| My first visit to Poland was in the Spring of 1998, on a high school trip to Krakow. We visited the salt mines and also Auschwitz, it was a very impressive week. It made me want to see more of the country, so in the Summer of 2002 I decided to go to Poland for 2 weeks with Anne. Below my travel report with photos of that trip! Also visit Anne's homepage for lots of photos and a detailed (and funny!) story of our trip! August 2002 From 3-17 August 2002 I took the SNP journey Trans-Poland with Anne. It was a train-walking combination through northern and eastern Poland.
We started the trip in Hengelo, where we took the night train to Berlin.
Anne and I took the upper beds (there are three beds above each other!) so we slept very close to the ceiling. Anne had trouble sleeping because the train made so many stops during the night (in the middle of nowhere, just to slow us down we guessed) but I actually slept quite well.
In Berlin we changed train, to Szczecin, where we changed train again, this time to Slupsk. This was our final destination for the day. We made a walk through the small city, where it was still possible to get lost... Anne and me would find that out later, when we tried to find the hotel in the dark after spending the evening at the internet cafe in the train station.
When we left the beach, we climbed a dune of 30 meter high. On top of it there was a lot of wind. It blew the sand away and that's quite painful! The last part of the walk went through the forest. In the touristic town Leba our bus was waiting to bring us back to our hotel in Slupsk. Below you can see some photos, in the last one you can see how the dunes 'eat' the forest, these dunes are sometimes called walking dunes. They move to the east with 3 cm a day!!
The next day we took the train from Slupsk to Gdansk, a 2 hours trip. We stayed in a beautiful hotel there... well actually it was more like an orphanage. Broken windows, big rooms, a shower without even a curtain. Very different from our hotel in Slupsk! Gdansk is a beautiful city and looks a lot like Amsterdam. Anne and I were walking around, a good tip if you want to see Gdansk: go find an internet cafe and you'll see the whole town! :) I also made a picture of THE car of Poland: the Fiat Polski! If you see the roads there, you don't understand how they can drive in such a small car... In the evening we had dinner at the Towns Hall. Anne gave a beautiful piano concert for our group. After dinner we saw Gdansk by night. We tried to make a night (well... not really night) picture. Without tripod or anything, we just used a part of the bridge. My photo is not that good, you can see the movement in the vertical. Anne's picture turned out quite alright! When we came back at the 'hotel' at night, we found out there was an internet cafe in the same building...! :)
From Gdansk we took the train to Elk, which took 6 hours. A bus was waiting for us there, to take us to the ecological farm where we stayed. It was owned by someone from Wageningen! Anne and me went for a walk, and Anne found a stone in the shape of an apple. I took a crazy photo of it in combination with the sun shining through a cloud.  At night, Anne, Celeste and I watched the stars. It's really dark there so there were a lot to see. We even saw a very bright falling star! The next day we went canoeing, it was fun! Anne and me were the fastest for a change :) I don't have photos of this day. The day after that we went for a walk in the Red Swamp. We never found out why it was called Red. Also it wasn't really a swamp, but that was because it hadn't rained for months. Loes explained a lot about all sorts of plants on the way. The last part of the walk went over a very long bride, first through the forest and then through a field. We also saw an elk in the last part... but it was behind a gate :) Meanwhile I got myself some blisters so I wasn't very speedy.
The next day we took the bus to the middle of nowhere, where we got out and started our walking trip. We walked through Suwalski Park Krajobrazowy, a landscape with hills and many lakes. On the way we found a rock with holes where swallows have nests. Anne wanted to get one, but (un)fortunately there was nobody home.
After walking through a forest we arrived in the small village Smolniki. There we took a bus to the ecological farm where we would be staying. This farm looks like Villa Villekulla, the house of Pippi Longstocking!
Anything but logical house, but really funny! Every room was different, ours had a beautiful wall painting (inspired by a napkin??). On the photo Jesus is still hanging on the wall... no further comments ;)
Because I still suffered from a lot of blisters, and I had a worsening angina, Anne and me decided to take a day off. The rest of the group went for a walk around the lake. The farm was situated very close to the Lithuanian border, so we just had to take a look! We walked there at our (well, mostly my ;) ) speed. We even slept for a while. The border was easy to see, on the Polish side there was agriculture, on the Lithuanian side there was forest. A big part of our walk we had company of a very nice little dog :) We practiced on phrases to use to defense ourselves if we would get caught at the border, but there was nobody there! So we could take pictures of the border of Lithuania. There was also a three countries border very near, there's a lost piece of Russia there. Of course we also had to take pictures there, to proof we really have been to Russia ;) I got very tired, but we were lucky.... we caught one of the three busses that stops there daily. We left a very sad dog, and drove back to the farm.
The next day we took a bus to the train station in Suwalki. We went to Bialystok by train, where we continued our journey by bus to Bialowiza. