Woke up early because the reporters from the national Ukrainian station 1+1 were to arrive between 8.00-9.00h (how about that for a surprise! - Ellen: "Must have been a slow news day" :p). Got all packed up and at a quick (but filling!) breakfast, and headed downstairs just in time to see the TV crew unpacking their gear.
Had a 25 minute interview where they asked a lot of the common questions about my trip (why are you doing it? where are you going? how many kms? etc). They then started to ask about how I felt about the Ukraine, and my impressions of Russia and farther east. After briefly interviewing Ivan and Oleg, they got some footage of me tooling around on my bike, and then followed the three of us out of town as we headed north towards the border. (I had an email the following day from Oleg about the web print version of the story, the TV blurb should be out in a couple of days!)At the ring road, my lead rider said goodbye and left to head north towards Russia. The pretty nice rolling countryside kept me occupied and 35km later I arrived at the border. The Ukrainian border guards were nice enough to wave me up to the start of t
he line (ahead of all the cars) and with a quick passport stamping sent me off to Russia. The first Russian border guard looked on in disbelieve as I rode up to his post, and he quickly gave me my migration card and with a smirk pointed me toward the first post. Being an unusual sight, I was quickly brought forward and bantered about in fragmented Russian for about 4 minutes. I received my stamp and then headed off to customs. Because I was worried about bringing GPS technology into Russia, I was a little bit nervous; however, the conversation at customs was basically - Guard:"Where are you going?" Jeff: "China", G: "By bicycle", J - "Yes", G - "Wow. Go ahead", and he waved me
(and my GPS unit) through!I was pretty excited heading up the last 40km into Belgorod that I over rode the distance by about 4km and had to backtrack. Found my (expensive) hotel for the evening where I knew that they would register my visa. Walked into central Belgorod (pop. 700 000) and went to the impressive city square. While I went to grab some money, the threatening thunderclouds opened up and it began to pour. Found a table outside and watched the Russia-USA semi-final in the IIHF cup - it was weird to be back in a country where people actually care about ice hockey. Grabbed a pizza next door, and then headed back to get some shut-eye on my super comfortable bed.
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