My UK Mum

Cassie: As predicted, today was a very special day. We finally met the beautiful Elsie, whom I've dubbed my "UK Mum" and her budgie, Freddie. It was so lovely to sit comfortably over a cuppa and have a chat with Elsie (and to a lesser extent, Freddie) in her home. But it made it very difficult to say goodbye. Neither of us wanted to say goodbye. Yes, there were loads of tears and I honestly was crying my eyes out after we rounded the corner and drove away. I was trying to be so brave and not blubber too much as we were saying goodbye. One beautiful thing Elsie said as we were leaving: she was giving me a hug, turned to Graeme and said through her tears, "Thanks for bringing her here". Thanks for being here, Els x. It has been a truly wonderful way to end our trip. Something I'll never forget.

Tonight we've stopped near a castle that Elsie recommended we see. It's called Tynemouth Castle perched high up on a cliff and it's really crumbly looking which is perfect! Just the way an old castle should be. We were too late to walk through it so we'll check it out tomorrow morning before heading off. There you go, Mum, we're going to see a castle :)

We emptied out our "pantry" and fridge of anything we don't think we'll use between now and when we farewell the car, and gave it to Elsie. It's nice to know all that stuff is going to be used. There was even an unopened bottle of juice and a packet of soup that came with us all the way from Russia. It was always a bit difficult to gauge how much food to buy at a supermarket when we needed to.

I don't really have anymore words for today. I just want to let it sit with me for a while longer.

Graeme: Breakfast at Ed's was hotcakes with would you beleive, pepper. Nice one! Not entirely savory, just a hint. Wow, the generosity is astounding. We always make all these promises with people, like if you're in Australia, you must visit us etc. Not only do we genuinely wish that, I also hope real hard that we would offer such generosity to future strangers that come our way.
I fell asleep at Elsie's which provided a good opportunity for the girls to chat without me there. It's also sad clearing out the car. The car is becoming an empty shell, devoid of the colour that made it our home. Tomorrow we should get 2/3 to Southampton, leaving some time on Monday to clean it up, drop it off and catch a train to London town. We've still not booked accommodation or return flights in case there are complications with the car. I'm torn between wanting this trip to not end, and getting all the lame shipping, accommodation and endless hours of discomfort in cattle class.

Photos: Elsie, Ed & Tynemouth Castle

Coventry

Cassie: Today has not panned out how we thought it would – in a nice way. Not that we really had a plan in the first instance. The only thing on our agenda today was to visit the Transport Museum in Coventry – tick. Then as we were leaving Coventry, Graeme thought it would be a good opportunity to get the air conditioning in the car degassed for shipping (a ridiculous requirement of Australian Customs). We were lucky enough to find a mechanic who would not only do this for us straight away, but in the process asked if we would like to stay in his home tonight which he shares with his partner and son, cook us a home cooked meal, enjoy a shower and give us somewhere comfy to sleep. What the!? That’s so lovely. And that’s almost where we find ourselves now. We are waiting for our gracious host to finish up work then we follow him home for the night. Such amazing hospitality from a stranger. His name is Ed, and he himself has travelled to 55 countries! Can’t wait to talk to him more about that over dinner. Graeme is resting against the window of the car. He’s like a child that is all tuckered out after a big day.

Below is a picture of Ed’s workshop and the machine degassing our air conditioning.

Tomorrow we are off to see a family friend in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Elsie, if you’re reading this, we’ll see you soon!!! It’s very special to be seeing Elsie because she’s known me since I was a little girl but we’ve actually never met in the 20 or so years Elsie and my mum have been close friends. It’s going to be a special day.

Graeme (Written a fair bit later):
Wow. Seeing the bikes today was indescribable… but I’ll try. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always been more interested in the trip, the route, the sights, the trucks and the bikes, more than the people. Nothing personal, it’s that my dream didn’t have people in it. I still hold in high regard any anyone who has done something like this – so I guess in a way that’s a kind of respect. The show was for me a visual inspiration of what we the route looked like… I liked what I saw. Anyway, I digress. Seeing the bikes was like seeing proof! Proof that the route was dirty. Proof that it was rough. Proof that it happened.

I feel much more of a connection to the trip through the bikes than anything else. I had such respect for the bikes. I don’t know why. In the same way I have immense respect for our car. Tom said when planning this trip, that it would be a shame to do such a trip and leave the car behind. “Rubbish” I said, “There’s no way I’d be attached to an object”. Well, I was wrong. Although I’m not attached to it, I will always see it fondly. I can already imagine issuing it a respectful nod as I walk past it. Or when seeing it from a window. Knowing it was waiting for us in Siberia. Knowing it was our shelter when it rained. Knowing it started every morning. It’s earned its stripes in my eyes.

Back to the bikes, and kind of on that topic of proof. Seeing the welds in Russia, seeing the helmet comms. Seeing the 20117 miles on the clock. It all happened! It’s weird now that I look back on writing that.. of course it happened? I think that’s why I’ve been so desperate to retain the patina of our car. The dust, the water marks. The oil marks on the roof. It all screams authenticity that I can’t wait to share with the readers. The UK weather has washed most of it away, but for some sick reason, I’d kept cleaning one patch on the bonnet throughout the whole trip. It’s a brilliant white, which even now still sticks out against the relative beige surroundings.  I hope that others get the same out of seeing our dusty car as I did feeling the dust on the motorbikes. We can only hope that I’ve left enough dust, and cleaned off enough mud to satisfy customs. Pfst, lets face it, either way I’m going to get stung for ‘cleaning’, even if it was brand new – what crooks! I won’t have the luxury of putting mine in a museum, so you’ve got about a week to see it before I scrub it within an inch of it’s life.

One thing I haven't figured out with the bike; is I thought there was a dint or a scratch on the fuel tank when it was dropped on the rocks in Mongolia The tank was immaculate, with exception of the tank bag rubbing on top of it and a heap of stickers. Oh I could talk for hours but I must restrain myself.

The autograph I suspect was written to who won it at a charity auction.
We’ve just spent the most amazing evening with our host Ed. Ed. was the mechanic who de-gassed our air-conditioner who invited us for dinner. He spent hours preparing us traditional Indian food, followed up by Indian chai tea. Yum. The generosity astounds us. He set us up on their Wi-Fi too. He’s travelled through 55 countries, and instantly said you can’t sleep in your car. Stay with us. So we did. We’ve chatted for hours (it’s midnight now) about all manor of world politics, travel, finance, you name it. What an amazing man. We’re still touched by the hospitality of strangers.

Responses to comments:
Mum D: Plenty of research. Dead end after dead end. One photo, on a BBC Coventry website, about four years old suggested that Charlie’s bike was there (when the article was written). It was a long shot.
Chris B: Nope, didn’t shock me. In fact the section in the museum was so quiet, I could have thrown a leg over it. I totally should have.
Steven / Mum C: It does seem to have been quick. It’s amazing how much time there is in life to do the things you want.

Coventry Transport museum

I'm quickly posting this on cafe wifi because our access to Internet has unreliable. Yes. Yes. Oh yes. One of the bikes from long way round. Was it absurd that I had to touch it?
20,000miles on the clock. I'll post more once the giddiness has subsided.

Maartin

You can click on these pictures for larger ones. I’ve displayed them in this way as they roughly make up a wide view from the same location. More 360’s have been uploaded.

Today we visited Port Isaac in Cornwall and the port next to it. This is where scenes of ‘Doc Martin’ are shot. The motivation wasn’t so much the TV show, but more the coastline and surrounding farmland which is pictured. Well, I must say, the TV show matches it’s setting perfectly. Things are tweaked like, the school isn’t a school, it’s a hotel/cafe, but I suspect they take the signs down to make it congruent.

It’s stunning nonetheless. The weather in the few days we’ve been here has been predictably miserable. Windy as hell, drizzly, raining, freezing cold, salt spray and very occasionally a ray of sun shine.

