Off to Georgia ⛴ – or not after all?

The “only” 190 km to Odessa, which we wanted to divide into 3 days, turned out to be the biggest challenge of our journey so far. On the first day, rain and sunshine alternated, meaning we had to put on and take off our rain gear every 30 minutes. In the end, we gave up and let the rain wash over us.
On the second day, we looked forward to better weather and remote roads and villages. When planning the route, we noticed a small, 4 km long section that was marked as an unpaved road. We didn’t think much of it, as this is generally the rule, even if the road is marked as paved. So we made good progress at the beginning, enjoying the reasonably good roads and beautiful poppy fields.

Arriving at a small village, Volodymyrivka (just before the dirt road), a local resident pointed out to us with hand signals that the road further ahead would not be passable. We replied using the translator that we had already crossed several muddy roads and that this was no problem.
When she saw us again five hours later, covered in mud, she just smiled. Now to our five-hour detour (during which we covered an incredible two kilometers 😂):
For the first few meters, we were still able to push our bikes reasonably well through the clay-like mud that stuck to the entire bike. But soon the mud became deeper and deeper, the bikes heavy as lead, and both wheels kept getting completely stuck.
When we couldn’t move forward or backward and were stuck in the mud up to our ankles, we had to make a decision. Either we push/carry the bicycles for another 3 km or turn around and take a detour of at least 30 km. Since our forces were almost completely used up and Beni’s mudguard was blown away by the mud, we turned back.
On the last meters of the way back it started to thunder heavily and we could just find shelter at a bus stop. Finally we had the opportunity to prepare our “lunch” at 4 pm and wait out the rain. While we were still eating, a man and his son came towards us and made it clear, again with hand signals, that we could spend the night with them. It was a unique opportunity to gain insight into simple village life. No running water, many power outages, no shower, outhouse in the garden and mainly self-sufficient life.

Luckily for such nice people we brought a souvenir from Switzerland and we were able to make the boy a huge joy with a small Swiss army knife 😀.

We had completely run out of energy, so we decided to cover the rest of the distance by train.
To do this, we first had to cycle 30 km out of our way and then another 30 km to the nearest train station. We did this on the off chance, as we couldn’t find a timetable and no one could really tell us whether we could take our bikes on the train.
It worked out 😃, and we and our bikes traveled the remaining 70 km to Odessa by train for CHF 4!

Arriving in Odessa we are picked up by Alex with his adventurous folding bike and we ride together to his apartment, where we are allowed to be his Warmshowers guests for the next days. Thanks to him, we get to very exciting places in the city, far from the normal tourism. He took us to a party where experimental music was being played, which you can think of as people making instruments out of everyday objects like a rusty piece of tin. Furthermore, together with him we visited a secret, abandoned, dilapidated industrial complex with a private beach section directly on the Black Sea.

Alex also helped us to take the PCR test to be able to take the ferry to Georgia on 6/22.
But now it so happens that the evening before we noticed that the departure date has been moved back by one day – without us being informed about it. We were then told on the phone that our ferry had suffered an engine room fire and was therefore out of service indefinitely. At the moment the shit is hitting the fan at the ferry company and we have no choice but to wait 1-2 days for more information. We are also toying with the idea of taking the ferry to Turkey if there is no other way. Let’s see where fate takes us 😃.
In the meantime, we stroll through the city and do various little things. We are already looking forward to repeating the PCR test again 🤪.