It was an early up and about at 5.30am on the Swedish ferry for another hot shower and to watch the boat approach the Polish coast at Swinoujscie. It was a smooth crossing, and we had quite adequate sleep inside the van. Customs were pretty prompt, and we even managed to persuade the young Orbis lady to give us the student exchange of $4/day required spending instead of the standard $10/day, so we were off and running before 8am.
The drive through the Polish countryside was along poorly sealed roads, especially near built up areas, where the cobbled roads really shook up the van. There were no traffic holdups as traffic was light – a large proportion of all vehicles were motorcycles, and most noticeable were the number of cars on the side of the road, especially the smaller models. We travelled through mainly small Polish villages, with not a lot of people evident. Those we saw, especially in the morning, seemed to be on their way to or from church, given it was a Sunday. In general, they appeared a fairly colourless, staid looking people, as evidenced in our earlier trips behind the Iron Curtain. The main colour
seemed to be in the red and white Polish national flags hanging everywhere in preparation for their National Day. The countryside was a mixture of bush and forest, with a lot of fairly unproductive looking farmland. The weather was as dreary as the scenery, but fortunately the rain managed to hold off.
We passed through the cities of Szczecin and Bydgoszcz, where we bought breakfast and lunch respectively, both pretty slushy food but cheap at 20 Zls. Our van certainly attracted great attention from all that we passed. We stopped off late in the day at Torun for a look at the medieval buildings and ruins, before taking a general Sunday stroll with the locals, with whom there was a bit of interaction, which was fun. We then pressed on to within 50kms of Warsaw, playing cat and mouse with all the locals dawdling along the side (and sometimes in the middle) of the country roads.
The following day ended up a rather eventful Polish National Day. We made the last 50kms into Warsaw in short time, and booked into Camp Gromada, showered, then made it into the city for the parade. We just made it in
time to catch the end of the military section – troops, tanks, rockets etc, with photography surprisingly tolerated. We caught the most impressive Military Brass Band, and then a constant stream of young people representing every field of work, sport, youth group etc, with some also in national costume. We were advised that over 50,000 people from all over Poland had marched during the day. I even won a Polish heart who presented me with her National Day badge as a memento of the days events. Late in the day, we managed to catch up with Elzbieta, the tour guide who we had met during our earlier Sundowners visit, and we drank cherry brandy and ate various snacks with her and her father until 7.30pm, when we turned to watching a soccer game between Warsaw and Moscow. Following that, we took in an evening Chopin recital in the Park Lazienkowski for an hour or so. After a meal at Bar Praha, we went to the Post Office to get addresses etc for tomorrows business dealings, before dropping madam back home and making it back to camp by 10.30pm.
you feel like packing up the whole travel scene and heading home. We seemed to cover a lot of miles walking around Warsaw but got very little We arrived too late for Czech visas, we missed out on black market money, although we managed to get the car fixed up (or should we say partially fixed up) after many hassles, tossed in getting films, and gave up on getting clothes made at the tailors – the least said about the day the better! A more interesting evening followed. We had a drink with some NAT Aussies at the camp before heading into the city for a feed. In our search for black market money, we were ‘picked up by an American/Polak who shouted us both a drink at the Metropole.
