We left Moscow on the 13th of November 2018.

We had to hurry up: we didn’t want to take a risk to travel in a wintertime. Even though it is Africa we were going to, we didn’t know anything about that weather there in that period of the year. According our plan we would go to Gibraltar through Europe, and when we would reach it then we would rent a ferry to get across to Africa. The final destination point was the southernmost point in Morocco. 

For our trip we prepared an old but reliable Volga 2402, a model that was produced in the Soviet Union from 1972 to 1987. When we bought the car it had to be repaired, repainted. We also fitted a roof trunk on it. 

Which countries we planned to visit. These were:

Russia, Belarus, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal. And at the end Morocco, of course. On the way back home we planned to visit Holland.

We left Moscow at 11 in the morning. Initially there was a big traffic jam at MKAD (a famous ring system around Moscow) and after that we went in a direction of Minsk. There, in Minsk, was our first stop. As it turned out later, it was in the flat in Minsk that I forgot my first and only item over our 6 months of travels – a white dress/shirt. In the fridge of that flat, the only thing waiting for us were Belarusian potatoes.

Then, after Minsk, we went to Brest. We left our hotel in the morning. Why did we choose Brest? Earlier, before we started our trip to Morocco, we created a profile in Instagram for this particular trip. There we’ve gotten in contact with some guy, who offered us an excursion through the famous Brest Fortress. Of course, we have accepted his offer.

Gas in Belarus was very cheap and there were no issues to find gas stations. We’ve arrived to Brest late in the evening. We were lucky to find a flat in an old, two story house, which we were allowed to rent for a short period of a time. It seemed like the house was only designed for two families. And the ceilings there were very high, at least 3 meters.

The same evening we met that guy from Instagram. When we arrived to the Brest fortress, we understood that everything here was very authentic, as there practically was no lighting. The only source of light there was the Eternal Flame. The atmosphere of the place was a bit creepy, as if we were not in 2018 but in the Second World War. Just very silent. We didn’t see much but we have felt a lot.

The next day we crossed a boarder with EU by. In the past we crossed this border already, and therefore this time we didn’t want to follow the ‘normal’ way, which involved crossing the Warsaw Bridge. Instead we went through PTO Domachevo, a Customs Clearance Point. We were crossing that point for the first time and were surprised, how slowly the cars drive there. And there I got to know the reason for this slow movement:  somewhere there is a huge x-ray apparatus. And for it to observe the traffic, the cars are not allowed go faster than 5 km per hour. They are also not allowed to stop because it can be dangerous for a health of people.

I also got information about some special building, which exists for the cars that smuggle things in them. It is a fact that Belarus people and the people from Poland try to illegally transport cigarettes into the EU because of a significant difference in price. The smugglers put blocks of cigarettes into doors, seats and all other kinds of places in the car to hide them.

Traditionally, all cars that cross the border go for a technical check-up. The headlights, turn signals, car wipers - everything has to be controlled. Trunks and the interior are also checked. In our case - none of that happened. We were only asked if we were carrying weapons or smuggling vodka. As it turns out, Volga as a car is recognized everywhere, not just in Russia. Even Moroccans recognized it, and the fact that we were driving a Volga simplified a lot of border crossings for us.

At about three o’clock p.m. came to Poland. When we passed the villages there I noticed a lot of graves in the gardens of the Polish people. Later on I have heard the explanation of this fact. Citizens of Poland were very poor. And when somebody died they didn’t have enough money to even bury a body in a local cemetery. But to bury in own garden was for free and was allowed to do by the authorities. And a lot of people followed this tradition, to use the own garden to bury the dead members of their family.

People in places, where we visited, were very friendly, they smiled to us, spoke with us in Polish, or just waved to greet us.

For the first time we made a break on our trip in Poland in a city called Rodom, where we came to stay into a hotel, which was decorated in a traditional style from the period of communism in Poland.

Already on the next day we were in the town of Wroclaw. Only then we discovered that what we rented from Russia was a flat or an apartment. Instead, we got a place in a hostel. The whole room of 5 beds and a bathroom was for us to use. The only issue was the absence of a table, which was an obstacle to my work. We had to get creative and made a new workplace for me out of a windowsill and boxes. 

