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Published: October 20th 2009
So a white guy, a black guy, and a Polock were on an airplane that was about to crash.................. and that was about all we knew about Poland when we crossed the border out of Slovakia. Growing up in the States most of us were exposed to a wealth of jokes where the unlucky Polish bloke always ends up doing the stupidest thing possible. After travelling for just ten days in the country it seems more likely that the joke was somehow on us. We heard stories of widespread pollution and indeed some urban areas in the south, where coal is still used for domestic heating, are a dismal sight. This scene quickly gave way however to scenic country roads which took us through small villages and pastoral lands rimmed with the glorious beauty of deciduous countryside in autumn. The scenery remanined rural until we found ourselves, as if by surprise, in the middle of metropolitan Wroclaw. We really knew nothing of the city but planned to spend a few days there with a couple we met in a hostel in Mongolia (whom we also knew little of)..............
Six days later we emerged from the city fully rested and wondering where
the time had gone. Between the youthful prosperity of the town and the ever gracious hospitality of our hosts we found it hard to leave. Night after night, encounter after encounter, we met a diverse array of young intelligencia, expats, artists, engineers, and other hip folk who did not need to try to convince us that theirs is a bright world with a brighter future. Old industrial complexes are being converted into experimental studio spaces, galleries are springing up all over the place and the music scene seems rich and diverse. Besides the cultural aspects, employment is on the rise as European companies move into the more cost-effective eastern markets. The coming EuroCup 2012 championships have construction crews bustling to ensure that the infrastructure will be in place for a world class event and young engineers are finding themselves with the clay of Poland's future in their hands. With the economy continuing to grow (even now) it is a great place to be and many people seem to have figured that out. Sweetening the pot for us was our friends' glorious flat and having Kasia and Laurence themselves to hang out with for a few days. A tourguide is always
a welcome luxury in such places but intelligent, thoughtful, worldly, witty companions are two in a million and we feel fortunate to have made a few new friends. Alas, after three more days than we planned it, was time to take our leave of Wroclaw (pronounced Vrotswav) and head west in the rain.
Two days and less than a hundred kilometers later we were battered by a steady northwesterly flow that was bringing substantial amounts of snow. Soaking wet and mildly hypothermic, we took refuge in a rural bus shelter and waited out the worst of the storm. It was odd sleeping in a cement box by the side of the road but nobody seemed to mind and we needed to get dry. When the wind stopped we rode on and found the road covered in debris with crews hard at work repairing powerlines and clearing trees. When the sun finally came out we were in a nature park in the Czech Republic and the landscape was radiantly gorgeous. We followed little roads through hilly forests where occasionally a car would pass. Though we only passed through a hundred kilometers of the country we were impressed with the well preserved
natural beauty of Bohemian Saxony. A night in a small cabin with a heated fan gave us the opportunity to dry everything as well as fry our socket converter. We felt so grateful to the space itself that we adorned it with a favorite sticker that has now been on four continents, waiting for a place powerful enough to bare its message.
The next day we came to the long awaited Elbe River bicycle path, a highway for bicycles that follows the river through Saxony and into the heart of Northern Germany. This path has been in our thoughts since we first heard of it from a German in Mongolia and rolling onto it, after months of anticipation, felt indescribably gratifying. We have stopped in Dresden only long enough to score a new socket converter, write this blog and buy food. The city seems nice but we are longing to ride and make use of a spell of good weather to cover serious kilometers. There is so much bike infrastructure here that it is confusing but we now have maps and are feeling confident about navigating glorious bike path after glorious bike path for the rest of our ride. We
have plenty of time to get to the coast but there are less direct, more aesthetic routes and we want to wind down our trip in style. The task at hand keeps thoughts about the end of our ride at bay, but when we think about that it seems unimaginable that we will soon stop travelling by bicycle and go home. It is a reality much too fraught with emotion to venture into, still out here, out on the great world road. We'll save the crying for the coast.
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Kasia and Laurence
non-member comment
From Kasia and Laurence.
"You are welcome guys, I am glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for the kind words.