Just beer

pictures of the beers I enjoyed on my journey.


Border crossing Russia-Kazakhstan (Saratov to Oral/Uralsk)

Long queue of cars at 9 in the morning already in front of the border area. But they let me in front again, I sure saved at least 30min. The Russian police guide each vehicle into a lane (again waiting in queue of cars) and notify you when you are allowed to go to the booth. After the passport is cleared they make a security check of your vehicle (open all doors, hood, trunk, panniers). In the end you are supposed to get a ticket to show at the exit. I didn’t get one, but a quick radio call of the officer at the gate and I was free to go. I guess it was about 30min.

Again a queue in front of the Kazakh border area, they only let about five cars in at a time.
No skipping here, waited about 15min. Two booths with two officers are available. You have to leave your vehicle and go to one of them. They didn’t seem to have seen a Swiss passport or vehicle registration ever! Even with the passport in his hands he needed to ask where I’m from! His colleague helped him out and together they finally managed to type everything into the computer. I asked about the temporary vehicle import form like in Russia (as I’ve read it’s needed in Kazakhstan), but he declined. But he’s English was not really existent and my sign language may not be good enough…
Took about one hour, so 1.5h for the whole border crossing.

There are some containers just 50 meters after the border. The first one was open and just looked like a mini market. But they also sell vehicle insurances and do change money. I paid 3000 rubles for a 30 day insurance (overpriced?).

Biker festival in Marks, near Saratov, Russia

Vladimir and his family invited me to join their friends at a biker festival in Marks near Saratov!

it was so much fun! I had one of the best times in my life! I’ve got a ‘special guest’ tag and didn’t have to pay the entry fee 🙂

I had to go on stage and received a present: a very nice leather belt with bag! It looks good on my bike 🙂 but I still don’t know why I got it, as the presenter spoke just Russian and I was drunk!

 


 

New tyres mounted, thanks Vladimir!

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.

 


an AfricaTwin on the loose