhok to Pskov located 50 kilometers from the Estonian border. Wanted to be at the border early so that we should make it to the ferry in Tallinn before the boat left at 6 in the evening. No problems at all at the russian border and Eva talked us in front of the line of russian cars when crossing the border into Estonia. Leaving Russia/entering Estonia took no more than 20 minutes. It´s totally amazing what a couple of hundred meters can do when it comes to peoples attitude in traffic and road quality. As soon as we passed the border into Estonia, the roads were just perfect and people was respecting the speed limits. No more mad overtakings and the ride to Tallinn was so relaxing that I almost fell asleep on the bike. No looking out for potholes, no 3.000 trucks in line at road construction sites, no BIG black clouds coming out of the exhaust pipes on cars and trucks, no crazy overtakings and none that tried to kill you in traffic only because they were in such a hurry….. Just a relaxing and nice ride with no surprises all the way to Tallinn….. 🙂 We arrived in perfect time to the ferry terminal and had a great evening aboard. I could´t eat much during dinner since I was so tired tho. Just wanted to go to sleep. Long days on the bikes combined with the russian traffic/roads for sure wears you out. Went to sleep before 10 and slept for 11 hours. Was still tired when I woke. Muscle and bones were aching. We drove off the ferry and called our friends Staffan and Gunilla to check if they had any rooms for the night at Regnagården, the hostel in Regna that they run. We passed by our home on the way through the city. We just drove by and continued to Regna some 200 kilometers southwest of Stockholm. Dinner and some wine with our friends and their american friends/family. Lovely evening indeed. Got to bed before 11 and slept til 10 almost……
Some pics……
The Kremlin in Kazan at night.
Another shot of the Kremlin. It´s on Unesco´s world heritage list and well worth a visit.
Smaller russian road. Took a short break to drink and rest abit. One of many breaks……
Beautiful rainbow in western Russia after a rain shower…..
We made it to the ferry in Tallinn. Great feeling in many ways but still sad. The trip is coming near it´s end…….
It will be great to be back home again in a couple of days but we miss Mongolia and we miss our russian and mongolian friends that we´ve met during this trip.
Minutes before driving on to the ferry……
Why put up a ash tray in a cabin were smoking is not allowed…..? 😀
Fantastic weather during the crossing. Calm ride.
Desert after the dinner. I almost fell asleep at the table and Eva was quite wasted too….
Fantastic sunset indeed. More so IRL than in this pic…..
The ferry goes through the archipelago on it´s way into Stockholm and it´s a beautiful ride.
Look. No trucks! No cars! We took a short break along the road on our way to our friends in Regna.
This grumpy old man is our friend Staffan playing Wordfeud on his cell phone outside the hostel this morning.
Our bikes outside Regnagården. Great motorcycle roads in this part of Sweden.
We´ll leave from here within an hour or two. I´m considering going to the toilet Mongolian style in Staffans garden before we leave to round up the trip in a nice way. We´ll be home in Stockholm again later this afternoon/evening. Havn´t seen our apartment for almost 7 weeks and I´ve not seen my basses since then either….. I miss my basses!
We´ll write another post to sum up the trip in a few days when we´ve had time to settle down and rest abit. Both Eva and I have work to go to on monday morning and we need to get things organized and fill up the fridge before then. But it´s has been a FANTASTIC trip! Fantastic people that we´ve met and memories for life. Glad we did this. But I´m tired. LONG way to go and hard riding. But a fantastic feeling now when we´re home again. More in a couple of days. Take care til then.
//Jan
Birka Adventure Riders 