At the end of our travel we all are a bit tired and not very enthusiastic to translate reports. We beg your pardon for this short form of the diary!

On 25 October the repair of the radiator had been finished by the late afternoon and we continued our way home, driving by night to and through Volgograd (at a petrol station the service man told us “Hitler kaputt!”) towards Rostov and Taganrog, where we arrived around noon the other day, after visiting the ancient Greek fortification of Tanais. Taganrog has a kind of partnership with Badenweiler for Anton Tschechov died there, and two young people of the municipality, Alexander and Olga, guided us around the sightseeing spots and museums, which was unexspectively impressive.

Weather was nice and temperature 24°C when we arrived in the Crimean peninsula on 27 October. After 26.430 km driving we immediately found a nice apartment for 25 $ just at the harbour of Jalta, had an evening walk at the Riviera-like promenade and a perfect turkish dinner with good Moldavian wine.

The south-west corner of the Crimea is a beautiful part of the world, wooded steep slopes and limestone cliffs. Easy to stay there, it’s not expensive at all – only the everywhere to see signs of decay, as usually in old Russia, hinder this area from becoming a holiday paradise for westerners.

We did our way across the mountains to Bahçesaray with it’s famous Tatar Khan’s palace in a quiet & peacefull garden setting and drove another 500 km from there to Odessa, arriving in the early evening. We checked in the hotel “Passage”, an incredible nostalgic place with stucco-decorated rooms, all a bit shabby, the perfect surrounding to write novels playing at the turn of the 19th to 20^th century.

So the hotel, so the complete centre of Odessa. We had the 29 October to walk around the streets, in this decadence of former imperial glory: But the impression of Odessa is not of an eastern, but western or southern city.

The famous Potemkin staircase to the harbour is the only disillusion: To many constructions at the side of the port.

(GA)

Tomorrow we will continue the way home via the Bukovina. This is the last report from on the way: At home we will try to produce a kind of a résumé.

Thanks to all, who took part in our travel by using our website. Thank you for all your good wishes!