Four countries in one day!

From Poland we had a very long drive through Slovakia, then Hungary and into Romania where we spent a night in a hotel very close to what is seen as Count Dracula's castle but which is really Bran Castle. The photos in this blog are a mishmash from different countries but give a general feel of what we saw on the road. What has surprised us on the drive is the lack of significant borders, you can drive from one country into the next without really knowing. There is just a little blue EU sign on the roadside letting you know when you have crossed borders. The borders between Scotland and England are more impressive, with big signs and flags.

There has  only been border immigration checks at Romania, Bulgaria and Greece, where we had to show our passports. We also showed our passports when we got off the ferry in the Netherlands.

In some countries we had to stop just after the border, usually at a petrol station to buy a vignette, which is a road tax for that country. We were a bit concerned about doing this but it was straight forward enough.

We have had a mixture of very pretty roads but also ones with big barriers blocking the view, these were mainly in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany .  

We have seen many picturesque lakes and reservoirs with rolling hills and towering mountains. 

Many interesting buildings, churches and forts, many we don't know what they are as we just drove passed them  and most signs we couldn't read! 

We have seen many people working in the fields, hard physical work, people with hoes turning over large areas of ground. We have not seen many tractors at all or other farm machinery.  On the whole we have seen people, of all ages  persevering with hard physical tasks,  just  getting on with their jobs in all weathers. 

While in Bulgaria we have seen that many of the homes have their own plot of land in which they grow vegetables, there are very few gardens full of flowers as the these would be seen as a waste of land when they could be growing food. Any flowers we have seen tend to be in pots or grown on verges outside their house. 

We have also seen a lot shepherds with either cows, goats or sheep. In Bulgaria a lot of the homes in the country areas have a few goats or sheep  which they take to a shepherd in the morning,  he walks them all day then they come back at night. Across the road from where we are staying, we have seen them coming back and knocking on the gate with their heads and the owners let them in. We have also seen them escape and the owners chasing them up and down the street. amusing for us, not for them! 

We have passed many horse and carts even on busy roads. I felt sorry for the horse in the picture above as it was going on a busy  roundabout, I suppose it was used to it. 

We have passed swathes  of fields of rape seed, all glowing in the sunshine. I wonder if the people over here whined about it as much as Britain did when it was introduced. 

This poppy field was more impressive from a distance but by the time I got my camera out I only got the tail end of it. 

By the time we reached Romania it was getting dark and as we drove along the roads increasingly got worse, with  pot holes, dirt tracks and windy lanes. I don't know if it was because it was getting darker but the roads seemed scarier, the towns more rundown and the people in the streets seemed more suspicious. Some of the towns/villages didn't have any lighting and people and animals would suddenly appear on the road, coming out of the gloom. 

As we drove towards our hotel the road became very narrow, winding between the trees, a couple of times a few things swooped towards the car , we were  unsure whether it was big moths or bats. Then out of nowhere a snarling hound leapt from the roadside,  lunged itself at the car howling for all it was worth. I braced myself for the thud as I really thought it was going to hit us. It was like something out of "  Hounds of the Baskervilles."

After what seemed forever we reached our hotel, once again the Satnav had got us right to the spot  but the place was in darkness and there was a big security gate  blocking the way. My heart sank, thinking we were in the wrong place in the middle of nowhere on a dark and windy road.  Thinking we may be close to the hotel and not right at it, we decided to travel a little further down the road.

After a short distance we realised that we were going the wrong way so we  drove back to the security gate and thought we would phone the hotel from there. When we reached the gate though the lights were on and a man was waiting for us, they had seen us turn up the first time but then we drove off! I was so relieved. 

The hotel was lovely, a gorgeous room and in the morning we could see the lovely view from the window. The man who welcomed us at the gate was  really nice and friendly, a lot better than the woman inside. If it had just been her there I would have slept with garlic around my neck! To be fair, I just think she didn't have a good understanding of English. 

We didn't linger in the morning though, breakfast and off! 

How could I forget Czech Republic !

We spent one night in the Czech Republic before going on to Poland , so this post is out of sync with the others.  In my defence I will say it was because I tried to erase it from my memory as a traumatic experience. It was there I was truly put in my place and told off by a young whippersnapper! 

