2017/08/26
Day 28: Kemerowo - Barnaul
I ordered breakfast for 8 o'clock. The breakfast room looks totally abandoned, so I deciide tp put some of my gear to the bike first.
When I return from the parking, the receptionist signaled to me that breakfast will be prepared immediately. Today I get quite unusual food: a sweet rice porridge, a cold hard-boiled egg and a cake and coffee. But I have to admit this pilgrimage breakfast is very good!
Leaving Kemerovo I have to refuel again and there's the usual struggle about paying with the credit card. Again I can not pay with card. Additionally the pump does not switch off automatically, and quite a splash of gas spills over the tank. Fortunately, My reaction is quick and it's not getting too bad.
The road to the south is very well, a four-lane road and it almost seems to me as if I am somewhere in Germany. Then turning westwards to the Altai-Kuzbass Highway, which I thought, it would be a more interesting landscape. Also this road is relatively boring and so I decide to make a detour to a secondary gravel road, where I'm flying over the gravel with 100 km/h. Great!
I'm arriving for the second time at the Hotel Prestige in Barnaul, check in and then ask at the front desk for a place, where I can wash my bike. It's not far away and for 300 rubles (about 5.20 euros) I get the bike hand washed. It looks so much better again.
Next stop is an ATM, where I charge my mobile phone card and also get some cash.
When I'm back in the hotel again, I call Andrew, to clarify with him, when the tire and oil change can be done. I could also make the tire change on Sunday, but at another workshop than the last time and the oil change would be difficult on Sunday. So I suggest to do both on Monday morning. Monday morning we will meet at the same workshop as the last time. Hope everything will work out without problems, I have never done an oil change on my bike myself.
After taking a shower, I walk to the center of the city. I walk up and down the main street and am glad to see that there are a nice old buildings.
In a supermarket I buy a few things. Right next to me in the queue, an older woman speaks in English with a younger woman. I'm curious and talk to them. She is an English teacher at the university who speaks accent-free British English even though she has never been abroad, and she's testing her niece's English level.
It's a pity that so few Russians are able to understand or speak English. It would very helpful to reduce prejudice and get closer if one can communicate with each other. Some are already aware about this, but there are still too few. Hopefully there will soon be more. I hope for the young generation.
In the evening I want to buy some beer for the hotel in another asupermarket, but the alcoholics are confiscated by the cashier. They explain to me that it is too late and that this is one of the strange Russian rules. Well, at the hotel I still get two cans of cold beer.