Our tally of police stops has now reached five, including the friendly chap who just wanted to help us out, three in Ukraine and two so far in Russia.  One of them was a very straight-forward, “Hello, I’ll have that wine thanks”, others have made attempts at official procedure, but the best so far was definitely as we drove the last few kilometers of Ukraine.

Pete was driving, and learning from previous experience we were sticking rigidly to the speed limit, but still we got waved down by a very grumpy fellow.  We quickly established a complete communications black hole, and Pete took the phrasebook with him to meet his superior.

These police didn’t even have speed guns, and to their credit they didn’t pretend we had been speeding, but aided by Lonely Planet’s choice of phrases, they managed to accuse Pete (to his considerable bewilderment) of disturbing the peace (good starter for ten), parking illegally (erm…) and being dizzy!  His sophisticated defence to all this was “me, nothing”, but it did the job and we were on our way without a ‘fine’.  Splendid.

David

During our visit to Hele’s School in Plymouth, someone asked us what we were most worried about, and with unanimity of a well-oiled machine we all said ‘Russian border crossings’.  We particularly thought the crossing from Ukraine into Russia would be an ordeal.  So with this in mind we approached the border yesterday with a little trepidation.

We stopped a couple of kilometers short to rearrange the packing in the boot so that a few shoes (and even one of Pete’s socks - a particulrly evil touch I thought) would fall out upon opening.  Then passports in hand, we trundled past the huge line of waiting HGVs to the crossing…

…and left less than 3 hours later having had no problems at all, and even several smiles!

Our first impressions of Russia have been pretty good all-in-all, we even got stopped by a policeman just because we looked lost and he wanted to help us.  Let’s hope it continues!

David