Cassie: Camping is an extremely difficult thing to do in this country because seemingly all the land is privately owned. I thought Australia was bad for fences and gates, I’ve never seen so many fences and gates in my life as I’ve seen here! As you already know, we were moved on from our first camp in the UK by the traffic cops or whatever they were, last night’s camp seemed ok as it was a gravel carpark that backed onto some bushland. It probably took us well over an hour of driving around to find it so we couldn’t be too picky about where we ended up. We were woken up this morning by the sound of being surrounded by cars. Seems as though the locals use it as free all-day parking while they’re at work, so as you can imagine, we were worried about getting parked in so had to move on quickly. Tonight’s camp is in a truck stop carpark. The quality of camps has hit rock bottom. Normally at these rest stops you’ve got to pay for parking if you’re intending on staying for more than 2hrs which is a bit stingy I reckon, but this one appears to be free parking. The Brits don’t encourage drivers to stop and rest, that’s for sure!

There are caravan parks we could stay in but oh my, they’re so depressing here it just doesn’t seem right to have to pay for something that’s worse than staying in a truck stop carpark.

We had a great day today walking around the little village of Port Isaac. The coastline is beautiful – really rugged and green. We had lunch in a pub in the village. Graeme had sausages, mash and gravy and I had fish and chips with mushy peas. Very British and very good.

End of an era?

Leaving Paris, half way to Calais, we stopped at a truck stop for lunch. The wind was staggering. When I was getting back into the car, the wind caught the door and it flew as hard as you could throw it into the van next to us. The noise would have certainly roused attention, but it was no doubt lost in the wind. It cracked the side of their rear indicator. oops. I sat and thought for a while. The rest of the van was rough as guts, my bit of damage was completely undistinguished from the rest so we let sleeping dogs lie. We drove up to Calais and caught the euro-tunnel. It was cool if not a little underwhelming. We drove into a train and emerged some 30 odd minutes later a little bit darker and with 'Welcome to the UK' messages on our mobiles. I was concerned driving back on the left again after so long on the right. Traffic makes it much easier to get used to it. When there is none, and it's dark, it's a whole different ball game. We were fine.Stopped at a truck stop for so
me dinner and took off towards London. Staggeringly, our GPS said there was only 41KM to our destination, and seeing what had to have been London in the distance we decided to camp. Oh how we miss the ease of camping in countries previous. Tired from our evening channel crossing, we drove down a police-only off-ramp. The camp was slopey and noisy, not resulting in terrific sleep. This morning we were woken by highway patrol knocking on our window. They were nice enough, but it was so ironic how it was the last official night of the trip, having camped at least 80 nights previous without interruption.
We arrived at our destination, 25 Bulwer Street or, to people who are not oddly fixated on an 8 year old television program, the point where Long Way Round began. Having done the route in reverse, it seemed only sensible that this be our finish line. So much of our lives has been spent getting to this point. Cassie was rightfully emotional, but as for me, these things take a while to sink in. As if nothing had happened, we drove on towards Port Isaac(s). We pulled off the motorway and had lunch at an English pub. Steak and ale pie seemed to fit the bill. It came with mashed potatoes, peas, carrots and all that stuff we call comfort food.

The caravan park we planned to stop at tonight was a slopey, muddy and populated paddock - hard to charge money for I would imagine! We since have stopped down the road which is much better. There would be room for 10 cars, gravel underfoot etc. We may be over someone's back fence as some partyish conversation has developed close by. It should die down soon. Our normal tricks for finding camps are not working here. Every inch of land is private.

Thanks for all the comments on the photos and posts. It always makes good reading.

See you in the UK

haha all the comments were terrific. Ironically we had Syrian for dinner last night and couldn’t have been treated nicer. We’re on our way to Calais now to catch our 6-something PM euro-tunnel crossing. Hopefully our GPS is better behaved today.

We’ll probably not have internet tonight so we’ll hold off. It’s been on and off raining since last night. It’s made getting ready fun, but it’

More Photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/AroundParis2?authkey=Gv1sRgCLDe447CreWp-QE

If we don’t make it to the UK, it’ll be something to do with cricket scores. Our final border crossing I suspect?

Pictures from Bruges to Paris

Cassie: Here’s some more pictures…

https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/AroundParisBrugge?authkey=Gv1sRgCLP5rIL518eAWw

One thing we forgot to mention in our last blog post was the fact that our GPS aka ‘Juliet’, bless her cotton socks, took us into the centre of Paris when in fact we were trying to find the caravan park we are staying at well on the outskirts of the city. The whole reason we booked the caravan park was to avoid the whole Paris traffic thing but alas, we literally made it to the centre and had to get our way out of it again. Thankfully Graeme was driving and did a wonderful job of manoeuvring the Troopie through the tight traffic and narrow streets, All up, we were in traffic for maybe 2hrs or more. We think what happened is that the GPS ignored our recently programmed address for the caravan park and instead had a hissy fit and picked up the fact that we had previously programmed in Paris itself. Not a very logical explanation but it’s the only one we can come up with. Yikes, oh well, we lived to tell the tale!

It’s 11.30am on our second day in France and we’re tied up at the caravan park doing our washing of all things. But, it’s wonderful that they have a washing machine and dryer that we’re able to use. It just means patience is required when sitting idly by waiting for clothes to wash and dry. It sure beats washing everything by hand. Our sight-seeing today will be cut short but nevertheless, on the list today is Notre Dame. We’ll also try our best to find a cafe that doesn’t take the table top away when we ask for a cup of coffee. Although, we were both in stitches about that yesterday. Probably not the most suitable decorum for a cafe but you try keeping a straight face when a surly guy takes the table top away from you. “You want a coffee!? Well then, I must take this table top away from you!”.

Tomorrow morning we will be on our way to Calais for the train ride to the UK! Super excited. Looking forward to being able to use our language and converse fluently with people again in an English speaking country. It also means our trip is coming to an end. The UK is the final country on our itinerary. Some days I feel like I could continue for another three months, but I equally feel tired enough to make me ready to go home.

Paris

Graeme:
We visited a heap of the Paris sights today. Typical Eiffel tower, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triumph, outside of the Louvre etc. Was good. Paris centre is fairly pretty. As you get out in the suburbs the graffiti and rubbish skyrocket. I suppose that's typical of most cities.

Auxiliary battery in the car has definitely failed. Last two nights, the low voltage alarm has gone off, leaving the fridge also unable to run. It's one of those 'maintenance free' batteries so I can't top it up, but the indicator window says everything is OK. I figure for it to have failed so suddenly it must have had a plate collapse or something. It does read a full charge, and will run everything flawlessly for a while, but it'll go from 90% to 10% instantly. Oh well. It's a bit annoying. We're driving the 1km to the train station to give the aux battery a chance to leech some charge from the good battery and absorb some charge from the alternator.

Having 'attended' French at school, I'm the one sent on all the shopping errands. I was sent in to get UHT milk, tea, and breakfast cereal. I came out with UHT milk, breakfast cereal, box of assorted lollies and bruschetta bread. Cassie went back in to get fresh food which I was not aware was required. It's given me opportunity to write this as I sit in the car, charging every imaginable object whilst the engine is running. One trick we learned last time we had a car without an auxiliary battery, is we'd set the fridge temperature considerably lower a bit before we needed to stop. When we'd stop, we'd set it back up to the normal temperature. Doing so gave us a good few hours of additional run time because the temperature would take a while to rise from the lower temp up to the higher preset. Cassie returned with fresh vegetables amongst other things, one of which looked like a huge green chili. I posed a gentle suggestion that it looked like a chili but Cassie insisted it wa
s a capsicum.

Dinner tonight was Bruschetta, topped with beautiful fresh tomato and green chili... a discovery made one decent mouthful into it. (Cassie: Oops!)