Why, where and when , I hear you ask. Well, after settling into our new hotel we went down to the reception desk and were asking questions about the local area when I inadvertently said Czechoslavakia, well that sent the receptionist off.  He didn't shout but went off on a rant about Czech Republic and Slovakia being split for 25 years, etc etc. you could tell after he had let off steam he felt a bit awkward and didn't know what to do with himself, I didn't say another word neither then or the rest of my stay to him, I wasn't in a huff just scared to talk. I felt so small and it was just a slip of the tongue. 

Now, I know there are people who get uptight about this sort of thing,  we come across people who think Scotland is part of England and others who think England and just England is Great Britain but basically you can correct people without telling them off. Anyway, that is in the past now and I will always  remember that Czech Republic and Slovakia split up 25 years ago! 

We stayed in a town called Olomouc, the hotel was on the outskirts so we set off to explore the town. Once again we had beautiful weather to wander around, in a way there was nothing particularly special about this town but at times it's just nice to explore away from the usual tourist spots. 

In several of the places we have stayed or travelled through there have been railway lines with no barriers or fences either at crossings or running alongside. In this town we had to cross the lines at two different points and basically you just look left and right like you do crossing the road. It made us wonder what their rail accident rate is compared to Britain's, what with us having barriers, signs, flashing lights and sirens. 

We did visit this church which was set in a garden area within a housing scheme. I sat there in the sunshine for a while , David meantime was geocaching. All the time he was loitering around the church there was an elderly couple sat on one of the other benches giving him the eye. Don't blame them, people must wonder what he is up to. 

Before we headed off the next morning we went to get petrol, brought back memories of days gone by when I saw the petrol pump. 

A night at the museum - Nowy Sacz, Poland

We were going to stay one more night in Poland before we headed for Bulgaria, mainly to split the journey up as it was too long to do in one go. This time we were heading for Nowy Sacz, which is classed as being in Lesser Poland, which I think sounds a bit unfortunate. Anyway, after another long drive the Satnav took us to a museum, yes a museum! I wasn't convinced we were in the right place but David never doubts the Satnav, so we got out walked through the courtyard, struggled to find a door in but then found a reception type place. We arrived at about five o'clock in the evening so the place was really quiet, no one was wandering around. 

I asked the lady if it was  an hotel or a museum , she insisted they were an hotel and seeing a booking.com rating displayed on the wall, I felt relieved that we had actually found the right place. After giving us the keys to our place, we told her where we were parked and she didn't think that was safe,  so asked us to bring the car into the courtyard, which we did. However, when she saw were we parked it she said, " You can't park it there we are a museum." So it was a museum and an hotel. 

The closest thing I could describe it to is Beamish, a living museum near Newcastle in Britain, where old houses and streets are set up for you to wander around and explore with old artefacts related to the building in place. This was like an old fashioned town square, with one main building which I think used to be the town hall as the hotel but there were little houses/shops set around too. It was very quaint, sadly we arrived too late in the day to see the shops open and then left early before they opened. 

Even our room was done up in the style of the museum, I think we were in the servants quarters, we know our place. One of our daughters thinks it looks like a convent. There was just a net curtain on the window, so we used a towel to block out some of the light. 

Strange but true there was a geocache in the area, so with it being a nice night we headed out to try and find it. Well, David tried to find it while I just enjoyed the walk. To start off with it was really nice, beautiful woodland, birds singing and in a church hall an orchestra was practising, so we were walking along to lovely music. 

I really like bridges, I don't know why so I was particularly happy when the walk took us over a river.

David wandering off to find a geocache, only to backtrack as he went the wrong way.

There were some unusual flowers on the route, although I bet somebody reading this will be saying, that's a weed, pull it out. 

The path really did lead through some beautiful woodland and the lighting in the trees was gorgeous. 

One of the paths led  to the church where the band was playing, outside was this small religious memorial which had been decorated with white flowers,  as had the doorway of the church. While in Poland  we saw lots of children dressed up in white  outside churches,  so I think it may have been Confirmation  Day, where children and sometimes adults are confirmed into their church. 

