"With this car, the Russians will eat you."

When we were sipping our first morning coffee on the day of crossing the border from Ukraine to Russia, we couldn't even imagine the problems that were about to come our way. Despite carefully gathering all the necessary documents (passport, driver's license, vehicle registration, Carnet de Passage, etc.), we were immediately asked to take an alcohol test in the office just before the Ukrainian border, which we considered harmless since we didn't take any risks in that regard. The 'Alcotest' was unpacked, then one of the officers disappeared and came back a few moments later with the device, which we only realized afterwards. It was mandatory to blow into a tube and to our surprise, the device showed alcohol content. What we expected to be a harmless test result quickly turned into a big problem. We were not allowed to blow a second time, it was simply not permitted. As if that wasn't outrageous enough, we were metaphorically given an ultimatum, forcing us to either immobilize the car and surrender our driver's license, or pay a certain amount of money that was far beyond our calculations for extraordinary fees to buy our way out. We didn't have a choice... So we scraped together our cash and decided to 'cooperate'. Up until now, this was our most extreme negative experience with any kind of state officials. On our last Ukrainian entry stamp in the passport, the customs officer added the phrase 'With this car, the Russians will eat you', which he could have spared us - after what we had experienced before, our nerves were already a thing of the past...

Two hours later, we finally encountered the first Russian border control officer, who greeted us warmly, chuckled at our car, and philosophized with us about the results of the World Cup. Finally, officers were able to communicate in understandable English without the help of Google Translate, which was really comforting for us. Despite the enormous bureaucratic effort, we felt much better than on the Ukrainian side of the border. After about four hours of waiting, it was finally our turn and the interest in the Lada grew even more. One officer quickly turned into 3-4 people who were interested in our route and our car, asked curious questions, and laughed with us. Even the repetitive filling out of certain forms (Russian bureaucracy... A says, write this and that - B says, that's not possible...) was accompanied with the deepest calmness. In the end, we spent a total of about 7 hours at the border, which is why we could only start looking for a place to sleep around half past 12 at night - and luckily quickly found a nice spot between trees at the edge of a field.

Now, nothing stood in the way of our multi-day journey to Rostov Na Donu. Endless expanses and roads that ran straight through the country until the horizon were set to accompany us to our next destination.