Saddled up 14

Dear siblings, family and friends,

A sign of life from Astrakhan, at the mouth of the Volga. Here we arrived last Saturday, August 10th, after a short stay in Atyrau and another night train journey, third class.

Since we have been here before, we quickly found our way around and this time we ended up in a small hostel at the other end of the city. The owner lived in Germany for a long time and so there are no language problems. The other guests are Russians, most of them work here during the week and go home on weekends.

Astrakhan delighted us again, and this time we took many tours of the city, discovered new places, lingered in cafés and traveled up and down the canals and the Volga promenades.

We met Mary twice, whom we had met in May, and it was a nice reunion. She speaks English well and helped us book a good tour to the delta.

Two days were spent fully occupied with our return journey Moscow – Berlin – Mannheim. As always, I had my romantic notion of a train journey, with a two-person sleeper cabin, a nice restaurant and pure relaxation. But this is not possible because our bicycles with luggage cannot be transported.

Now we have to rethink and we will be traveling by a kind of Flixbus. From Moscow to Riga and from there to Berlin and then Mannheim. We started the journey by bus, and we will probably end it that way too. We are not entirely happy about this, but Riga is said to be beautiful, and that is a small consolation.

Two highlights in Astrakhan were a visit to the Hlebnikov Memorial Museum. A beautiful old wooden house, built in the last century by a merchant who turned it into a small art museum that can be visited today. The special thing about the cozy museum is that you can see everything in half an hour, not just the house, but above all the museum employees. With love, they manage this gem, and we were proudly guided through the rooms by two people - without a word of English. These two made the museum very charming, and we left this harmonious place with its employees very happy.

The second highlight was our excursion to the Volga Delta. In the morning we took a bus out of the city for an hour, then a boat to the delta. At a base station there was a short break, and then we went through small channels to lotus flower fields in an even smaller boat. The sky was bright blue, for a change there was no wind, and we enjoyed the calm ride through nature. We saw some sea eagles, cranes, and jumping fish until we reached the huge lotus fields. Wherever we looked there were lotus flowers, buds and huge leaves. We ate the lotus seeds, which tasted like peas, and the seeds, which tasted a bit like coconut. Unfortunately, there were hardly any birds or other plants. Nevertheless, we liked this trip very much because we enjoyed the peace and nature.

Back at the base station, we had a lunch of delicious fish soup and fish patties, and then relaxed by the pool or on the terrace.

Today, Friday, August 16th, packing, repairing and cleaning the bikes is on the agenda. Since I am expecting medicine from Germany, we have to wait until it arrives. If it arrives today, we will hopefully head up the Volga tomorrow with tailwind, which will take us approximately 8 days to Volgograd. From there, we will get in touch again.

That’s what we thought! But the medicine from Germany did not arrive, so we had to extend our stay in Astrakhan.

First, we had to give up our room in the hostel and were supposed to move to a shared room as a replacement. Stephan didn't like this. On Thursday, we met Mary Anna. She lives with her husband in an apartment right in the center, and they spontaneously invited us to stay with them.

With Anna and Sergey, we walked along the Volga promenade on Saturday evening, where there was a lot going on: a public dance event with at least 40 - 50 couples dancing salsa. We were very enthusiastic and would have joined in if we could have danced. There was a lot of music, dance events in restaurants and bars, and children driving around with small electric cars and scooters.

Anna works at the municipal puppet theater and we were able to see a play with her on Sunday. It was – One-eyed, Two-eyed and Three-eyed – played, of course in Russian and in a slightly different version. But we liked it very, very much. Tonight, we are inviting the two of them to a fish dinner as a small thank you for their very warm hospitality.

Now we hope that the package with the medicine will arrive on Monday and we can continue our journey.

Wishing you all the best and we hope to see you all on October 27th for brunch.

The cyclists

Corrina and Stephan