Then the lovely walk went horribly wrong as we basically got lost following the GPS for the geocaching . This saw us walking down private roads, over people's land, setting their dogs off and basically wandering aimlessly for ages. To make matters worse we never did get on the right path so basically had to retrace our steps, setting the dogs off again. 

I was not a happy bunny and was stomping along thinking of ways the GPS could meet with a nasty accident. Thank goodness it was single beds that night! 

After an early night we woke up to get our breakfast, which unusually was not in the hotel building but across the courtyard in a separate building altogether. 

This is some of the buildings in the courtyard. 

The building below is where we slept, can you see the tiny windows in the roof, that was where we were. 

Poland- Wieliczka Salt Mine

After we left Auschwitz we went to book into our hotel, all I can say is thank goodness for Satnav as we wouldn't have found it without it. It was in the middle of an housing estate tucked away up a side street. The receptionist there was very helpful and after sorting out our booking we asked her how we would get into Krakow city centre the next day. Now, the reason we booked this hotel was because on  booking.com it said that the city centre was just a short bus ride away. As it turned out you needed to catch a bus and then catch a train to get there, so with that in mind and the fact that we are a bit "old citied out" we decided to do something else. 

We had been given a city map by the receptionist, the type that advertise key points and areas of interest, on this we saw that we could visit Schindler's Factory or a salt mine which was very close by. As we had done a  lot of war things we decided to go for the salt mine, and we are so glad we did, it was a fantastic attraction, very interesting and so different from other things we had done during the year. 

A feature of the attractions that we visited in Poland  was that there was a bit of confusion where to park. This is because leading up to an attraction there are loads of car parks which often have attendants waving you in with signs advertising where you are planning to go, so you presume that that is the car park for it. As it turns out, they are not and the chances are you could have a bit of a walk to get there and have the privilege of giving them the parking fee to do so. These car parks are alright if the main or official car park is full but try and get as close as possible to the place. However, if you are not sure exactly where the place is this can be tricky, we ended up doing a couple of drive bys of the mine before we decided where to park. We probably looked like we were casing the joint.

We were lucky as we timed it just right, at the mine there are guided tours in different languages at different times during the day. As we bought our tickets the lady told us our tour was just starting so if we got a move on, we would catch them up. I didn't manage to get many good photos as the lighting was not great for taking photos with an iPad. 

The white stuff above is called cauliflower salt, as it looks like lots of little cauliflowers, surprisingly enough! 

During the tour we had to climb  about 850 steps down, this was not all done  at the beginning but was staggered in stages throughout the tour.   We learnt lots as we progressed through the tunnels, such as the history of the mines, how the tunnels were developed, living conditions of the men and horses who worked there, how technology developed and about the dangers of working underground. there are hundreds of kilometres of tunnels that are right underneath the town in several layers. 

There are still miners working there but just maintaining the mines and clearing more for tourists to see. You can do a tour where you actually work a part of the mine with the miners. 

Our tour guide had obviously been doing the job for a very long time or was having a very bad day as 

he was clearly cheesed off with the whole routine of it all. He reminded me a bit of Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, at times he was really quite rude but we actually found him quite funny. Every person 

in the group had an audio set so they could hear their tour guide talking, this was switched on at all 

times, so you could hear him muttering to himself and sighing as we went from area to area. 

He would say things like, " We go in this area, you see ghost, you get scared we leave" then he would lead us in. No, we were not scared by the ghost because basically it was a flashing light and he had spoilt the element of surprise. At one part of the mine there is an amazing chapel, it covers a huge area and has the most intricate detailed carvings in it, all made out of the salt walls. In there, the guide after a short tour of the area said, " I give you five minutes to look around." Then thirty seconds later said " Let's go" and marched us off. 

These are salt crystals growing on wooden beams. 

This is a carving made out of rock salt of one of the Kings. 

The rock salt is cut into cylinders making it easier to transport by rolling it along. 

A lot of the technology down there still works. Everything has to be made of wood as metal rusts too quickly. 

There are many chapels down there. The miners are  very religious and after an accident , religious carvings would often be hung at the site. The chapels would be moved periodically as the miners worked further and further into the mine. We went into one and it had pews, a small altar and even stained glass windows which were coloured glass with a light behind them. There is also a tour where you just visit the chapels . 

