Slovakia - Ukraine

The next day, we reached the Slovak-Ukrainian border in Welykyj around 4pm, where we felt the differences between Ukraine & Russia for the first time (since we want to continue to Russia...). Just before that, we quickly made an international (D) license plate for the car and were able to cross the border. After our car was searched by various customs officers and we were able to overcome our language barriers with rudimentary language skills, we were relatively quickly allowed into Ukraine. Even a female customs officer who became quite mean when we couldn't respond in fluent Ukrainian couldn't stop us in the end... And now it feels like a fairytale - children playing on the streets and livestock being driven on the country roads. From here, I also realized that here the streets and their potholes are mainly dominated by Ladas and other old Soviet vehicles. It feels like every second car is a sibling of our Soviet steel horse, which really fascinates us. It's just not special anymore to drive a Lada - which we like because we are not immediately seen as exotic or tourist. Shortly after exchanging euros for hryvnias, we noticed that we also entered a new time zone, so we had to quickly find a place to stay before it got dark. A nice spot off the villages by a small mountain stream was perfect for that.