Today we've not found Parisian merchants to be very lovable. We were very polite, talking in French, many bonjour's, SVP's, merci's and au-revoir's but are consistently rewarded with grunts. Maybe they are sick of tourists? But then again, Munich, Prague, Kiev and Brugge merchants seemed more than happy to engage with tourists. We are the constant in this equation, and so far, these mob are sticking out with a bad attitude. It's not a matter of matching preconceptions either. We were very excited to visit Paris and use what little language we had that wasn't Russian. It'd be fair to say that if you got out of the city and into the country, you'd get a totally different feel - this seems the same the world over. (Cassie: It needs to be noted that the girl in the supermarket was lovely to us).

One comical example was a fine specimen at a street cafe:
me: 'Bonjour monsieur'
it: 'Do you want lunch?' (He was speaking English to us and we were trying to do the polite thing and speak in as much French as we could)
me: 'Non monsieur, cafe?' pointing to an unoccupied table in the corner

He grunted as if we had asked for the world. Once we sat down he removed the cutlery, removed the napkins and placemats... wait for it.... removed the table top, revealing a round table. We're simple people. A square table, round table, no table. We're not fussed, obviously he was.

me: 'Un cappachino et un chad chocolat svp'
it: 'So one cappachino and one hot chocolate'
me: 'Oui svp, oh, 'sorry' et un creme brulee svp' (I didn't know what sorry was, but I figured he would)
it: grunt mumble

He delivered our goods, the creme brulee was HUGE. Like a quiche dish, but about half the size. Oh damn it was good though. Cassie reported the worst coffee the whole trip - that's saying something. It did look like yellow dish water, but my hot chocolate was good. Little tip to travelers to Europe - make sure your bank cards have the chips in them. Hardly anyone accepts swipe EFTPOS in Europe. Cassie thankfully has one card with a chip, but our joint ones and my one does not.

The attached picture of the chair is to irritate anyone who was expecting touristy photos around Paris - You'll have to wait.
The second photo is of a girl with a Hello Kitty crash helmet. And her scooter with the handbag hook.

Video

The video as promised:

Brugge/Bruges

Cassie: This is a seriously pretty city. Again, we’re staying smack in the middle of it living in fear of our car getting towed away. The parking machine didn’t work so we couldn’t buy a ticket for it. Oh well, we have no choice but to leave it where it is and see what happens because there’s hardly anywhere to park it. Hopefully it’s too heavy for them to tow away with any tow truck that could fit down these tiny, narrow streets. We’ve been told by the hotel reception that they don’t clamp cars around here. I think I’d rather the threat of a clamp than have the car disappear on a tow truck! Anyway, we’ll walk around to it tomorrow morning holding our breath and will hopefully be able to let it out with relief when we see the car still there. We’re really not that worried, I’m just dramatising!

Our hotel for tonight. You can just see part of the city canals on the right side of the picture

Today has felt like a real taste of how a European holiday should be. We started out our stay in Brugge by visiting a chocolate museum (when in Rome…or I should say Belgium). How could we leave Belgium with not having done something chocolate related!? At the end of the museum a chocolatier gave us a demonstration on how they make their basic chocolates and then we got the all important, much anticipated taste! We got to sample a hazelnut ganache-filled milk chocolate delight. Oh yes, it was gooOood. There are heaps and heaps of chocolatiers around this joint. It was hilarious to see a lady unashamedly stuffing her face with one chocolate after another right outside a chocolate shop. I question whether or not she was breathing she was stuffing them in that fast. She must’ve had some mad craving!

This was the chocolate we got after the demonstration by the chocolatier. The little fella didn’t last long!

This is the demonstration area

After that we simply strolled around, had some lunch, I bought some new shoes (I just had to because they’re so cool!), and coffee at a funky cafe.

A quote inside a chocolate wrapper

We have already booked a spot at a caravan park outside of Paris for a few nights. We think it’s unrealistic to have the car in Paris. Not only do we not fit into any parking garages because the Troopie is too high, we’ve heard that Paris is fairly limited when it comes to parking. So, we’re taking a different approach this time, staying outside of Paris for about 16.50 Euros a night which apparently also includes free wi-fi (not bad for a caravan park - you beautie!) and a metro station is about 700m down the road and it takes only 20mins to get into the city. Umm, awesome! It’ll be nice to know the car is somewhere safe and not potentially parked illegally while we’re out exploring.

Here is our photo album too: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/PragueToBrugge?authkey=Gv1sRgCObI8JmSiKawpAE

Ok, the real story

***To anyone who has not watched the teaser video below, you simply must watch it first. Scroll down***
Awards go to David & Jon for figuring out the riddle.

Graeme: The real story. Ok by now, anyone worth half their weight would have looked at our GPS locations and figured out where we were.
We went to Nurburg, to drive the Nurburg Ring's north loop (Nordshleif). We like to keep this as interesting for you as it is for us, so suspense was all part of it. Plus there is always a chance 'public runs' (I can't remember the proper German name for it) will be canceled or not scheduled for the day, so we didn't want to risk more disappointment.
Sure, it's probably not the first Australian car on the Nurburg ring, but you can bet it's a one in a million deal. Needless to say we saw heaps of Australians, but none in their own car and equally few hiring one and going for a blap.

To those who don't know, Nurburg's North loop is some ~20KM of turns, sharp descents and ascents surrounding the town of Nurburg. Jackie Stewart, a famous race driver coined it 'Green Hell'. When we'd planned this trip from the beginning, we had to come and give it a go. We're much happier to have given it a blap at this end of the trip, not the beginning!

The video will be uploaded in its entirety tomorrow.

Taking the troopie round was awesome!!! This isn't playstation people! 3 tonne, ~96KW diesel, mud terrain tyres and 100KG on the roof. What a hoot! We were one of the first ones out of the gate, taking off disappointingly slow onto the main straight. Like merging onto a highway up a hill it was laborious. Down the next hill it started to come into it's own. It's all about momentum with this beast. After a few quick corners a 90' right-hander washed our speed away. You'll see from the video a car just driving in pit lane was no doubt going faster than us.
If you ever see us on the right hand side of the track, you can bet we were indicating for someone to go past us. Staggeringly, some cars and bikes stayed behind, and when they went past, they were not going much faster at all. How were we possibly leading the pack? Two things the training revealed and is difficult to appreciate, is that 80% of the corners are blind corners, and that there is 300M altitude difference across the track. Holy hell! Having never driven the track before, not even so much as knowing the direction of each turn keeps you on your toes. I had played it before on playstation, but the ~150 odd corners tests your virtual memory. One piece of research I did suggested the biggest failing of bringing road cars to 'the ring', is people fry brakes. I was very mindful for this not to occur to us, with no airbags, crumple-zones and all those niceties. One more thing to consider when watching, is that this track was designed in the 1920's and therefore has 1920's
safety. There is hardly any room for run off. Ouch. I hope that doesn't all sound like excuses?

One corner I'd forgotten about is in the video around 4:34 when you hear the kettle roll out of the cabinet. Thank goodness for that car in front of us because I suspect we wouldn't have seen that corner as you can see so many before have also missed. 3/4 on the temperature gauge is the new record, but then again, I doubt it's ever had quite the 'workload' that it just had. Cassie, the ultimate co-driver, was quick to turn the heater on for some additional cooling! When we'd finished, we quickly hid the camera away (filming is prohibited) and went to the hire car place to pickup the next part of our adventure. Interestingly enough when we pulled up, the tyres were really sticky, but the brakes were virtually stone cold!... should have gone much harder!