As the mines are now geared up for tourists they have developed certain areas such as putting in an underground lake  where they play classic music to you. Tourism has been going on there for years and they used to have boat rides along one bit. Apparently  during the war German soldiers over crowded the boat causing it to tip over,  some of them died and that was the end of that. 

At the end of the tour you can go to an interactive educational type of area where they have a 5D movie on the mines.That  had started when we got there but it gave us a chance to play with the interactive games set up for the children. 

The movie was good it had the normal 3D type of things but the seating also vibrated at certain points and you got a wind blowing past too . So, I think that was the five aspects but I could have just been sitting in a draught. 

As you make your way out there are three different lanes to queue up in, one for groups leaving, one for individuals leaving and the last one for people wanting to visit the museum.  We decided to visit the museum as it didn't cost anymore so went into that lane. We were the first ones in it and we stood for ages, what they do is wait for enough people then take you around. 

After a while it was still just us, others did join us momentarily getting our hopes up but then they realised they were in the wrong queue, so it was back to just the two of us. In the end it worked out well as we ended up having a tour with just me and David, the  tour guide and a trainee tour guide. The tour guide we got this time was very enthusiastic and keen to share her knowledge,  we had a great time with her as she explained more about the mines.  It really was fascinating. At the end you go up in one of the original miner lifts, which travelled really fast and had lots of us in it all squashed up. 

It really was good, so if you are in the area try and get there. 

Poland - Auschwitz

We drove to Poland planning to go to Kraków city centre, which is supposed to be amazing to see, on the first day, and then go to Auschwitz on the second day. As we travelled down though we passed the sign for Auschwitz so thought we would pop in and see if we could get in that day. There are two parts to Auschwitz,  there is Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz-Birkenau which are about 2 km apart with a free shuttle bus between the two. Both parts are free to get into but if you want a guide you need to pay and you then go around in a group.  Auschwitz Birkenau you can get into at anytime but in Auschwitz 1, it is guided tours up until 3 o'clock and then individuals can get in for free after that. We tried to order online tickets to get a guide but we had left it too late to for the money to clear the banks, however we did manage to get two free unguided tickets online but to be honest these were not needed as you could just turn up at the door after three and get in. 

It was quite confusing finding the right place and that is how we found ourselves at Auschwitz - Birkenau rather than Auschwitz 1 , but it doesn't really matter which order you do them in if you are just wandering around by yourself. 

As we were not totally sure if we were in the right place when we turned up at the car park, we nipped into the tourist information shop by the car park. I went up to the counter and said "Hello" to the young lady behind the desk. She didn't even lift her head, she picked up a pad of Post It notes and peeled one off, she then picked up a pair of scissors and proceeded to cut it in half. Not once did she acknowledge I was there. David, who had been locking up the car then appeared and spoke to her and she started to write the number 10 on the bit of paper and started to colour it in. Totally bizarre, and not very good in a tourist information place, we left her to it, went back into the car park where an attendant helped us. 

A short walk from the car park took us to the entrance of Auscwhwitz -Birkenau and the ominous gate and railway line that you associate with the place.  What stunned us the most about the place was the sheer scale of it, prison huts and the remains of prison huts could be seen stretching away into the distance. 

This is one of the guard huts, one of the places where the selection process would take place on whether people should live or die. 

These are the chimney stacks of wooden huts that used to house prisoners. Not all of the  wooden huts have been destroyed some are still standing. 

There were also some brick huts, some of which you could walk around. The picture below shows the  beds which were basically wooden platforms which were shared with several others. 

It was very eerie walking around the huts knowing the suffering that had happened there, some people had left flowers on the beds which was very poignant  and showed that people still cared and remembered.

The sanitary conditions were very bad and basic, there was brown ceramic trough type sinks and we presume the picture below are toilets. This was in a hut for female prisoners. 

One of the huts was for Polish women and children and it was used as school by them. Some of the original art work was still on the wall. 

 As we walked up to the back of the camp we could see all these ruined buildings, which basically looked like they had collapsed in  on themselves. When we got closer we found out that they were actually the gas chambers which the a Germans had blown up with dynamite, to try and destroy evidence  when they knew they were defeated. 

