Ten thousand kilometer day

The night in our first Siberian Gastiniza is very loud. In the building next door there is a gambling den where people meet to drink heavily. Only when it starts to rain at 2:00 a.m. does the bright screaming of the young women and the roaring of the drunken men stop. When I open my eyes at 6:00 a.m., my gaze falls on the cloudy, wet and cold sky. So that’s how it is in Siberia. Although August has only just come to an end, it’s raining just like here at the end of November. The day before yesterday the temperature was 37 degrees in the sun and today the thermometer shows 12 degrees. What a drop in temperature.

“Huuaa, it looks terrible,” says Tanja as she wakes up. As if in slow motion, we pack up our things and prepare for heavy weather. Suddenly there is a knock. “Come in!” I call out. Vera, the cleaning lady, opens the door shyly and smilingly and hands us a bag of fresh tomatoes. “From my garden,” she explains. Buoyed by her friendly energy, we carry our equipment from the second floor to the first floor with a little more confidence. “Here,” Vera says again and hands us another bag of fresh garden tomatoes. “Oh, that’s very kind of you Vera. Thank you very much. They will enrich our lunch,” says Tanja happily. While carrying the bikes out yesterday, Tanja tells me that she searched in vain for tomatoes in several stores. “I asked Vera where to get fresh vegetables and she didn’t know. I think that’s why she brought us some of her harvest today.” Before we leave the Gastiniza behind us, we give the nice woman a lighter that we have been carrying with us for 3,000 kilometers so that we can give it away when the opportunity arises. Although Vera doesn’t smoke, she is happy.

As soon as we set off, the rain stops. The movement means we are no longer cold. The master is well disposed towards us, which is why we speed along at an average speed of 17 km/h. Here in Siberia, too, many drivers cheer us on. One in three of them presses the horn hard. Despite the many kilometers that lie behind us at this point, we still haven’t gotten used to the loud salt horns. Some drivers manage to sneak up on us unheard from behind and press on their terrible noise just when it frightens us the most. Trucks in particular, with their oversized and loud horns, often almost blow out our eardrums. The drivers sit in their cabs laughing and waving excitedly. Laughing, we raise our hands and return the greeting. How is the good man supposed to know what he is causing with his bag?

Even policemen hunting on the roadside with their radar guns wave at us from time to time. They use their state power in a friendly way to satisfy their curiosity. “Well then, have a good and safe journey,” wish us the men in their old police Lada.

Around midday, the sun pushes through the cloudy sky, prompting us to take off our rain jackets and pants. We find a place at the side of the road for our snack. As always, all the pretty spots on earth that offer themselves for a rest are littered with broken vodka bottles, plastic bottles and other garbage. I clean the meadow as much as possible. Then we lay out our tarpaulin and eat our snacks. “Look, there’s a tick,” says Tanja, pointing at the tiny crawler. “Indeed. As soon as we get to Siberia, there are forests, ticks and the weather is decidedly cooler. The country lives up to its name,” I say. Tanja takes the little shit and throws it far away. “All that’s missing are the brown bears,” she says with dry humor.

We continue our journey. More and more often, huge wheat fields peek out from behind the forest strips at the side of the road. We are surprised to find an endless planned economy here too. We have now been sitting on our roadtrains for almost 10,000 kilometers, have crossed Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, the Crimean peninsula, western Russia and Kazakhstan and in almost every country we have often driven past huge wheat fields, some of which even looked like oceans. It is simply unbelievable that today’s human race, which continues to multiply inexorably every day, needs such enormous, even incredible resources to feed itself. And yet around 840 million people on our Mother Earth are currently starving. While many people can fill their stomachs every day and simply throw away anything they don’t like, millions of our citizens are still starving in the 21st century. Unfair distribution, wars, dictatorships, slash-and-burn, erosion, corruption, natural disasters and much more are partly responsible for such grievances.

Stimulated by these eternal fields, I cycle along as if in a trance. I would like to better understand the global political and economic context in order to understand how the misery on this earth can be reduced. At the moment, we are trying to do something about forest dieback with our tree planting campaign. But it is not easy to mobilize people for such activities. No wonder, because many of the world’s citizens are unsettled. Which of the fundraising campaigns is clean and which is not? That alone is difficult to find out. My gaze returns to one of the mega wheat fields, its ripe stalks bending in the westerly wind. “We are not giving up. We’ll keep planting trees. We’ll collect tree after tree until we give life to a real forest,” I motivate myself, turning the cranks kilometer after kilometer.

“Denis! It’s time for camp!” Tanja snaps me out of my thoughts. Startled, I look at my watch. Indeed. During my mental excursion into the world of hunger, I completely ignored my own. It is already 18:00. The sun is low and after more than 100 kilometers I notice how my body calls for rest. “It looks good back there,” I say. We stop at the side of the road and let the cars drive past until there are no more to be seen. Then we roll down a muddy path from the embankment into a harvested field. Forced to dismount because of the soft ground, we push our heavy donkeys to a promising group of trees in the middle of the cultivated area. “Looks good,” I say out of breath. “I don’t know. You can still see us from the road,” Tanja replies, which is why we work our way to another group of trees. When we get there, we suddenly see a car lumbering past not far from us. “There’s a dirt track,” I realize. “I wonder where it’s going?” asks Tanja. “Probably to a lonely settlement. But no matter where it leads, we can’t stay here. They’ve probably seen us,” I say. We push on again until, after 15 minutes, we spot a niche between trees that is not visible from the road or one of the dirt tracks. I immediately remove the flag from the trailer to avoid being discovered. We quickly set up our tent and hide our bikes under the green tarpaulin. Then I sink into my camp chair and enter the coordinates of the GPS system into the computer. “An evening to celebrate,” I say while Tanja cooks pasta for us. “Why?” “We passed the 10,000 kilometer mark today.” “Oh, fantastic.” “Yes, really fantastic. I hope you packed champagne in your lunch bag,” I joke. “I forgot”, Tanja amuses herself, concentrating on not overcooking her pasta.

After we have satisfied our ravenous appetite, the approaching cold drives us away. At only 8 degrees we flee to our castle and under our sleeping bags. Only now do I feel the many mosquito bites I caught while typing our experiences. “Ahh, how it itches,” I moan, scratching wildly. “Take the Cool Pic from Jaico. It will help you,” Tanja suggests. I rub some of the brown liquid onto the sting marks. The itching is actually relieved. Relieved, I lie there and listen into the night. Only rarely does the whispering wind carry the sound of an engine past. A rustling sound makes me listen attentively. It cracks. A branch falls from a tree. The call of a bird can be heard. A dog from the nearby hamlet howls heartbreakingly. Another dog answers plaintively. There are still villages here. What will it be like when we cross the forests of the Central Siberian mountains? Are there wolves there? Will we reach this mountain range before the snow and ice this year?

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