Moscow, it’s been lovely

July 28th: Once again the Russian bureaucracy got the best of us when we determined that we really needed an extra stamp on our visas to comply with every 3 days registration policy and didn’t know where we’d be sleeping later that day. After we’d seen the Red Square, the Kremlin and waged a powdered sugar pastry war in front of Archangel Cathedral, we decided it was better to seek out the stamp in Moscow. So while Zoya and Annie negotiated with a hostel proprietor to stamp our passports even though we hadn’t stayed there, the rest of us used the 4 hours on a side street in Moscow to embellish our car decoration. Senior, our silver Micra, will now be known as Senor Moustachio and has a pistachio flavored mustache (insert picture). We also met many lovely Muscovites who signed our car, broke pistachios with us, and wished us well along our way.

Each time we arrive in a new more Easterly Russian city, we discover that it is an hour later than we thought and we can visibly see the change as it gets darker and darker, earlier and earlier. This poses some challenge for finding campsites late at night. Near St. Petersberg, the furthers north most of us have every been, it was light until almost midnight and here southeast of Samara it is becoming twilight at only 9.

After ice cream, a whole lot of pasta eaten communally out of a plastic bag, and some stamps we were finally on our way out of Moscow and conveniently missed the rush hour traffic.

We slept that night INSERT town, about 80 KM southeast of Moscow in an apparently empty field. But not sooo empty as we were awoken at 2 am by a car careening quite close to our tents through the open field. Understandably, we freaked out, and came up with many potentially unpleasant scenarios. The ladies packed up and moved to sleep in the cars while the guys stayed put, or in Kyle’s case, never heard the car at all(either time it passed by). We were up by 4 the next morning and out by 5 and feeling much better in the daylight.