This railway carriage is in the camp as a memorial to all the people who had been transported there by train. 

There were rows and rows of these holes in one of the huts which again we presumed was toilets. 

We were surprised at how low the actual fences were, but there was barbed wire on the fences and look out towers dotted around the camp. In this photo you can see the chimney stacks which were in the huts,  going on as far as the eye can see. 

This wooden hut was designed to hold 52 horses but was used to house 400 prisoners. One can only imagine how cramped the building was. 

                                                    

Walking around Auschwitz-Birkenau was very moving and the whole place had a subdued, desolate, oppressive atmosphere with both individuals and groups walking around in a respectful, quiet manner.

Next we went to Auschwitz 1. There was a huge queue outside waiting to get in which we joined but thankfully it soon went down. This part had a totally different feel to it and if you didn't know the history of the place you would be surprised to know what went on there. 

Walking down the roads between the rather pleasant looking buildings with buddleha bushes and trees blowing in the breeze as the sun shone  seemed surreal. Even the people walking around seemed more relaxed. In  the buildings were exhibits and information on the different groups of people who had been persecuted by the Germans. 

                                                 

Within Auschwith 1, there was other evidence of the brutal techniques used by the Nazis such as the courtyard used for shooting prisoners and gallows where some prisoners were hung as an example to others . The first gas chamber is also there but it's use had been changed for  storage when the new ones were built at Auschwitz Birkenau. 

It was a very interesting day, it is the type of visit you do not particularly enjoy but feel you should do  out of respect to all the people who died and suffered in the camps.  

Germany -Wolf Park

Just across the border from Luxembourg in Germany is a wolf park that David found out about on the Internet. So, after a very short journey we found ourselves walking amongst the wolves, who obviously were safely on the other side of a wire in their enclosures. 

As soon as we got out of the car we could hear some of the wolves howling which made us more eager to see them. The park is free to walk around there wasn't even a donation box or a souvenir shop to buy things , which is a pity as I would have liked to help support it. Although it was unclear why they were being kept there or where they had come from, so I don't know if they were rescued or captured! 

There were several packs of wolves all within their own enclosures. The packs mainly consisted of six wolves. Each enclosure was very big and covered a wide area of woodland but obviously in the wild they would have a huge range to run around. I did see one wolf pacing the length of the fence but the others seemed happy enough. 

The walk itself through the woodland is beautiful, work was being done on the pathways which are just made of earth but that is good as it keeps it more natural. The soil there is very red. There were also a couple of two storey hides so you can see the wolves if they are not close to the fence. 

From there we set off to our hotel for the night, as we drove along this aeroplane suddenly flew across in front of the car, a bit too close for comfort. 

Our hotel was beautiful and was set in the Bavarian Forest, there were loads of walk ways and paths for cycle runs. Bikes could be used from the hotel. You could also go for pony treks,  the ponies were lovely, a beautiful toffee brown colour with cream manes. We were greeted at the reception desk by a curvy fräulein in traditional costume,  an added bonus for David ! 

The hotel upgraded our room so we ended up with a four poster bed, a sitting room area, a little hall way which the bathroom was off and it even had a bath. I really like having a bath and used  to have one every Friday night after a busy week at work. A wee treat! 

After we had booked in and got settled into our room we went for a walk in the surrounding countryside, it was very serene and calm. 

After that we were ready for tea, we looked at the menu which was up outside the hotel and obviously it was all in German so we had a stab at deciphering it. We could work out the  words scampi and tagliatelle , so fingers crossed we went in and hoped for the best. 

The waiter inside was lovely and luckily spoke good English and even gave us menus in English, 

which was a relief. We both opted for Pork schnitzel as we had had that in another country and enjoyed it. David had chips and I went for a potato salad but it was  not potato salad as we know it, it tasted alright but it didn't look too appealing, being yellow and shiny! 

David also had a colaweiser which is cola and beer mixed together, like a shandy made with cola. Sounds horrible but was actually alright. 

The waiter we had was from Poland and that was another place we were going to , so we had a nice conversation with him about where to go. Nothing is really planned for this trip, we are just taking it day by day. He recommended Kraków and as that is close to Auschwitz, another place we had thought about visiting we decided to go there.