Cu Panda la Soci: ziua 9

Finally, the road trip is showing us his true face:

A frozen smile, cold teeth, landscape eaten by snow, corruption and the wild street-dogs. But moreover the picture of our new hero: Dima Sartor. Welcome on board of PandatoSochi, you half god. Dima Sartor was born in Russia, has a Russian mother and an Italian father. Simply the perfect combination of what we have been in need of. The well known Italian mood for driving our Fiat Panda and the Russian way of dealing things out at the borders of Romania, Moldavia and Ukraine.

We are indeed an attraction with a western car and Nokia Lumias. Good product placement should show off, of course. However, when we left Bucharest in the afternoon,

we knew about the danger of driving during the night through Ukraine. There are gangs pretending to be police officers robbing you and may kill you. In fact, we got stopped by the police, but „only“ the real ones from the border. After six hours of waiting without water, food, heat and only Dima who was able to deal with them, it was time trying to speed it up with some cash.

But they refused and just kept on interviewing us about our journey and did not believe us that the final destination was Sochi and no the political unrest here in Ukraine. They rather searched for weapons, drugs and discussed my non existing religion. We don‘t have the time and energy to describe it precisely but if you want to get more details just text or call us here: 0043 660 525 0162

After all, we arrived at a twelve-star hotel in Izmayl, which shouldn’t even get one star and had to chance to get rest for a couple of hours. I was trying hard to not recognize the used condoms on the floor of my bedroom and the two empty vodka shots on my table. The whole morning there have been street dogs barking their oust souls off their body.

Somewhere along the line, I got the feeling the hotel was right out of Franz Kafka‘s book “The Transformation”. The bad smell of the frozen bedbugs under my sheets was going into my nose and was forcing myself to sleep. Only my mind knew that this will be over soon, because we are just about to reach Odessa.

The city of our dreams. Why? Because Dima is insisting to show us the traditional kitchen.

More on that tomorrow. Please pray for our safe travels.

Due to the fact that we haven‘t been able to upload more hi res photos, you can follow us on instagram, twitter and facebook via #pandatosochi.