The night and day change was the substitution of a Renault Megane, with it's ~2L turbocharged kick in the pants. For the first lap of all rentals, the instructor must accompany you. Initially I was really disappointed and inwardly angry that this technicality meant Cassie would miss out on this, but in hindsight, so many people would crash straight away, so I see why they do it. If you had plans of doing a few laps, the instructor would have been good training. Even now, with all maturity and calmness over me, he was still a major kill joy. As a passenger, I would have been the same. I wouldn't let some stranger drive within 80% of their limit with me in the passenger seat. The troopie was relatively more fun as I wasn't getting poo pooed at every opportunity. All that aside, it was still worth it, and if we'd have booked more laps, the laps after him would have been an absolute blast.The car was STUNNING! It's a RenaultSport R26R. Front wheel drive, carbon fiber bonnet, no
rear seats, hardly any soundproofing, roll cage and 6 point harness... this is a factory configuration people! The absence of soundproofing meant you could hear the roar of the air intake, or exhaust, or a combination of both when it came on boost. Either way it was thoroughly a treat to the ears. This very model achieved a time of 8 minutes something on this very track by a Renault test driver during development. Unfortunately, I don't know what my time was in this thing, but I'd estimate 12 minutes. It handled like it was on rails. No exaggeration. It would out-handle me by a factor of three! There was sooooooooooooooooooo much braking power, so much horse power and so much handling in reserves it was beyond words. 227HP, 310NM, 6.5second 0-100 time.

As we took off down the straight, it was cutting out like crazy at around 4000 RPM, like hitting the rev limiter, but at nearly half of it's 7000 RPM red line. Turned out it does this when it's not yet warm. Fair enough. Either way, it was still properly quick when we took off down the straight.
Note to self - must return and bring hoards of people with me. Spend a week here.

Cassie:
Graeme and I were originally thinking we would be spending two nights and one whole day around the town of Nurburg and surrounds to incorporate a blast around the track with ol' Troops and another the next evening in the Renault Megane. The reason for this thought was that public sessions usually run from 5pm - 7pm each day unless the track has been booked for something else. So we were under the impression the line up would be huge to get onto the track so we would only get one chance to go around one evening and would have to reserve the other run for the next evening. But, being mid-week our timing was perfect and there actually weren't many people around so, after both of us feeling a bit let down that the town of Nurburg is tiny and what on earth are we going to do there for the next 24hrs, it hit me like a tonne of bricks, why don't we do both runs in the one evening then we're free to do something else the next day!? I felt like the little girl on the Old el Paso ad wh
o suggests why don't we have both soft and hard taco shells!? We were both so excited that after a spot of lunch in a beautifully quaint town near Nurburg, we spun round to the place that hires cars out for the Nurburg Ring, parted with the cash and spent the next hour looking for a vantage spot for me to drive to so I could film Graeme zooming round a corner.

At our chosen vantage point, we met a German guy, Christian, who is a freelance photographer. He not only recognised that we are from Australia, he knew where New South Wales is because he lived in Byron Bay for a while! The world is so small in ways. His first inkling that we must be Australian was when Graeme walked past him with a cuppa in hand, wearing our distinct, hardy boots and also the kind smile and wave hello Graeme gave him. Then, when he turned around he was amazed to see from our car that sure enough, these guys are Aussie! I saw him walking around our car in awe so I said Hi and the first words out of his mouth were, "Did you bring this car from Australia!?". The Germans have been so friendly and warm to us. Not once have we been made to feel unwelcome anywhere we've been. I've lost count how many times someone has waved, given us a thumbs up and taken our picture on the autobahns. Seriously, we'll be driving along at 100kph or so and all of a sudden there'll b
e a car travelling beside us and when we look over there's big smiles, waves, thumbs up. It's fun that they're sharing our excitment at being here.

Anyway, back to the real story, the Nurburg Ring was such a thrill! We took Troopie around first and OMG, I've never been so scared in my life! Through the 154 corners on the ~20km track, I was literally gripping on to the "Jebus" bar in the car for probably 149 of the corners and my mouth was totally dry by the end of it. I think it's a scarier experience as a passenger. But, having said that, do I want to drive it? Nyet with a capital 'N'. Would I go out on it again? Yeah, absolutely. Maybe next time in a car that doesn't have such a high centre of gravity so hopefully the cornering isn't so sickening.

Seeing Graeme fly around the corner on the track was breathtaking, for a couple of reasons. It was amazing to see him accomplishing something that he really wanted to do, but my adrenalin was pumping. A race track is a full on place, especially when full of people who aren't used to a race track. I was a mixture of pride and worry when I saw him and in fact, if you look closely at that part of the footage on our video, you can see it shaking ever so slightly - that's me shaking from adrenalin and a bit of fear! Graeme wasn't concerned at all, he even managed a wave from the car as he drove around the corner!

We stuffed up our timing through Germany a little bit so missed out on seeing things like the Dachau concentration camp museum, the Porsche factory tour and the Porsche museum and I was feeling a little bit sad that it felt like we were missing out a little bit on such a wonderful country. But, hey, the Nurburg Ring! It's totally made up for it.

Teaser Video

Cryptic Post

Graeme:
I will tell a story with a wealth of clues and ambiguity. Once I have a chance to edit together the 14 something minutes of footage, you'll get the real story. Cassie drove this morning's shift. Some 200 odd KM of beautiful scenery and typical autobahn. Wind generators dotted the horizion. We pulled over to swap drivers and I drove about another 50KM. We had to buy a ticket for the toll road, and at 26 Euro it'd want to be a decent drive. We managed to find some gas canisters in a local hardware store. After that, we had a brilliant late lunch of hamburger and wedges whilst watching a wealth of brilliant new Porches, Ferrarai's and BMW's idle by. That sure was a lot of W's! After a late lunch, we went to somewhat of an information centre, then were back on the road by 5. Again, more beautiful scenery, some oddly familiar. Huge variations in altitude meant the car was warming up, but I guess it heated up in line with brakes and tyres. In what felt like a flash, the road had re
turned to where it had started. That was beatiful, well worth the cost. Not content with seeing it once, we returned to the information centre to see if there was a more immersing means of transport as I suspected driving the rough old troopie on this beautiful road was almost detracting from the experience. Indeed they did. Others too had come before we were told, also not satisfied with the experience they had. We were sent on our way again, but Cassie was more interested in taking photos, so the tour guide accompanied me instead. Off we go again, the tour guide offering a wealth of local knowledge. The road meandered by again, but somehow different this time. Like night and day something had changed. Again we'd returned to the information centre and I waited for Cassie some five minutes to come pick me up. We should have brought two cars!

Cassie picked me up, we drove into the bush to setup camp. Had dinner of zucchini, potatos and garlic with crusty bread. With half the crusty bread left over, it was drizzled with honey for a brilliant end to a brilliant day.

Tomorrow we plan to head for Brooge, we'll camp a little bit outside so we get a full day there the following day. We plan to be in Paris from the 22nd, so there's a good chance we'll catch up with some more family friends.

..To anyone who has suspected what was going on here, keep your comments to yourself. Once the teaser video is out you can do as you please! I suspect you will have this tomorrow if we find wifi.... fingers crossed!

Responses to comments:
Steven - So pleased to have you commenting again. You would have loved today's 'scenery'
Steven - I'll happily race you on a segway!
Warren - Yeah, they are good. And they should be in Canberra already.
Chris - I did consider getting a bag for a client of ours who works with indigenous affairs, but I feared they wouldn't see the funny side.

