The entrance to the marina in Syzran is ‘tricky’: sandbanks that have been shifted or accumulated by the Volga over the winter and are neither marked on a map nor reliably marked by buoys – but fortunately the ArgoFram has an echo sounder system, and there are some local fishermen who take their boats out […]
The arrival to the megacity of Samara is incredible and impressive: the Volga stretches for kilometres along one side of the city, enthroned high above with its skyline – again, there is a lot to see… We quickly left the marina near Samara (lots of industry next door and unpleasantly loud). Now we are a […]
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 […]
From the west, we travelled along the Volga via Sviyazhsk to Kazan, from where the Volga branches off to the south… We, that’s Oleg and me – Oleg, who welcomed me in Murmansk last year, with reunions in Solovky and Belomorsk, and was now ready to accompany me from St. Petersburg to here as a […]
The Volga takes me from surprise to surprise – to be honest, I didn’t even know this city from hearsay. Cheboksary? After all, it has half a million inhabitants… and is the capital of the Russian Federal Republic of Chuvashia. With its own language, with multilingual universities (Chuvash, Russian and English), with a relaxed lifestyle. […]
Nizhny Novgorod took me completely by surprise – the expanse of the Volga and the even greater expanse beyond the riverbank, the completely transformed city with the old centre and the satellite suburbs spread far and wide, the new football stadium and the ‘traditional’, kilometre-long pedestrian zone in the old town… Ruslan came at just […]
Plyos is something of a posh (spa) resort on the Volga. Only a few hundred people live here permanently, but powerful and famous Russians have their dachas here – and there are several sanatoriums founded and still run by the former Soviet artists’ unions. In other words, Plyos is an extremely well-maintained place that is […]
Through the Rybinsk weir we entered the ‘real’ Volga – for the next few weeks I will be carried by it eastwards and later southwards, several thousand kilometres away…
Jury is the loving guy who welcomed us at Yaroslavl and looked after us carefully. He is actually a fuel station attendant, but […]
From Cherepovets across the Rybinsk reservoir, well over 100 km long and about 50 km wide, then shooting into the bend of the Volga – we head for Koprino, briefly against the current, to a tourist spot, well done, for an upper class of customers who seek and find wellness with spa, fine food and […]
Oleg is seriously ill – if Oleg is not well, my project is not well. Cold nights on the ArgoFram, lots of wind during the day, the unusual stress… Luckily there is Svetlana! Svetlana is a fairy godmother and lives near Cherepovets, our next stop. She will take us in – a breather! And a […]