Mongolia is far away. It still felt close for a few days, after I got back. But it’s been just over a month since I washed the last bits of Mongolia out of my pores with a long, hot shower in a hotel near the airport in Beijing (our connection was delayed). The absolutely official end to my journey came with a bite into my double cheeseburger from In N’ Out on the 60th night since leaving American soil.

When our car broke down on the outskirts of Vilnius and the Nissan mechanic fixed our car for free, we knew we were going to like this city. I’m proud to say my great-grandfather was from Vilnius, and that I’m a quarter Lithuanian.

On day three of the rally, we hit Munich on foot. After craning our necks upward at the turn of six o’clock just to watch the famous Glockenspiel tick silently away (the figurines danced at five), we walked the pathways through the vast grass of Englischer Garten. Meandering until we hit the Eisbach, a frigid man-made tributary of the Isar River, we eagerly laid eyes on the standing wave that has beckoned German surfers since the 70s. Basically, a fluke of engineering has seeded in Munich a unique landlocked surf scene.

But still, here I am and here are some notable numbers to give some cold, hard scale to my and Team Great Job’s adventures over the last two months.

We arrived at the Mongolian border after driving all night, passing through frigid Russian mountains just before dawn. At around six in the morning, just as the first light was making a jagged outline of hills visible around us, we found a circle of Mongol Rally cars parked in a circle like Conestoga wagons, protecting a handful of tents.

Greetings Comrades from Moscow,

I’ve taken thousands of photos thus far on our journey, but I can only edit a handful every several days, so here’s just a few to get the ball rolling.

We finally escaped Latvian purgatory by making minor repairs to the Team Great Job! car and getting it reinspected, thus obtaining a crucial holographic sticker that some guard looked at for about two seconds at the Russian border.  The delay since our first failed border-crossing attempt had been two weeks.

After taking all night to cross the border and then driving all day without a good night’s sleep, we arrived in Moscow with our little yellow Nissan Micra.  Think of the most hectic freeway junctions in Los Angeles, stick them in the middle of one of the world’s largest city centers and then subtract eight hours of sleep before trying to imagine me at the wheel on Sunday afternoon, trying to find our hostel.  Russians don’t feel obligated to obey lane markers, which is too bad because in the heart of Moscow t

Will hasn’t had time to e-mail any photos or write a post, but he did manage to get quite a few shots up on the good ol’ flickr. Even though they are from earlier in the trek and not the Eastern European photos I eagerly await, they will do for now. Check them out here.

The hardest part of travelling across Europe before and during the Mongol Rally has been the clinging feeling of uncertainty – we don’t know whether our journey will be cut short in a matter of days or stretch for another month. We all still crave the latter, to roll into Ulaan Bataar in late August is still a magnificent dream to us. But as the days have turned into weeks and after a month of seeing the insides of many of Europe’s ancient cathedrals as well as its DMV-equivalents, and watching the rolling countryside through the window of our cramped yellow car, it is harder and harder to say we haven’t accomplished enough. I’m not sure we don’t already have enough stories to tell and that, given some of the difficulties we’ve experienced, we must push ourselves even further to reach some sort of catharsis, to feel like we’ve gone far enough.

Latest update from Will came in on Saturday, who knows where he is by now. Team Great Job!’s Twitter is now randomly updated (international texts don’t cost so much, eh?), so make sure to follow that if you are as desperate for new updates as I am. – Jackie

The Polish mechanic’s hoisting a slab of metal underneath our car to protect it from rocks and debris once we get on the dirt roads in Kazakhstan and Mongolia.

Two days ago, we were in Lodz, Poland and on every side of us were miles of dismal Polish highway, two lanes and seemingly the entire stretch under some sort of construction.  The city offered respite from the unyielding semi-trucks on the narrow roads, and we were scouring Lodz (pronounced Woodge) in search of a mechanic willing to weld a generic slab of metal underneath our car – a measure greatly endorsed by previous and current Mongol Rally participants to combat the roads in Kazakhstan.  Driving aimlessly around Lodz, our first stop was at a Mercedes service station.  The youn

Will sent a quick update yesterday from a couple’s home, where he and Team Great Job! stayed in Poland. The team was off to see a mechanic to make some upgrades on the Nissan Micra they are driving to Mongolia. From Will:

A quick hello before we go out to find supplies for our journey in the city of Ludz (pronounced oudge), the second-largest city in Poland.  We are staying with a super-nice couple who have written in Polish some explanation of what we need and why we need it that we can show to people today.  For us, it’s a very welcome respite from camping.

We drove from Munich to Prague and explored the city with one of Ryan’s friends two days ago and put some serious mileage on our feet getting through the city.  Then we left our campsite yesterday morning and took some wrong turns out to the city before making it through the forested mountains of the Czech Republic.  The resort towns along the way reminded me a bit of California’s national parks, and we stopped for pizza in a P