Previously known as Stalingrad, Volgograd is a large, patriotic city in between Ukraine and Kazakhstan. We didn’t have much time to explore the city, as we wanted to be on our way to Kazakhstan by that evening. One thing we definitely couldn’t miss though was the giant Mother Russia (Rodina) statue looming over the city. We drove up to the hill it was perched on and marveled at the scope of the thing (larger than the Statue of Liberty). There was also a gold-roofed Orthodox Church as well as various memorials to those that had died in World War Two (along with Russia’s version of the Eternal Flame). It was all very surreal and a reminder of how much influence communism had on the country for 70 years or so.
We met the guys who we had stayed with the night before at the memorial. They mentioned that there was a McDonald’s up the road as well as a Statue of Lenin. We walked quite a ways and failed to find wither, so we wandered into quite a modern shopping mall and ate an overpriced meal at the food court.
Heading out we stopped at a gas station to fill up and I noticed that we had a steady fuel leak coming out of our rusted gas line. Yup, we still hadn’t fixed the problem, and it seemed to have gotten worse. The gas station attendant, a boy of about 18, saw our problem and got down on the ground to try and fix it with some twine (to try and secure it from hitting the wheel). It kept breaking, so he got out some plastic rope and between him and I we secured it pretty neatly and bought some more time before it needed to be fixed or replaced. We tried to give him some cash for his time and effort, but he refused. I ended up taking a picture with him, but he looked pretty embarrassed at all the attention.
Pictures have been posted in the gallery.