Hardware store bread

Graeme:
Today felt wasted. We turned up at Stuttgart, and by no surprise, the museum was closed. We had a look around what turned out to be a used Porsche lot, but they all looked entirely brand new. They were tantalizingls cheap too. I felt a bit inferior around all the suits entirely as if we were not entitled to be there. Hopefully that feeling will one day pass. We left for our next destination. More KM's. We needed some bread and gas canisters, so we programmed 'Juliet' to look for a super market. We left the autobahn and stumbled on a hardware chain called OBI. We figured this would be more likely to yield gas canisters. Nup. We walked around for 15 minutes. SO close, smaller & larger gas canisters, gas cookers (which included 2 canisters), but none of the extremely popular one we used. It looks as if they had sold out. We bought bread at the front of the hardware store and headed on back to the highway. We chose to try a supermarket chain that resembled Aldi, but was maybe cal
led Lidel. Turning left into the driveway, the steering bound up a bit. Nothing alarming, but it wasn't normal. I've since adjusted the offending ball-joint and it's not done it since. Isn't it funny, the only non-genuine Toyota bit on this rig is the bit that's failing. Can you imagine the look on the mechanic's face when I return to have them replaced again, having only done 25,000KM in 6 months. One would think by looking at out blog posts that we have a strange affiliation or affection with M&M's. Nope, they are just available all over... including the hardware store. Would you believe these ones taste slightly different? Different market, different tastes I suspect.

Position: 12-09-17 17:35:47 +0200 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=49.31958,8.486415&q=49.31958,8.486415&z=16

Leaving

Cassie:
The past couple of days with Gisela and Hans have been wonderful. They're exceptionally kind people and wonderful hosts. After a casual Sunday morning breakfast of fruit, bacon, eggs, toast and tea (we have been very looked after!) they drove us to the alps. What an amazing place! The mountains are out of this world beautiful. The scenery is like nothing I've ever seen before. We were so close to Austria at that point that over the other side of the mountains we were looking at was an Austrian village. We couldn't see it, but Hans assured us that it was there.

Graeme and I have been overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of Gisela and Hans during our stay with them. We were really sad to have to say goodbye to them this afternoon. They made us feel so comfortable and welcome. It made me realise how much I miss home now.

Graeme:
We think they were a little shocked to hear we were leaving. We're a little sombre after leaving. I think they genuinely enjoyed our company as much as we did theirs. We do however need to push on and cover some distance. We've driven maybe 50-60KM down the road, had dinner and fueled up. We had planned to visit the Porsche museum tomorrow in Stuttgart, but only just realised it will be Monday... the only day they are not open. fiddle-dee-dee. That's SO annoying! We missed out on the factory tour, now this. Far out!

As we were trying to find a camp tonight, we pulled over to let a car past while we looked for spots. After we drove up the road, he was stopped with his hazards flashing. We drove around him because it was only narrow and there was an intersection. It looked like he was trying to figure out his GPS. We drove down the road a little further and he put his lights on high beam. I pulled over, a little hightened, thiking, oh here we go. He drove beside us and asked in a broken german accent 'Do you need directions? I live around here', No thank you was the reply and he went on his merry way. Again, the generosity is staggering.

We both had a great sleep last night, and with all the 'mountaineering' today, we're looking forward to a good sleep again.
The autobarn's are impressive. They are much better now that we're on a three lane one. Two lanes was too difficult to overtake. You could never gain enough speed to make a gap in the fast lane without inconveniencing anyone.
Picture: Launch pad for hangliders. No turning back.


Position: 12-09-16 21:29:18 +0200 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=48.41257,10.72318&q=48.41257,10.72318&z=16

Hans and Gisela

Our hosts, Hans and Gisela have been beyond generous. They prepared a traditional German dinner for us. It included a brilliant traditional meat dish which contained what resembled frankfurt meat, but was of much higher quality with a crispy shell - sorry I can't remember the name of it. Warm potato salad with a hint of vinegar. Huge pretzels which are apparently very everyday here. Beers come in seasons here. Hans found some upcoming Oktoberfest season beer for our arrival and was no doubt mortified when I said I don't drink. Cassie and I had the equivalent of a glass between us for the taste.
Hans also went to the butcher very early this morning to try and buy something resembling bacon. It was made to special order and may become tomorrow morning's bacon and eggs. It's this sort of generosity that we are so grateful to have received. I can only hope that we would offer this level of hospitality if guests came to stay with us.
We went into Munich today. We caught the train which was typical German excellence. Smooth as silk, fast, quiet, clean and on time. It may not surprise you but Munich was again very touristy. The photos should give you some idea. We arrived with not much in mind other than to have a look around. We did just that. Looked around, coffee break. Looked around, lunch break. Looked around, returned home. We're pretty lazy tourists it seems.
I do regret a little not doing enough research for this leg of the trip. I'm certain we'll to return with more energy and explore further this beautiful place called Europe. When it comes to energy, I'm way out of it. My 'fuel light' has been on for the last two days. Even the drive here was peppered with breaks. Neither of us have slept properly the past three nights.
Tomorrow I think we're getting a tour of the area including an urban landscape Hans designed on his computer. After lunch I think we'll make a move and camp outside of Stuttgart.

So tired

Just a tiny micro post before bed. Arrived at family friends in the suburbs. Had dinner which was amazing. More later.

Did Someone Say “Segway”?!

Cassie: Today has been so much fun. After a super leisurely buffet breakfast at the hotel, Graeme and I went on a 3hr segway tour around the city of Prague and it was awesome. Made more awesomer because we were the only two in the tour group so we got a private tour of the city and didn’t have to go through a painfully long “training session” with other people. After a few minutes cruising around to get our bearings we were off. It was a bit bumpy in parts because of all the beautiful cobblestone streets but that just made it more fun. I did my usual trick when on two wheels and almost stacked the segway. Yeah yeah, three cheers for me. Some of you who know me know that I’m a little bit unco on two wheels and I tend to have a stack at some point. Well, we were on a particularly rough and narrow cobblestone path with slow moving traffic on one side and a wall on the other. The path was wide enough for one segway and one person to pass fairly closely together. There was a driveway that had a fairly decent slope to it and the trick is you’re meant to bend one knee and lean slightly in the opposite direction to the slope. Hmmm, apparently that was all too much for my somewhat limited coordination. It really wasn’t that bad, but I felt myself losing it and quickly had to turn the segway towards the wall and put my foot on the ground to stop myself careening crazily into the side of a car. I just stood there as still as I could, holding onto the segway until the tour guide steadied it for me so I could hop back on. Because the segway relies on your body movement for direction, having one foot still on it while being slightly forward can be a bit of an awkward predicament! But, crisis was averted. I’m absolutely fine, Mum!

The tour took us to parts of the city we would never have made it to. We also became somewhat of a tourist attraction because people are often amazed by the segways. I’m happily exhausted at the moment and would love a bit of a kip but I’m too excited! This city is so cool and there’s so much to do and see here.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a picture of the segways at our halfway coffee stop. Graeme’s was the black one in the foreground and mine was the one on the far left.

 

This picture was taken at the lookout at Prague Castle…

And this one was taken after our coffee break. I can’t believe we’re here seeing all of this! Look at that beautiful city!

PS: Thanks MumD for keeping your fingers crossed for fine weather! It was raining when we woke up this morning but by the time we started the tour it had fined up and the sun had made an appearance. It was still fairly cold today though, but I think that just made it more pleasant to tour around.

Graeme’s reading through the rules of the Euro Tunnel train we’ll have to take to get over to the UK. Here’s some funny ones for you. Rules rules rules!…

Section 8.4A – No person shall sing, dance, shout, whistle or play a musical instrument. (Damn!)

Section 8.4B – Use any apparatus for transmission, reception, recording, reproduction, or amplification of sound, speech or images. (Um, ooookaaaay, I promise not to. Wait, oops, I had my fingers crossed!)

Graeme:
Wearing a helmet on these things makes you look like a goon, but oh well. Saw a Ferrari FF… watch the video. Needless to say my attention was not at the percentage of egg mixed in the mortar, but rather at the red beauty and the photo potential.
Cassie’s a bit hard on herself surrounding her success on two wheels. She didn’t have any trouble, she just got stuck at a section with a side slope… and a gutter.
Prague is crazy touristy. It’d be 20 tourists to one local. I get that we are also tourists, but in future, I expect the streets to be cleared of other tourists before our arrival.

