Across six countries in eight days. Russia → Belarus → Poland → Slovakia → Hungary → Ukraine. A motorbike trip.

Well, I wish we hadn't left Moscow in this weather.
The further from the capital we went along the M1 highway, the lower the temperature became. As soon as we reached Minsk, the dashboard showed a pitiful figure +8°C. :( And when you proceed going at a speed of 160 km/h for a long time, the cold wind sneaks through so that your teeth start aching.

Today the capital of Belarus is welcoming the guests. The streets are crowded with roaring, chrome-shining Harleys, which are driven by brutal, pot-bellied, bearded men, dressed in leather jackets with inscriptions in English on their backs that denote their belonging to some professional biker club.

Unfortunately, hardly could we fit in this mega-party on our BMW motorbikes. So, having talked with some friends from the 1st MOSCOW CHAPTER, we headed for Poland early in the morning.
The gorgeous Minsk-Brest highway, which has minimal traffic, provokes speeding, and soon we were punished for the traffic violation. Incorruptible Belarusian traffic policemen did not succumb to our appeal and issued the protocols without any hesitation. As a result, we paid off the fine of 26 Belarusian roubles (which equals about 800 Russian roubles). Since I exceeded the speed by 55 km/h, I think, I was quite lucky to get such a small fine. In Poland, one would have to part with €100 or even more for the same violation.

We crossed the Belarusian-Polish border not near Brest, where one can get stuck in a queue for several hours, but near Domachevo town, which is 25 km from Brest to the south. There were just a few cars in a line and the border guards on both sides were very polite. After fulfilling the ordinary forms we entered the territory of the European Union.
Poland greeted us with rain and cold. The temperature was +6°C. ? We decided not to go to Warsaw but to stay in Lublin, one of the oldest Polish cities. Our evening walk continued in one of the pubs in the old part of the city.

Despite the nasty weather, the day turned out to be very nice! Tomorrow we're going to Budapest!

I like to travel without any strict time-management plan and route.

This way you will never be late anywhere, because the goal of your traveling is the journey itself, and not the chain of attempts to be in a certain place at a certain time, otherwise the plane will fly away, the train will leave, the tour will be proved unsuccessful and just everything will go wrong...

This morning, while having breakfast, we slightly adjusted our plan and decided to head for Budapest the next day, but visit Krakow first.
There is only a little more than a three hundred kilometer distance between Lublin and Krakow, half of which goes along the excellent motorway, where speed limit is 140 km/h, but in reality everyone keeps 160 km/h or even more.

The weather has become a little better. It's sunny and dry today, but still cold.
Krakow is an incredibly beautiful and fabulous city! There are castles, town halls, tall clock towers, monuments to kings, real carriages with beautiful horses harnessed to them and... a lot of tourists.
Could we have failed to come here?

The distance from Krakow to Budapest is less than five hundred kilometers. It can be "flown" over just in four hours along the motorway, or you can make a small detour and go across the Tatra Mountains, which are the two mountain ranges and the highest peaks of the Carpathians.

The beauty of these places is outstanding! We saw snow-capped peaks, clear mountain rivers, towering fir trees and a narrow winding road, across which frightened roe deer sometimes run.

Today we went through the territory of three countries: we had breakfast in Poland, then lunch in Slovakia, and our dinner took place in Hungary. This is what Europe is like: it's very compact, and in any direction you go, you will find yourself in another state in just three or four hours.

Budapest, despite the inappropriate weather, was very beautiful!

The way to the castle took us an effort.

"You're traveling by motorbikes? So aren't you these… the Night Wolves?" a pretty border guard girl looked at us in question and surprise through the window of a small checkpoint "Maly Berezny", placed in the Ukrainian-Slovak border.

"Come on, do we look like the Wolves? They travel by Harleys and are dressed in leather jackets, and we are on BMWs and, in general, quite intelligent people!" I replied, while smiling as sincerely as possible.
"I see, but you will still have to be interviewed by a security representative," she answered, as if apologizing. "We received such an order yesterday. All motorcyclists should be allowed to pass the border only after an interrogation... that is, an interview."
Having collected all our documents, the border guard, whose name was Victoria, took us to the office, where a man, dressed in civilian clothes, suggested us taking a seat opposite him and began to ask all sorts of questions. "Where are you from? Where are you going? What for? Which way did you go? What did you do in Slovakia? Where do you work?" etc. Everything was very polite and courteous, only once I got a little confused when he asked what education I had and which school I had graduated from. This way our conversation ran in 15 minutes and, in general, it did not bother me at all, since Ivan (that's how the security officer introduced himself) was quite respectful and did not put much pressure on us. An invitation from the Federation Motorcycling of Ukraine helped us out.

Thanks to this piece of paper with a blue seal, we finally entered the territory of the Independent Ukraine! I asked if it was safe enough for us to expect to return home by our motorbikes and not on foot. The officer answered positively and added that we could actually meet baddies everywhere, just in some places of the planet their concentration per capita can vary from more to less.
To be honest, I didn't fully understand what kind of baddies he was talking about and he didn't specify the place of their greatest concentration either. Anyway, everything went as usual: stamps in passports, document verification and a formal inspection of the trunks ("travel cases" were not checked :)). They wished us good luck and let us go. The procedure of crossing both borders took us a little more than an hour.
WELCOME TO UKRAINE!!!

 

As soon as we passed the checkpoint, the good asphalt road ended and a broken one began… It hasn't been repaired for quite a long time, to say so.
There was one more checkpoint at the border with the Lviv region, where two young guys with machine guns and in bulletproof vests checked our documents, asked a couple of formal questions and opened the barrier with a wish of good luck to us.
And after this checkpoint an excellent road led us across the Carpathians. We enjoyed the perfect asphalt, smooth twisting turns, beautiful views… So wonderful! It wasn't just a ride but a real pleasure!

There aremany churches and small beautiful chapels with gilded domes in the villages around and along the highway. And such a number of Lada pickups 2101-06, Volga and Muscovite cars I've probably seen only in Armenia. ;)
After Sambur we went on a bombed road again. It was destroyed completely! :(

We arrived in Lviv before sunset. While riding slowly along the tram tracks through the traffic jam, I kept turning my head left and right, enjoying this beautiful town! I have not seen so many streets covered with paving stones in any other city in the world. Trams and cars go right along the cover. The main avenues, small streets and pedestrian sidewalks are all paved and clean!

And every morning the streets are washed with shampoo! Just amazing!!!

Lviv has become for me one of those places that I would like to visit again. It is a very interesting, ancient, peculiar and beautiful tourist town.

There are a lot of temples of various denominations and original buildings that were built many centuries ago. The city centre is full of small cozy cafés and restaurants, souvenir shops, boutiques and street markets.

Lviv nightlife is in full swing. It's not that easy to get in popular places, so in order to smoke a hookah in one of the cafés in the city centre, we had to bribe a waiter. Just a small sum of money. ;)

Here you can see a lot of youth and foreign tourists. The staff at the Chopin Hotel, where we stayed, and everywhere else were very friendly. Almost everyone spoke Russian perfectly and I haven't noticed any negative emotions addressed to me, though to the question where I was from, I always answered that I was from Moscow.

There are 550 km of quite a good highway between Lviv and Kiev. So it was not difficult to keep racing at a speed of 140…160 km/h and, having left Lviv at 1 p.m, I arrived in Kiev at about 7 p.m. Finally I have got somewhere in a warm place!

It's +23°C and no rain! Here, in the capital of Ukraine, my friends, who have already been waiting for me, put me up.

The evening was spent on talking and drinking up a bottle of fine malt whiskey for two, which confirmed that we had had a nice trip!
However, the following morning was not that pleasant! ;( The consequences of the night alcohol abuse have appeared in the form of headaches and things like that.
After lunch we went for a walk around the city, where all the preparations for the Eurovision Song Contest were being made.

Crowds of people were walking along the blocked Khreshchatyk street, in the centre of which the stage towered. It was a sunny day and everywhere we could see blooming chestnuts and smiling people. My headache had gone away and life seemed beautiful and wonderful again!

This is the central square in Kiev, which is named Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Today is the 6th of May, 2017and the day after tomorrow, on the 8th of May, Ukraine celebrates the "Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation", a contemporary public holiday.

There are practically no speed cameras on the roads of Ukraine and no traffic policemen, as such, either. They have a patrol and guard duty, who, besides other things, are in charge of monitoring compliance of the traffic regulations. However, it seems forbidden for them to measure the speed limit with the help of various devices. At least, I haven't seen a single policeman with a radar. Therefore, it took me only 4 hours to get from Kiev to Kharkiv, which are located 500 km from each other. So I had lunch already there, in one of the biggest cities of Ukraine.

A five-hour walking tour around Kharkiv with Andy Sherban, who was our guide, allowed us to get a certain impression about the city. Of course, it is not like Lviv with its history and architecture, and not like Kiev, which is the capital, but here you will have something to see too. There are long wide avenues, grand buildings of military academies and numerous universities, a lovely park and a beautiful embankment of the Lopan river, where you can find kissing lovers on the benches and in the rented boats.

Tomorrow is Victory Day, but no holiday spirit is felt in the city. There are no banners, ribbons, slogans, military marches and other attributes, which usually accompany this event. The government policy is aimed at gradual erasing of this date from people's memory, as well as everything else that unites our nations. It's difficult to do it right away, but everything is coming to this. And it's really sad, but nothing can be done…

There's a lonely yellow-blue tent in the central square in front of the administration building. It's a meeting place for patriots of Ukraine. But there is no one. Only the homemade stands with caricatures and other propaganda material around.
By and large, I liked Kharkiv. I felt very comfortable in it, as well as in other towns of Ukraine.

This is the end of my another short trip. I'm going home on the 9th of May, Victory Day. There are six countries and 4650 km behind. I've met my old friends and made new ones, moreover, got a huge charge of positive emotions! Some stereotypes have been discredited and I have discovered some amazing towns to add to my travel list: Lublin, Krakow, Budapest, Lviv…

And a chance encounter with my friend, countryman and classmate Sergey Shevtsov, which happened halfway from Kharkiv to Moscow seems to be a real miracle!
“Accidents are not accidental!”
And there are so many new journeys, adventures, meetings and discoveries ahead…

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