2017/08/04

Day 06: Ufa - Tscheljabinsk - Kurgan

The Hotel President in Ufa was really great and offered a good breakfast buffet. I was slow a bit this morning. 

To get cash from the ATM in the hotel didn't work. But basically I get along well with the Visa card.

I had underestimated the way today, it thought its only 600 but it were about 700 km. Today I crossed some mountainous regions for the first time, the foothills of the Ural.

And between Ufa and Chelyabinsk, many trucks were on the road today. At some construction sites you have to wait until the traffic in the opposite direction has passed - so all in all not very fast today.

Not only the landscape is changing: the rest areas along the route now also offer tea samovars and much honey is sold along the road side.

The refueling today was rather a problem. The difficulty is, that they always ask me, how many liters I want to fuel up, when I want to pay with credit card. Always pretend not to understand, what they want and then there is in most cases a button, which allows customers to fill up and pay afterwards with the credit card.

In between I have to put on rain clothes and Brigitte tells me later, that the GPS spot did not indicate my position for quit a long time, probably because of the bad weather. Unfortunately it pours again in the evening.

At the entrance to Kurgan I had my first police contact today. Probably I was to fast or did something else wrong. A young police officer came over to me. I first took down my helmet and got out my ear plugs, slowly of course. In the meantime the police officer already realized, I'm from abroad, asking me for my passport and if I can understand Russian. Gave him the passport (slowly) and smiled all the time. Now, pretending to be a bit stupid again, and he did know, that it will be difficult with me, also smiling, so after some time he gave back my passport to me and I was free to continue again. Actually it was quite harmless and very friendly. Smiling seems always helpful.

The receptionist at the Hotel Dvoryanskaya speaks a little English. And I get a 10% discount card for the restaurant opposite to the hotel, she recommends. And the waitress in the restaurant speaks English and German - perfect! So today I have proper communication included with dinner. Like Dimi, she's studying English and German and sometimes she works as a interpreter for hunters from Germany, which are going for hunting trips to some areas nearby Omsk.

Get delicious dumplings for dinner and deer as a second course. After the meal I go for a walk, actually for the first time since I started my journey. I am fed up and satisfied. And I when I am going to bed, I'm quite relaxed and still early. Still have two long days to ride to Barnaul until Sunday.

What sounding names: Moscow, Volga, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa, Ural, ...

Insertion: Had contact with a Romanian guy today, with whom I chatted since quite a while. He is traveling with his father on two bikes and our paths should actually meet today. But somehow we missed each other. Pity!