When referring to the photos below, this is the story surrounding the John Lennon wall. The John Lennon wall is on the side of the Malta embassy. After John Lennon’s death, a mural was painted on this wall. The next day it was painted over by the police/council. It was repainted. This went on for a few days, back and forth. As this was communist times, naturally this kind of thing was outlawed, except the locals negotiated with the embassy, and the wall stayed as it was property of Malta, not Prague/CZ. The larger cobblestones a the base represent Malta soil, so painting in the 1m section is permitted, painting beyond this was illegal.

Photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/AroundPrague?authkey=Gv1sRgCP2Yq7K66YOrlgE#

Prague

Cassie: Here’s a perfect example of one of the amazing roads – like the inside of a non-stick pan. Admittedly, not all the roads are this superb but they’re all pretty darn awesome in their own right.

In Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and to a lesser extent in Ukraine, the UAZ van (or Bread Loaf as we like to call them) was the predominant car of choice. Particularly in eastern Russia. In CZ the Skoda is the new UAZ. Not surprising I suppose considering the Czech Republic is the home to Skoda and UAZ is a Russian brand. Still there’s a heck of a lot of them! There’s so many Skodas here that you could be forgiven if you tried to unlock the wrong one.

Our hotel seems to be smack bang in the city. For the first time this trip we have to pay for parking. In fact, I had to stop typing mid-sentence just now to pop downstairs to chuck a couple more coins in the machine to buy another ticket. We’re paid up for the rest of the day now. We’ve snagged a spot on the street right outside our hotel that is for a maximum of 6hrs. Seems to be quite the score because everywhere else we’ve seen so far seems to be a maximum of 2hrs…and the parking is full. Unfortunately, it means we’ll have to get downstairs by 8am to pop some money in for the first 6hrs and make sure we’re back from sightseeing in time to top it up again, but oh well. It’s better than having to top it up every 2hrs and it’s the price we have to pay for the convenience of having our car with us.

We’re totally in holiday mode now. We’re researching places to visit along the way and are putting together a kind of itinerary as we go. It’s so much fun. We’ve got together a strategy for finding good hotels at a reasonable price. We stop somewhere on the highway at a McDonalds before we reach the city so that we can have a break and utilise their free wifi. That’s one thing that McDonalds is great for, you can rely on them having wifi and clean toilets if you need it. We then jump on the ‘net to find a good deal on a hotel located in the middle of a city, make the booking online, get the address, wack it in the GPS and off we go. It’s all very civilised really. In far eastern Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan the usual ritual was to drive “into the guts” of a city and then start looking for a hotel, find one, walk in and ask what the cost is per night, do they have wifi and is breakfast included. A bit laborious but really the only way we could do it because the websites that allow you to get good deals on hotels don’t list many, if any, hotels in the areas we were. Now, it’s dead easy. The most difficult thing is deciding which awesome hotel to stay at!

I’m pleased to say that for the first time this trip, there’s absolutely nothing amiss with the bathroom. It’s all wonderful and clean and it doesn’t turn into a swimming pool. Graeme coined it well: “Best. Shower. Ever.”

The shower is a room all of it’s own, as is the toilet, and the basin is kind of in the bedroom. Difficult to explain, but a really nice idea. I’ve included photos below to show you what I’m trying to explain. Another interesting aspect of the wet areas is that the doors to the toilet and shower are acrylic. Very cool indeed.

Graeme:

Opal Senator - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Senator You’ll see in our video, we spotted one of these. I’d seen one or two in Australia, but seeing something that looks like an old VK commodore in Kiev was worth a video.

The unsung hero of our trip has been our GPS. More recently, the turn-by-turn section. In Australia and Russia, she is ok, but in Europe, she’s amazing! From the blurry screenshot below, you can she she tells us what lane to be in, the buildings, street names, and currently she’s displaying ATM locations and accommodation. She’s very quick to criticise our speed, but without her we’d be lost - no doubt about it…. so she can stay.

One little clue on there, is the 2200KM remaining to Southampton. We’ve already driven ten times that figure which is mind blowing!

After some deliberation, we’ve chosen not to hire a car in the UK as we already have one that brings cheap, convenient accommodation and transport, luxuries we’re not inclined to give up just yet. We’ll drop her off at the dock before we head to London for touristy activities.

It’ll mean exceeding the service interval by ~2,000KM, but surely that won’t be a problem? Will it?
It’s fully synthetic oil and oddly enough, isn’t as visibly polluted black as the mineral oil is by now.

If it’s not raining tomorrow, we might do a tour of Prague on Segway. We did these once before and they are awesome at helping you cover ground between attractions that you’d be too lazy to walk. Plus, who doesn’t want to speed around on fandangled two-wheeled gizmos?

Replies to comments:
Chris - We think the sound was the sound baby chicks make when competing for the mothers regurgitation.
Everyone else – cheers

Dee & Bob, Di & Rob, Julie & Ross

Were the names of the loveliest people we’ve met… is it any coincidence they were Australian?!

Oh, OK there have been other lovely people we’ve met but these are the flavour of the day! I took a punt when hearing English speaking people in the lobby of our hotel. When their airport shuttle arrived, Dee said that she’d wished so much that we’d arrived a day or two earlier so we could have spent time together. It seems like such a weird thing to be excited about, but they were so normal that we clung to them for maybe 30 minutes. They took a photo or two of us which hopefully they’ll email us. Our email is: twomagadan@gmail.com

Photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/KievToPrague?authkey=Gv1sRgCKCFuefhzqKa5AE

Videos and more content coming soon, just desperate to have a shower and lunch.

Czech Republic

Yep - In another country today. Slovakia and it's people have been stunning. As we were having breakfast, a tiny child walking alone on his way to school said the hello greeting as he trundled by. He was so young his backpack was nearly as big as him! I wish we'd have learned some greetings, hello/good day sounds something like doobra-dien. Breakfast was a full breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and tomato. The bacon was... in the words of Kramer "so thinly sliced that the flavour had nowhere to hide".

We drove through two tunnels today! Might sound boring, but I've never been through a tunnel that was maybe 10KM long! It was an unexpected European treat. I had a suspicion when we went through several points at which our height was checked, with numerous bollards and signs that something big was coming up.

Charne, (Cassie's Mum) loves castles. We saw four today! Some are perched so precariously in places where the river just squeezes past. You can imagine arrows flying from their turrets at people trying to sneak down the river.

Afternoon tea was celebrated after a successful border crossing into Czech Republic. We drove past two or three tracks that lead into the most stunning of forests. After you miss one, you think, oh well, too bad. But after the third missed turnoff we had to turn back to check it out. Really tall trees with light green leaves let no light through to the forest floor.

We were stopped by 3PM today, so shade was high on our list of wants out of our camp. We found shade, tucked away in a far corner of a golden valley. We have the best view and a cool breeze is taking away the apparent 30 degree heat. One of the pictures is our view.

Cassie:
Far out the border crossing was intense! Seriously the most difficult one by far. It started out that we were happily cruising along and then BAM, we found ourselves in Czech Republic! Haha, had you going there didn't I!? There actually was no border crossing presumably because we're in the EU. There was a sign that said we would be approaching the Czech Republic in 1km. Ok then, I got out our passports and car rego in the usual preparation for a border crossing, next thing we past a teeny tiny sign that said Czech Republic then....nothing. I said to Graeme, "Ummm, I think we're in another country now". I guess those of you reading this who either live in the EU or have been to the EU are laughing yourselves silly right now at how naive we are, but we honestly didn't know what to expect. We guessed that maybe there would be something like a toll booth setup where you drive up to the window, get your passports stamped and keep on driving. Coming from Australia, and only ever h
aving flown into another country before this trip, it's a totally foreign concept to us to just simply drive into another country without any customs process. It's a lovely experience. Apparently we're now 8hrs behind home.

Yikes, we just heard a bit of a weird/unsettling animal sound in the area we've camped. It sounded somewhere between a dog bark and I don't know what. We tried to capture it on camera but it hasn't made the sound again. Isn't it often the way that by the time you get the camera out the moment has passed. Oh well, I don't particularly want to hear it again if I'm honest.

Mum, you would absolutely love all the old buildings we've seen today. And the castles! They're amazing. I'm sure we'll visit one before our holiday is over. They're everywhere here!

Slovakia

Leaving Ukriaine was also beautful, proof that borders don't necessarily mean the earth stops at a line. One Ukrainian treat was a digital sign, showing the waiting time at four or five borders you could use. Wow - that's clever. All were marked zero and realistically, other than the three of four cars who drove in front of us, that was it. The first Ukrainian border who's job it is to write down our registration and how many people we had in our car did his best to throw around what minuscule weight he had. He said he couldn't tell what country we were from because our AUS sticker was too dusty. Seriously? I had more dust on my windscreen and our sticker is four times the size of anyone else's, but obligingly I dusted it off and he made a gesture like 'ohh nowwww I can see it'. As Cassie will go into further detail, the rest was super seamless.

Wowie dowie - this place is beautiful! Every town has it's own emblem, a stunning yesteryear idea that is still strongly embraced today. Every valley looks like it should have a castle in it.
In addition to every other thing imaginable, the road surface is milimeter perfect. From how it's flush with drains, line markings and even the bits between sections is beyond perfect. It seems a petty thing to notice, but cmon, we've earned the right to talk about nice roads by now! Cassie said last night that we've done over 21,000KM so far! Everything is perfectly clean, even though we've been going through country towns, there would not have been so much as a cigarette butt for the last 100KM.

Tonight's style of camp spot is a personal favourite. Private beauty. We had to snake up a through a valley cutting which was protected by dense overgrowth and sheer difficulty. It would have been a 4WD track if I wasn't too lazy to get out and lock the hubs in. We came out atop a set of hills and are just parked beside some bushes for shade. After dinner is done and the sun has set, we'll move to a more level section. Sadly, our time in Slovakia will be short. The size of the country, combined with our schedule means it'll only be a blip on the radar, but it's been lovely nonetheless. It's a bit of a shame that it's so far, and so expensive to come here. Europeans are lucky in that regard, they have a huge world at their fingertips, where we are pretty imprisioned by location in Australia.

Oddly enough, drivers here don't have the compulsion to overtake everything. And not for lack of capacity. Heaps of turbo Golf GTI's with DSG gearboxes, Audi's and Merc's, but they are happy to wait until an overtaking lane to unleash their power. Perhaps their right foot is stiffened by the fuel prices! Diesel is 1.5 Euro/Litre or around $1.85 AUD... Yikes! We were pretty full crossing from Ukraine, so the amount of fuel we'll need to buy at these prices should be limited. It's so silly to consider fuel prices in the scheme of the whole trip, but meh, no one wants to part with more than double what they have been paying. We will need to be pretty much bone dry when we ship it back because it will save the ~$400 dangerous goods declaration required. And the difference is, in Australia I can arrive at the depot with a jerry-can, in Russia I could not.

I had hoped to book in for a Porsche factory tour but today they emailed back saying they had no free places until October. Darn. We may still go to the museum, but the tour would have been very cool.

Two pictures tonight. One is what happens when you order a meal without sides. This was a chicken Kiev, ordered just out of Kiev. The other is our camp tonight. Blueberries not visible.

Cassie:
There's really nothing to say about our border crossing today, other than it was very organised. At the Slovakian (EU) border we didn't even have to get out of the car. A guard came up, took our passports and car rego paper to a booth for processing then brought them back to us. Service! What a change from our first border crossing fiasco to get into Mongolia. The only time Graeme had to get out of the car was to allow another guard to conduct a customs inspection of the car.

One weird thing that happened at the Ukraine border was with the guy who inspected the car. We have a packet of Gastro-Stop tablets in the car. A very essential part to any overseas travel and as we all know, are readily available at any chemist and some supermarkets in Australia. Well, he was being all official and eyed the packet of tablets and immediately wanted to know if we had a prescription for them. He obviously couldn't read it because it was all in English and he didn't speak a word of English but he kept scrutinising the packet like it was a really serious thing he was doing. I couldn't help but think, hey mate, if you really want me to I'll mime out what they're for! You have to give them they're moment to feel important I suppose. But of all the other interesting things in the car he could've scrutinised, he chose that. Haha, nice.

We met a couple about our age from Czech Republic at the Ukraine border. They were returning home after a month long trek around Ukraine in their Holden Combo van (although not called a Holden Combo here - not sure what it's called in these parts). Anyway, this couple seemed as kind as they were tall - and my gosh they were very tall. They're style of travel is the same as ours so they're living out of the van and sleeping in the back. Ummm, how does a couple well over 6ft each sleep in a van that tiny!? They were all arms and legs and would seriously have to scrunch up to fit in. They were eyeing off the Troopie with much envy because of all the space we seemingly have in the back. The guy said they're hoping to find something similar to our car for their future travels. Nope, stop thinking it everyone, we're not selling the Troopie!

Some of the road signs in Slovakia are actually quite creative in a way. Which made me think about the stark contrast between some places we've experienced on our travels so far and here. Here are some of my observations from today. You know you're in Europe when...

1. You don't leave your car at the border crossing and all the paperwork is done for you.
2. The roads are so black and smooth they're like driving on the inside of a non-stick pan.
3. The "Give Way to Pedestrians/School Children" road signs have abstract pictures of pedestrians with overcoats, top hats and ribbons in their hair, and the "Look out for Deer" sign has an abstract picture of a delicately frolicking deer...all very sophisticated really.
4. To be continued...

As Graeme's already touched on, we've seen beautiful little, picturesque towns today. So many people walking and riding push bikes and looking generally happy and healthy. The wonderful sunshine obviously adds to this picturesque scene. As it's autumn here, everything's so golden.

Dinner tonight was pretty funny. Back in Chita in Russia I found cous cous in a supermarket - or at least I thought that's what it was. I poured it out of the packet and into a bowl for dinner tonight, added some tinned corn (trying to get our vegie intake higher) and added the boiling water, gave it a stir and the stuff turned to liquid! Holy moly that's not what was meant to happen. I dipped a finger into it and it was horribly salty. The packet was entirely in Russian but I now think it was soup stock. Oops. Oh well, dinner turned from pork with corn and cous cous into pork with buttered bread. Very uninteresting but I had to do something under pressure and very few ingredients.

Slovakia is a small country in comparison to the ones we've travelled through so far. It's weird to think that we'll very likely be at the next border tomorrow.

Hello

Sorry for the absence of updates. The reality is, nothing worth noting has happened. We're both in good spirits and slept well last night. We didn't hit the road till maybe 9:30-10:00.
Yesterday we purchased an audiobook using fuel-station wifi. It took about an hour to download, so we stalled with numerous drinks, toilet visits etc. It's one part of Stephen Fry's autobiography entitled 'Fry chronicles'. What's weird, it's only probably 2-3 hours long, which for a book doesn't sound long enough.

We visited L'viv today. More pretty cobblestone streets. The car is starting to stand out now. Most people are doing double-takes in an effort to figure out which country has fluro yellow numberplates. If you bought 'European' style plates for your car, it would blend in seamlessly.

We drove 450KM today and as a result we should be into Slovakia tomorrow all going well, we're only ~220KM from the border.
Dinner tonight is tomato flavored rice with steak. Basic but good.

Position: 12-09-09 17:15:50 +0300 +0000
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Leaving Kiev

Cassie: Kiev has been great. The room service pizza and Discovery Channel watching was just as awesome as I thought it would be. We caught the metro train into the city yesterday, walked around for a bit, saw some beautiful buildings, churches, markets, streets all on our way to the Chernobyl Museum. After wandering around there for a bit we got Graeme a haircut on the way back to the metro station so he’s looking like a spruce goose.

