Today we were intent on finding some internet as we needed to catch up on emails related to visas for those Central Asian Countries. So our goal was the city of Barnaul where we hoped we might find an internet cafe or get good reception for our cellular modems. So throughout the morning we motored along with moderate traffic on good roads through lush farmland

On the entrance to Barnual I noticed a number of large, professionally made, billboard signs for truck manufacturers and repair shops and concluded that Barnaul might be a good stop for any overlander with vehicle problems.

Also on the entrance to the town (crossing the towns main bridge) we saw a wedding party getting photos taken, interestingly they were using a local heli-pad as the studio for their photos. Also interesting, the wedding party had parked their vehicles on the curbside lane of the bridge.

Turning off the highway we found ourselevs on Lenina Prospeckt, the towns main street and one on which trucks were prohibited (oh well we did not know that in advance and could not work out how to easily get off this street). This took us to a big paved square and a statue of Lenin where we found a place to pull off and park. We spent some time here, with inernet, at a local internet cafe, and getting Nina a hair cut. All very productive.


After our chores were done we found a better place to park (across the road in a large paved parking lot, right behind the Lenin statue). The police lady who seemed to be in charge of the lot told us (via iPhone translation) that it would be ok for us to park in the lot all night. So we settled in and then went for a walk to check the place out, and for Nina to take photos of the many wedding parties that seemed to be over-running the town.


It eventually became apparent that some large event (actually a rock concert) was to be held near our parking spot, people were streaming in from everywhere, a large force of police officers and soldiers turned up in a variety of vehicles. As the aternoon wore on the parking lot filled up with cars and the transport police were kept busy controlling the parking of the cars.

So we spent the evening watching the crowd, dropping in on the concert and exploring the area of town around our parking spot. At least this center area of the town was very pleasant, clean modern and well maintained and with some interesting buildings.

What an amazing day - a parking spot right in the middle of the city and a concert!!

The final amazing thing about the day was that by 23:00 the concert was over and the crowd had dispersed. As part of the dispersal process a troup of police officers seemed to go around the area collecting drunks and other potential trouble makers, loadiing them into buses and after that we know not what. Once all this was over we had a quiet night.