Day 7 Rain and Sputnik

We started the day a little late, but in high spirits. The map indicated straight, quality roads, a tail wind and eggs for breakfast had us feeling we could get close to our next planned stop, the town of Vinnitsya. Though it wasn't to be our most scenic day, there was still plenty to enjoy.

Two of our favorite Ukrainian sights in one: horsecart and painted gates

That is, until it started raining, we got soaked, and Nate's hands started going numb from the "hard covered" roads and cold, wet gloves. Fortunately, we found plenty of places to put our great little stove to work, warming ourselves up with hot tea.

Public wells make great places to hide from rain

Nate, looking classy, and sad that the bus stop had a leaky roof.

Nearing the end of the day, we grabbed some supplies from a little market, including a bottle of kvas, a fermented Russian soft drink that's somewhere in between rootbeer and Guiness. Unfortunately, Nate had picked it out to surprise Katie, and hadn't realized it was a massive 2 liters. So we strapped it on top of our bags to save for later, and went on our merrry way.

But the kvas wasn't having taking any nonsense from the dirt roads, and the second or third time it went flying off the bag, it burst a spraying hole. As we sat and chugged down as much of the stuff as we could (it did cost a whopping 8 grivna=$1US), watching village life pass us by, someone pulled up to us on a bike. There are lots of people hauling lots of stuff around on beat up old Soviet singlespeed bikes in and between all of the villages in the Ukraine, but we knew at once that this wasn't a typical villager. She proved to be our first fellow bike tourist, a German named Anne, who was working her way west from Siberia by train and now bike, visiting all the places her grandmother had lived, and suffered, in the Soviet past. After introductions and mutual bike inspections (hers is an ancient Sputnik brand, with a guitar strapped on the back, and the Russian word for dandelion painted across her bags), we all agreed to continue on and camp out together that night.

Anne, barefooted cyclist

She proved a great companion: she pushed us to ride longer, to find a great campsite waaay down a farm road, beside a huge field of sunflowers, help us make a delicious dinner, and play a lovely little good night song. It was great to have a Russian speaker to help us navigate the stores, where you need to ask for your goods, and to speak to passerby at our campsite. Her experiences as a German in Ukraine sounded pretty fascinating: it turns out that for all that Germany killed and destroyed in the Ukraine, the Soviets managed to be more hated there. Add that to the old men's pleasant memories of army postings in East Germany and their commiseration with her grandmother's time in the gulag, and she received warm welcome everywhere she went. To give our thanks back to her, Nate tried to give the Sputnik a little love. Unfortunately, its many woes were a bit much for field repair, and in the morning we parted ways as she stopped in the next village to find Soviet tools for her Soviet bicycle. We headed on toward Vinnitisya and the night train to Chisinau.

Katie's bike likes sunflowers as much as she does.