The metro gets so full of people. We waited for maybe half an hour yesterday morning to get onto a train that didn’t have a crush of people on it. There were literally people squashed onto the closed doors. It’s amazing how many people are being ferried into, out of and around the city at any one time.

Dinner last night was yum and fun. We got chicken skewer kebabs, lavash bread, salad, a delicious pepper sauce and bbq sauce. Basically a put it together yourself meal. After we ordered and were waiting for our meal, a cat and dog sauntered into the marquee style, outdoor cafe thing we were eating at. They were even walking around in the kitchen area. Well, after coming out of the kitchen area the cat crouched down between us and the table next to us and started to spew. OMG it was disgusting. Yes, yes there was the sound of a cat throwing up, and yes, there was a smell. To top it off, the dog kept eyeing it off as if it wanted to eat it but didn’t. I couldn’t help but think, hmmm, it just came from the kitchen, hope our meal doesn’t have that effect on us! It didn’t, it was awesome despite cat spew in the vicinity.

Here’s some photos of our day out: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/AroundKiev?authkey=Gv1sRgCOaNuc3xgojEoQE

Hey–lets have a video!

To celebrate one of the most amazing internet connections we’ve ever used, I’ve uploaded another HD video for you all to bask in. It’s hard to believe we’re only a few hundred kilometres from a book store that sold… an Internet yellow pages. People using an internet yellow pages, instead of a search engine must surrender their internets at once!

Our videos are becoming stupider. Crazy ramblings, lame jokes and pointless adventures are now included. To give context to something said in the video, Cassie nudged a fence when parking for lunch… so without further adieu, here we go:

Oh, also, there are a few more panoramas uploaded.

German Autobahns will be wasted on us

Here’s a video of us coming into Kiev, Ukraine.

It seems far too many of our photographs are of food. Not sure why that is?
Here they are anyway: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/VolgogradToKiev?authkey=Gv1sRgCIeLiJW8gvKXvgE

Cassie:

Ukraine is quite beautiful. Closer to the Russian border it still had a Russian look and feel to it but as we’ve driven into the depths of it the country has an identity of its own. There’s lots of corn and sunflower crops which makes it fairly easy to find camps. We just turn off the highway and drive around the dirt road running the perimeter of a field until we’re tucked in behind trees.

The roads are amazing for the most part, and the ones that aren’t so crash hot are still a whole heap better than Kazakhstan roads or the worst Russian roads. Ahhh, it’s wonderful to be at the point in our adventures where we are “having a holiday”. The challenge these days is navigating the Troopie through the ever more populated cities, finding large enough parking spots (Troopie has a big bum!) and finding a motel in these cities. Previously in our trip found it easier to drive ourselves around all the cities we’ve visited, but now, due to the sheer size and population we’re going to start catching public transport which should be good.

The hotel we’ve found here in Kiev is pretty cool. It seems to be a decommissioned ship that’s been anchored on the edge of the Dnipro river. We’re literally staying in a ship cabin. Without fail in every hotel room we’ve stayed in, there’s always something annoying about the bathroom. Usually the shower leaks onto the bathroom floor, or the hot water takes ages to come through or there’s no hot water at all, the toilet stinks or the hot and cold taps are opposite (more common than you reckon it would be!). Well, the bathroom saga in this room is that the entire bathroom floor, from wall to wall, turns into a swimming pool when you have a shower. The bathroom floor is flat as a tack, no fall in the tiles at all. Well, it does add to the “ship” feel of the place because we have to bail the water out of the bathroom after every shower. The ceilings are really low like in a ship too which means Graeme only clears them by a few inches and has to be careful around light fittings!

Another awesome thing about this hotel is that there are TV channels in English, German, French, Russian and Ukrainian. So, hello Discovery Channel, BBC World, EuroNews and EuroSport in English…we can actually watch TV!

Feeling particularly lazy and indulgent, we’re opting for room service for dinner tonight (Pepperoni pizza, Coke and Discovery Channel – yeah!) and will hit the city for some sight-seeing tomorrow.

More mobile info

I just tried to upload the last blog post using Cassie's SIM in the laptop but surprise surprise, it didn't work either. Perhaps it's the network after all?! Maybe the Russian owned MTS network is held together with rubber bands and gladwrap too. Oh well, back to the sat phone.

Damn phone

Graeme:
Breakfast was vegemite
toast and hot chocolates. We're getting very sophisticated with our toast now. We use a frypan, oiled lightly with olive oil, then lightly oiled thick slices of bread. Covered with a saucepan lid to keep them warm, they cook in no time, resulting in golden crunchy yet soft bready pillows that melt in your mouth.

It's like someones turned up the gorgeous dial today. Although the first bit of driving today was fairly boring and rough, from Kharkiv and onwards has been stunning. Huge fields of sunflowers, some corn and gigantic trees lining the wide multi-lane roads. Kharkiv felt very european (this coming from someone who has never been to Europe), clean, busseling, cobblestone streets, ye-old trams etc. It feels like town pride is back on the table. Smiles and waves are now commonplace, and seeing people picnicking in the countryside is refreshing and confirms our suspicion that this place is somehow better.

My argument has been that we're seeing things in a more positive light because we're more rested, but Cassie is still adamant that this is not the case. I'm inclined to agree with her on this, some parts of the trip have indeed been lame, but being tired doesn't help when an interpretation of something that could go either way.The pressure of covering distance is becoming less and less as the distances we need to cover are so much lower. It is however good that we got the hard bits done, leaving us ample time to enjoy this end of it. The one thing we keep saying, is thank goodness we did the trip this way round, as opposed to going from the UK to Magadan. The culture shock would be depressing.

Dinner tonight should be marinated beef with packet risotto, washed down with orange Fanta.

Bit of a techie section, so those only interested in our travells, skip this section:
I've been having some trouble with my phone. Even in Russia, mobile data was unreliable. I could get it on some networks, but not others. If I had mobile service with MTS RUS, I could not change the phone to Manual network selection, the search would just time out. If the MTS network was not available (either out of service, or in Mongolia, or Kazahkstan where there was no MTS), it would search fine, use another network and 3G would work fine as well. Weirdly in Kazahkstan, in urban areas, data would not work, but in regional areas, it would work fine. If I do a quick dance before the phone completely starts up, I can sometimes manually change networks and data would work fine, but on MTS, I don't know that it's ever worked properly. I checked with the network before leaving, we were meant to have roaming data in all countries.

I guessed there was some incompatibility between MTS and the phone, like perhaps an odd character in the network name or something, causing the search to fail, but I can't be sure.

Cassie's SIM card doesn't fit my phone, and hers does not have data capibility, so we've not been able to swap them around to test. I have however put the SIM out of her phone, into the laptop and it has full service, 3G and HSPA. So, either way, no clearer if my phone is fail, or the SIM or both.

What's also weird, is at times, trying to trick the network selection, I remove the SIM whilst the phone is on. Normally the phone instantly goes 'No SIM', but recently mine is still displaying the last signal strength regardless of if we have more, less or none. This is also evident when I find I can't send SMS's. I suspect something is crashing the mobile part of the smart phone, everything else seems fine. Restart the phone and it comes good for a while, but still no data.

Today, the phone plugged into the car stereo, which normally charges it, ran it flat to the point it wouldn't turn on. It's not a particularly hot day, but the phone was quite warm... like it overheated and decided not to charge. I've left it charging on a makeshift icepack and it's going fine now... weird.

I've used the 'Reset Network Settings' option to no success and although a full reset may fix the problem, there's too much useful stuff on there to loose and without Internet access, I can't get older or newer firmware for it. We should be arriving in Kiev Thursday, so I might try update it or something?

We've not had comments from Steven or Jon in a while?! I knew Jon was away for a few weeks, but we expected to hear from him by now?

Position: 12-09-04 16:11:10 +0300 +0000
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