The next morning we saw a man who was very interested in our Volga. He recognized this exact model, and was very enthusiastic of to see it again with his own eyes. He asked us to make a photo of him and a car. It was funny, because initially I begun to speak with him in Czech, but he didn’t understand me at all. However, when we switched to Russian, communication became much easier, despite him only speaking Polish.

As this situation ensued, I’ve remembered what the guy from Brest told us. For him, Polish was much easier to follow than Belarusian because a lot of political broadcasts on the TV were in Polish. For everyday things, Belarusians use Russian to communicate with each other.

After this interaction, we have loaded the car, bid farewell to Polish stranger and went further, to the Czech Republic.

This time around we didn’t buy a toll license for the highways because the plan was to drive through small villages, they are much more interesting. When we reached Prague, our home was waiting for us. The next day we had to pick up my mom from the Airport in Prague to then start driving to Paris, where we would celebrate her birthday.

Finding gas for our car in Prague was not an issue. There were lots of gas stations and the gas itself was cheap. Out of all the countries in the EU, Czech republic seemed most bureaucratic, also comparing to Poland and Slovakia.

Prague is a city that is very important in our lives. We have lived there for many years, and it was there that I went to primarily school. But since we returned back to Russia to live in 2000, our mother hasn’t visited the place for over 18 years. This was her first visit in all these years. 

 

On November 19 we drove further to Germany, and this time we were three. From Prague to Adelsheim the distance is short, so we came there pretty quickly. Using autobahns in Germany is the perfect way to see nothing in the country at all. And following this way, already in the evening we’ve arrived to a small town of Adelscheim. In this place lived the friend of our mother. Her name is Olga. Everybody in our family knows Olga, everybody loves her very much. Olga and her family, Germans by origin, came back to Europe in the 90s. Back in that time, Germany was doing a mass recall of all ethnical Germans. Olga and her family are children of immigrants from the times of Cathrine the Great. Many Germans back in those times were sent to Kazakhstan. 

Before they lived in a village Gmelenka, a small place in Volglgrad’s district of Russia, where they were assimilated, had the own house, had children. In the year of 1992, Eltsin, the president of Russia of that time, signed a decree relating to the rehabilitation of German Russians. And thanks to this decree in 1998 the entire family of Olga went to live in Germany, in their ‘historical homeland’.

On the left is my mother, on the right is Olga.

The village where Olga lives now with her family is small, but very cozy. There is a school, government offices, and a couple of big supermarkets. Each house there had Christmas decorations. When we came there, we knew that we’ll have a good, relaxing and restful time. There was Russian food, local beer, walks around the village. I was also lucky to have a big table for all my work that had to be done. My commission the packing of tea for Zagreb was finished quickly, which could not be said about finding a table in our following part of the trip.

After that, on the 25th of November we drove out to France. Our first stop was in a mini hotel from Accor. (I chose this hotel because I knew about it from my work in the past - in that time I made illustrations for them about a different location around the world). This time we got ‘hotel F1’, which is a so-called ‘Modular house’. In that ‘modular house’ the heating didn’t work. It was already the end of November, and the temperature outside was only about 5 degrees. Very quickly it became clear to us that heating batteries were damaged. After that Steffan went downstairs to the Volga to take his tools. And in over half an hour the heater started working again. So that is a story about how we repaired a room in a French hotel.

And in the next morning we were already underway to Paris. In November 2018 there were lots of meetings and protests in France. Every weekend, the yellow vests went outside where and blocked the traffic at the highways. Along the way, all the cameras were either coated with black paint or were simply broken. All of this we saw already on the way to Paris. In, Paris itself everything was even worse. Everywhere we looked, we saw burnt road signs, burned cars, the gas stations were closed. The bus stops and some buildings were closed. Everything looked like it went through an Apocalypse in a weekend, while the next day, on Monday everything was already in order. We saw crowds of tourists and the working people going calmly to their workplace. People were walking with their dogs. All of this continued until the next weekend…

We came to Paris in the middle of the day. Our flat was rented by Airbnb. This accommodation had to be big, because except me, Steffan and my mother, the mother of Steffan also planned to come to us. This flat was in a district 18 of Paris. It was in so-called Black District. 

