For the past week we had been focused on how we could possibly get into Russia. We realized upon arriving that we hadn't thought at all about how to get around once we were here. We don't speak Russian and outside of the big cities in Russia it is hard to find someone who speaks English. We asked for directions on how to make it to the next town, after 10 minutes of failed charades the gentleman set us up to follow this bus as it twisted and turned through the streets. Success!

A side effect of coming through a border that wasn't supposed to let us through was that they didn't have someone at the border to sell us car insurance, like they do at their other borders. We drove through many police checkpoints like this illegally uninsured. We were even stopped twice by the police, both times they let us go after I smiled and told them in terrible Russian that I don't speak Russian. We were lucky!
Last comment 08/13/20.

We had a couple of traffic jams like this one in those first couple of days, which was really concerning because of the Black Sea detour, we were getting to Russia a week behind schedule. We didn't know how far exactly we had yet to go but we did know that Russia is big and we had to cover some ground!

We made it to Volgograd and took the morning to sort out finding someone who would sell us car insurance. It felt very good to be driving legally.
Last comment 04/19/22.

During WWII Volgograd was called Stalingrad and suffered greatly from the Battle Of Stalingrad. It was among the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare, with almost 2 million casualties.

There is a huge memorial commemorating the battle.

It was very touching to be there.
Last comment 04/19/22.

This memorial of the eternal flame commemorates the 1.1 million Russian troops who died in the battle.
Last comment 04/19/22.

The statue of Mother Russia was incredibly beautiful and huge. She is fighting the battle with the sword in her right hand and calling for reinforcements with her left.
Last comment 04/19/22.