Oleg leaves, Lena arrives, and we continue south along the Volga, without a
plan, until we stop at a marina that stretches out into the Volga and is
flooded by it – we are in Ulyanovsk. The city itself lies high above the
Volga; between the marina and the high plateau is a beautifully landscaped
park, which we stroll up. I don’t need to say anything more about Lena:
we’ve known each other since 1989, when we met at a desert camp in Gobi
(Mongolia) and have visited each other again and again over the years, her
family in Switzerland and me and my family in Siberia. Lena gave me
fantastic support for this project of circumnavigating Europe in a RIB,
obtained a Russian boat licence and accompanied me as a pilot from Murmansk
to St. Petersburg last year. Isn’t that fantastic?
Lena loves travelling at least as much as I do, and after stopping here
unexpectedly, she seems delighted to be in this historic place – Ulyanovsk
is the birthplace of the revolutionary ‘Lenin’, who turned the world upside
down around a hundred years ago. Although we view the figure of ‘Lenin’
differently, or perhaps precisely because of this, we found the perfect
opportunity here to discuss the development of the past century and to
visualise the evidence and traces that led him also to Switzerland from this
place (which was renamed after his family name Uljanow). – Lena is visibly
proud of her country’s achievements since the revolution, and with her
enthusiasm she always succeeds in opening the hearts of the people on our
way and allowing me to gain an insight into the souls of her compatriots.
Because she reaches out to people, she is also skilled at spontaneously
organising the impossible… That promises to be fun… And I am already
looking forward to our journey together to Sochi in the Black Sea.