2012 – Eastern Europe and Russia

Good morning Iveco. After a quick breakfast, we are greeted by the friendly staff at Iveco, and ushered into the workshop. Then follows the second odyssey starting with an inspection of the engine compartment, tests, and finally a test drive. With Rolf furiously accelerating and breaking, I can work only intermittently.

I’m absolutely shattered. Not only the new time change (Ekaterinburg is again two hours ahead), but the last few days and weeks have been strenuous. Shortly after 9 o’clock I’m already in Torsten’s room. He, Rolf and Felix had picked Michael up at the airport late last night or rather early

Friendly stewardesses, constant dripping tea pots, passenger queues for the toilets, and no beer served. The fully booked Transaero flight from Bangkok is heading with tired tourists toward Moscow. While for most passengers a long journey will end in the Russian capital, for me it is only a transit point for

We arrive in Kamenka town in the early evening and find, to our surprise, a “SPAR” supermarket well-equipped with all imaginable food. After a longer discussion about safety at night we park the car in front of a motorway restaurant and assume that this is the best option. The appointment with

Early evening we have to leave the Kamenka family and head further to the East. We want to cover a few kilometres before it gets dark to avoid any time constraints over the next 1-2 days. We are accompanied by Ilya Golovachev of Kamenka who wants to visit his hometown Tambov

We start our journey to Rostov, the green city on the Don which is approximately 710 km away from Lipetsk. Such a distance can easily occupy two solid days of driving. So the hours are spent negotiating flyovers and junctions, and spending nights under the trees on tranquil side roads off

The second team, under the capable leadership of Michael Maruschke and Torsten Strauss, has successfully completed the section of the tour from Ekaterinburg and both Michael and Torsten have now returned safely to their home turf. Our assessment so far is very positive: true, there were one or two technical glitches

The summer break is well and truly over – And the Go to Brau Beviale blog is up and running again The third interview team is made up of Alexander Büchler and Waldemar Schmitke, who, as we speak, have just arrived in Dnipropetrovsk. In the course of their 14 day tour,

The holidays are over. The Editourmobil is waiting in the Ukraine for us to pick it up. The two of us, Waldemar Schmitke, co-driver, and Alexander Büchler make up the third team on this, the final stage of our Go to Brau Beviale Tour. The first major challenge is on the

Our overnight resting place was the premises of Retal where we enjoyed an excellent night’s sleep. As we emerge blinking into the daylight, an alarming thought slowly dawns on us. Our water tank contains water from the engine cooling system. Dare we take a shower in it? Normally cooling water consists

We still need to find Interpet, and hopefully Anastasia has instructed the satnav on where to take us. We end up on an industrial estate and the satnav duly informs us that we have arrived at our destination. There is no name plate anywhere but peering over the wall we notice