When we were driving and were coming close to Paris, we recognized our dear Moscow there: the same traffic jams, the same detours, the same traffic accidents. Everything is the same in every big city. When we were already in our district, we couldn’t find a way to our hotel because the signs with the names of streets weren’t there or were broken. All we had was the navigation system, which fortunately functioned. And by the way, when we were already in Morocco, the best navigation system, which works there, is maps.me while the google and apple simply aren’t be able to do what they have to. Probably there are too many small streets, nooks and turns for them to know all these details.

We lived in Paris for a week. This was according to our tourist schedule. And because our mothers were there for the first time, we planned to bring them to Arc de Triomphe, Moulin Rouge, Montmartre, Champs Elysées. The tour Eiffel had to become the highlight of this trip for them. A birthday present. We had champagne in front of this Champs Elysées and then we went upstairs inside the monument. When we returned back down below, the lights at this tower just turned on.

In order to complete the birthday present, we visited Louvre the next day. In 2013 I had the presentation of my work there. Despite that, the first time I’ve seen the famous Mona Lisa was now only now. We didn’t’ really understand her, or rather the grandeur of the painting. As a painter I am ashamed, and I understand and regret it. Maybe one day I will see enlightment.

On 2nd of December I had to leave France and to fly back to Moscow because of my job. I’ve returned to Steffan in two weeks, but this time it was to Lisbon. Steffan had already reached Portugal by that time.

The drive from Lisbon to Nazare was 1 and a half hours. Nazare! You need to see this place to stop taking any kind of waves, even the biggest ones, seriously. Nazare is settled between two cliffs, on one of which there’s a lighthouse and an observation deck. We’ve lived there for about a week. And every day I went to the beach, mainly to see this lighthouse. When I would watch it for a long time, I had a feeling that I was under some kind of hypnosis – it was difficult for me to stop watching and to leave that place. We rented a flat on the mountain not far from the beach and you could see the flat from the surrounding areas. The humidity there was extraordinary. Washing clothes made no sense because they would never dry out.

Our next aim was Lisbon. It is a controversial, strange city. It is extreme eclectic place. Only one thing there was the same throughout the city – the ceramic tiles. You can see them across the entire city. It is so beautiful, that you’ll never forget it. We lived in a typical Portuguese flat, with yellow wall tiles, the wooden floor. and more tiles. Tiles everywhere. This was my Lisbon. The trams there were also yellow. There were no smooth roads in the city. Differences in height in the city were significant. Thanks to electrical scooters we could move around. We have stayed there for two days…

And finally it happened! Today was 31 of December, we were in almost most South-West part of Europa. In an apartment in a small town Portimao. There, we would celebrate the New Year. And my own birthday. The 31st of December in the morning I was still in bed, looking through the big ornamented widows. It was already warm in that time and I was busy with sending answers to the friends who sent me the congratulations of my birthday. Later on, in the evening, we went to the main platform on the embankment. Not far from that place we saw people who were busy with pyrotechnics. New Year event is an event everywhere: a lot of people were grouped together, had their own bottle of champagne, you could hear music everywhere; people danced, and sent fireworks. Later on, people would go to either a bar or a club, or as we did, home. This is because of Steffan, who prepared a festive dinner with broccoli and tiger prawns in a creamy garlic sauce. It was very delicious!

On the 2nd of January we left Portimao and went to the Strait of Gibraltar in Spain. We stayed there, in the port, to spend the night. That flat belonged to an Englishman, who lived there with his wife and a son. We spoke with his wife woman. She told us that she lived in Uzbekinan. There she met this Englishman when she was 15 year old. When she was 25 y.o. she left her fatherland and went to live with this man in Spain. And she also added that people in Spain find Putin dangerous, as he is always looking for power. We listened, we were surprised, we smiled…

To be continued ...