Apparently my title and registration looked very suspicious to the Estonians because they spent about thirty minutes minutely examining them. They probably don't see American vehicle documents too often and had no idea what they were looking for. Eventually they decided they weren't fraudulent and waved me on into Russia. Surprisingly the Russian side was faster than the Estonian. After filling out a small immigration card, I moved on to customs. The woman there claimed to have no forms in English and gave me one in Cyrillic to fill out. I stood there staring at it for about five minutes, with her staring at me the whole time as if she expected me to learn Russian right then and there, after some exasperated sighs she set off to find a form in English which lo and behold they did in fact have. In less than an hour I was across the border. The first order of business was to buy insurance. I pulled into a gas station across from the border crossing and pointed at the word for insurance in Russian I had copied in my notebook. A very nice old woman was in charge of selling insurance and through hand gestures I ended up with three months of insurance for around $50. I'm sure that in the event of any claim the process would be impenetrable, but it should save me some trouble from the police.
I gave Yuri, my host in Pskov for the night, a call. said he was not in Pskov, but somewhere on the road and that if I were to ride towards Pskov he would find me. This sounded improbable, but with the language barrier it was impossible to understand any more detailed directions so I took off in the direction of Pskov. After about 20km I saw a guy in camos on the side of the road next to a blue Soviet-era Lada waving furiously at me. It was Yuri, and in the car with him were his grandfather, Nikolai, and his friend, Sasha. They were going fishing and I was invited. With Nikolai at the wheel the Lada took off at an alarming pace with me trying to follow closely behind. Pulling off the main road we took a dirt road down to the lake, as we arrive a beautiful naked Russian girl emerges from the water (sorry, no pictures!). People were using this spot for swimming, and as much as I would have liked to stay the fish had cleared out of the area. We decided to head to a different fishing spot on a river, along the way we stop at an abandoned quarry to dig some limestone, don't ask me why:
Arriving at the river we see that some other fishermen had the same idea so we proceeded to the next fishing spot, but it too is already occupied. Eventually I think a consensus was reached that there would be no fishing today and that we would go for a swim instead. So we headed to a fourth lake! It was cool and drizzling on and off and I tried to resist Yuri and Sasha's cries to join them by pleading that I didn't have a bathing suit. This clearly wasn't an acceptable answer so I too ended up in the lake. After the swim we headed to Yuri's apartment, he lives alone and was able to set me up in the spare bedroom. Yuri prepared Sasha and I a dinner of pilmeni, traditional small meat filled dumplings usually served with sour cream. After coffee spiked with a 45% Estonian liquor called Vana Tallinn, Yuri, Sasha, and I set off to explore the city. We walked for hours and didn't see much to be honest, but we did eat some delicious cherry filled blini:
Yuri gave me an extra bottle of Vana Tallinn to deliver to a friend in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The Russian post won't take it so I agree to try, we'll see if it survives the cold, lonely nights in Mongolia! In the morning Yuri had head to work so I set off to explore Pskov's kremlin and cathedral which I had only caught a glimpse of the night before:
