K'grad pt. 2 and the long way home

The money spent for the Russian visa was truly not wasted. Everyone else was, though.
The Friday night in Rockotheque in Kuri Bambuk turned into early morning bowling which turned our plans of Saturday return upside down.
Pasha did good job in keeping us from paying for almost anything, which I hope can be paid back later in Finland.
But since we didn't ride on Saturday, that meant a 720 km ride for Sunday.
Which is all well and ok, but for the heat, and the speed limit of 70kmh on Kaliningrad's mile-wide motorways, enforced every few kilometers by the ever-eager Russian police.
There is hope of better future, though, since the government doesn't have the money to keep the police school in K'Grad running anymore. So maybe in a few years the police/resident ratio will become something more sane.
Extra credits for vigilance and hospitality goes to the Russian customs officer, who had us fill the customs declarations three times over. Mind you, the forms were naturally only in Russian, so it is no wonder we got one check-mark in the wrong box.
After this, there was something wrong with writing date as "july" instead of 7, and the final rewrite had to be done because the hand-writing was not clear enough.
They had no interest if the bikes we were riding were ours, or if the bikes matched the documents at all.
So the 10 minute border crossing took more than an hour.
After clearing the Russian-Lithuanian border, things were easy, and it only took 7 hrs or riding to make it to Tallinn. We could've made it to the last ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki, but they didn't have room for our bikes, so we spent one more night in a hotel and soon all the Lokit will be safely home.

Kaliningrad

After the extra day in Olomouc, we were in a hurry to get to Kaliningrad. One night was spent in Poland, which was nice as ever. Yesterday the MCML Russian Export Team finally made it to Mother Russia. Rest of the guys had some tire problems in Katowice, and had to locate a new tire for one of the bikes.
They also went to see Auschwitz, which is impressive and depressive but not something you want to do in a hangover.
In Kaliningrad the nazi horrors were the furthest thing in our minds, when we went looking for Pasha, the friend we met last time here.
His Kuri Bambuk -bar has evolved into a heavy metal night club and also relocated. The place looks really cool and rocks like perkele.
Pasha was working the bar but somehow that wasn't really a concern and soon we were a jolly party of dozen or so people, and food and vodka just kept appearing to the table from nowhere.
Today being Friday, i think we will see what Kuri Bambuk is really about these days. I vaguely remember there being promises of a heavy metal disco today...

Cultural findings in Olomouc

Otocec was left behind yesterday. The spearhead of the Culture team managed a 600 km ride to Olomouc, Czech Republic, because we have a plan of making it also to Kaliningrad, to meet the old friend Pasha.
Rest of the guys chose Bratislava.
Olomouc is a 1000-year old town, 5th largest in Czech. The student percentage is supposed to be highest in the country, but all students seem to be away for the summer, and it is also some kind of national holiday now, so most of the bars and shops are closed.
What is remarkable here, is the amount of old churches, cathedrals, castles and palaces. There is one on every street corner.
One of the churches sports a massive old astronomical clock, displaying whatever those clocks display, phases of the moon, position of Mars in relation to Sagittarius etc. But what is different about this one to it's counterpart in Prague, is that it was rebuilt by communist government after WWII.
And since communism didn't give much credit to angels, saints, deities and other fairies that the clock's displays had been originally had, they replaced them with scientists, labourers and other working class heroes.
The plan to make haste to our Russian friend was interrupted by rain, and we decided to spend another day here. We already have seen lots of the old cathedrals, one even from the 46-m tower, and now we'll go find out what else this town has to offer.

Here be swamp monsters

The second day of Rock Otočec proved to be as good as those in the know had promised.
The mud field was there, and a football match started in the afternoon, and continued well into dark. There were 2 goals on the field, but only one team. The brown team.
The playing tactics combined volleyball, rugby, wrestling, stage-jumping, synchronized swimming and some other sports that haven't been invented yet.
Rock'n'roll was playing all night and special thanks for making the evening something hard to remember, goes to one lad's grandmothers friend, who had provided the lad with a couple of bottles of self-distilled honey booze.
Also a very pretty girl on the Dark Side (they have cookies there), and her father and uncle must be thanked for providing inside advise into Slovenian culture, as well as scented car-refresheners and a badge which turned out to have some kind of double-meaning message in it.
Today it is still festival day, but we need to take things slow, because this is the turning point of our trip, and so the long way home starts tomorrow.

Rock Otočec

The Otočec festival is not all that big but it more than makes it up in the surroundings. It's set next to an old castle, middle of a river.
The river also plays important role in keeping the festival people cool. Today they're planning on watering a patch of grass until it turns mud. Then several mud games will take place and general hilarity will no doubt ensue.

Culture goes underground

Another victory for the Culture team.
The down town Ljubljana is nice, but rather similar to other Eastern European major cities. Nice terraces with a river in the middle, Italian tourists with big sunglasses and little Korean people in front of every statue, others taking their pictures with their Nikons.

Something completely different can be found if asking the right people. Close to our hostel, there is an artist-driven cultural village of one or two blocks, all covered in all forms of art and artists and hangarounds.
Yesterday we found ourselves there in a gig of a punk-reggae band. The inner yard was filled with sweet herbal aromas and people were generally less big-sunglassed and much less cool than the downtownians. And a whole lot happier.
These are the things Culture team lives for.

Slovenian achievements

The Culture team managed an unexpected feat. Riding from Brno, Austria to Kranj, Slovenia in one day while taking the scenic route, passing over not one, but two mountain ranges. Two, I tell you! I'm not sure that has ever been even attempted by a man before! The sights were spetacular and roads varied from hairpins to knee-dragging 150kph sweepers.
That was yesterday, today we made the short transition to Ljubljana, and checked in a youth hostel.
I can hear the most cynical of you smirking at the mention of us and youth together.
To those despicable cynics I'd like to say that you would be here too, if you could.
The hostel is a fomer prison, with each of the cells converted into a hostel rooms by a different artists,
They're also hosting an all-u-can-eat BBQ tonight, but as the temperature is something like +33 C, that might be a tad too much.
The Alpine team, on their part, has been touring the Dolomites, from Arabba, Italy for a few days now. They're supposed to meet us here tomorrow.