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.