I’ve been driving four hours through Saratov to find a mechanic which mounts my tires! I’m not good in doing it myself, did it only a few times and I’m afraid to destroy the tubes…

So every motorcycle shop in Saratov only sells bikes, but does not do services or tire changes! And the tons of car tire shops don’t do motorcycle tires!

Finally, some nice guys called around and found Vladimir! He’s also car mechanic, bur drives a bike himself, so he wanted to help me out!

He had some troubles with the car tire machine to change the front wheel, the back one went fine. He’s doing metal detecting and even gifted me some old coins he found!

The day after he and his family took me to the park Pobedy, where a lot of old Russian military vehicle are displayed. And there’s a nice view over the city from the world war 2 memorial.

After camping wild the first night in Russia, I stayed for three nights in a very good hostel here in Volgograd: Scotch hostel

you have to visit the monument “the motherland calls” if you are here! It’s about as big as the American statue of Liberty!

but otherwise there doesn’t seem to be much to see here…