Leaving Marta (Tallinn, Estonia - 13/07)

After 10 days here in Estonia we are leaving Marta's place with our two
oldtimers.
We should arrive approximately in between 1 and 3 weeks (depends on the
vehicles mood).

Wall renovation or playing Twister? (Tallinn, Estonia - 12/07)

After being drunk and having a rest, nothing is better than renovating to
have a good night sleep.

Second business done (Tallinn, Estonia - 11/07)

Diana could not resist to buy this car anyway!!
Now, we'll go back home not with one but two unreliable Soviet vehicles...

Business done, time to go back to our headquarter (Narva-Joesuu, Estonia - 09/07)

Vintage collection (Narva-Joesuu, Estonia - 08/07)

We realised that we are buying the bike from serious vintage bike
enthusiast!!! The BMW R25 (in front in the picture) is the bike I always
though to restore when I'll have time (because easy mechanic and gorgeous
look)!!!

Market guard (Narva-Joesuu, Estonia - 07/07)

The test-ride (Narva-Joesuu, Estonia - 07/07)

We phoned Anatoli who advertised his sidecar already since last year. The
sidecar is a KMZ (Dnepr) MT-10-36 from the year 1979 and it looked to be in real
good condition. The real problem was that Anatoli just speaks Russian. Marta
asked some of her Russian friends to phone him and to set an appointment.
Luckily Anatoli had a friend who speaks English so he could translate once
we arrived in Narva-Joesuu.
Anatoli offered us a ride with him driving to see how good is the bike.
Then Jeremie tried to ride and crashed in a tree (fortunately in slow motion)....Training is needed!!

The 3. Appointment (Narva-Joesuu, Estonia 07/07)

Our sidecar research started on Tuesday we had two appointments for seeing
the bikes. The first sidecar was not driveable at all. The tyres were flat,
it had no batterie and all in all it was in really bad condition. The owner
told us that we could bring it to a garage and it would take maybe 2 till 3
months to fix it. But we do not have that much time ;-).
The second appointment was funnily in the same town just 12km out of
Tallinn. So we took the same bus like in the morning.
The young guy was not really nice and he just wanted to push us to buy the
bike. The sidecar was not complete. We would have to fix it buy ourselves
and he as-well had no batterie. He just put a car batterie on it and showed
us that the engine is working. But the problem was that we could not even
ride it once. When we offered him to come back tomorrow with a motorbike
batterie he just said that he has 2 other people coming tonight so that
would be too late. All this stories did not "smell" good for us, so we
denied.
We had one more option in Narva-Joesuu, 200km east of Tallin next to the
beach. So here we are...

Plan B test ride (Tallinn, Estonia - 06/07)

Our first visits were so disappointing, that we are thinking of a car now...
Diana was in love with the plan B already... But we still go and see the
sidecar tomorrow!!!

The Professional Advice (Tallinn, Estonia - 05/07)

Our mission here in Estonia is to buy an old sidecar and to drive back home
with it. Marta has a lot of friends including the police and so we got some
special advise of how to register a vehicle in Estonia. This was very
helpful!

Catching some luck from the chimney sweeper (Tallinn, Estonia - 05/07)

Tallinn-City-Tour (Tallinn, Estonia - 05/07)

Tallinn is the capital of Estonia and situated just next to the Gulf of
Finland. So it is a nice sea-side town with an old medieval city centre.
Here you can see us posing :-)

Estonia, here we are!!! (Tallinn, Estonia - 03/07)

From Mareeba to Estonia!!! We meet Marta in Mareeba on the Papaya farm and
at that point we did not even know really where Estonia was. To clarify that
we are here now :-).

The Wifi-Bus (from Russia to Estonia, 03/07)

Coming all the way from South-East-Asia we are not used anymore of modern
technology in buses. Mostly they were so run down that we were happy to just
arrive safely. So we were so surprised to have even wifi connection in our
bus from St Petersburg to Tallinn. Jeremie even managed to skype with his
family while driving in the bus. That was funny!

Lalalala... Lada (St Petersburg, Russia - 02/07)

The good old Lada from East-Germany. Childhood memories come back - our
family car!

St Petersburg by boat (St Petersburg, Russia - 02/07)

City-Snapshots (St Petersburg, Russia - 01-03/07)

Overnight we went with the train from Moscow to St Petersburg. We had no
hostel booking but we were lucky that there was still a double room left in
the old International Hostel of St Petersburg. St Petersburg is a relaxed
student city and we finally stayed 3 days. We thought to take the train to
Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. After some questioning we found out that
no-more trains are going to Tallinn. So finally we bought a bus ticket :-).

The Mega-Fountain (St Petersburg, Russia - 02/07 )

One more of the many beautiful fountains in Russia!

The All-Russian Exhibition Center (Moscow, Russia - 29/06)

The All-Russian Exhibition Center is a big park with many different
buildings from the Soviet area. In each of this buildings different
exhibitions are hold. There are many beer-gardens everywhere, go-kart,
roller-blading, etc. It's a great place to relax between this extravagant
architecture...

Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics (Moscow, Russia - 29/06)

This big museum is really interesting. The displays trace the history of
space exploration, including the first interplanetary satellite flights, the
first dogs in space and man's journeys to the cosmos. There's plenty of fun
gadgetry and an excellently conceived display explaining how astronauts
survive a space flight. A pitty is that everything is just explained in
Russian.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Moscow, Russia - 29/06)

Matryoschkas everywhere (Moscow, Russia 29/06)

This famous souvenir dolls are carved out from Linden or Birch wood and
there is plenty of that in Russia like we could observe during our train
journeys. Orginally they go back to the Japanese Fukurokuju dolls which were
imported into Russia in the end of the 19th Century. The name "matryoshka"
actually comes from the typical Russian female name "Matrona" (from Latin
matrona).

Stalin and his friends... (Moscow, Russia - 28/06)

...you find still some photo-opportunities with Stalin and Lenin. The double
of Putin we saw at the Red Square.

The Russian way of parking (Moscow, Russia - 28/06)

We found many cars parked in an unusual way like this. That must be Russian
style :-)

Russia, the country of fountains (Moscow, Russia - 28/06)

Russian cities are very romantic with fountains in nearly each park. The
locals take every opportunity to refresh themselves and take a dip...