The routes include transporting a car by ferry
On October 4, the last country in the European West bordering Russia, Norway, closes its border checkpoints to cars with Russian license plates. Previously, Poland, the Baltic states (with the exception of Kaliningrad transit) and Finland took the same measures. Thus, the borders between Russia and Europe are closed to travel by cars with Russian registration. Travelers gave advice on how to leave Russia by car.
Avid travelers are people who are almost unfamiliar with the word “not” if there is something behind a locked door something interesting. Therefore, the most active of autotourists do not resign themselves to prohibitions imposed from outside and look for routes. There are, in fact, only two of them — and both involve transporting the car by sea on a ferry.
“This summer I went to Bulgaria by car through Georgia, then by ferry to Istanbul and further by land,” says Alexey, an entrepreneur from Moscow, who owns real estate in this Balkan country. — This is our traditional family vacation at sea, I took my family out for three months, I flew to Russia twice by plane and flew back.
According to MK’s interlocutor, getting to Georgia in a Russian car is still not difficult. But you can run into hours-long (sometimes up to two days) traffic jams at the border crossing. No, not what everyone remembered when they heard the words “Upper Lars”. It’s just that the passes are sometimes closed due to weather conditions.
“Buying a ferry ticket is also quite easy if you stock up on an “international” bank card in advance,” advises Alexey. — In general, if you have such a map, right after the checkpoint with Georgia, you find yourself in a world familiar from earlier times: driving through Turkey and the Balkans is not so easy, but it’s absolutely the same driving as five or ten years ago, there are no specifics here.
True, it is worth noting an important thing: cars with Russian license plates became “non grata” in Bulgaria from October 2, two weeks earlier Greece took similar measures. These are two EU countries that share a land border with Turkey. Thus, in Turkey, Russians driving cars with Russian license plates will have to transfer along with their car to another ferry — going to Italy. The authorities of this country (as well as France and Spain) have not yet announced unfriendly steps towards the cars of Russians.
Two other routes discussed in the auto travel community are also linked to Turkey. The first is an overland route from Georgia along the southern coast of the Black Sea. Note that it is well-used by truck drivers, but is still unusual for passenger cars. The second is a transport corridor to the same Turkey through Azerbaijan, which can be reached along the shore of the Caspian Sea, from Dagestan.
Whether the mentioned schemes will operate until the next warm season is unknown. Two main questions: will Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan remain “friendly” towards Russians traveling by car, and will there remain countries in the European Union in which tourists in cars with Russian license plates will not be at risk?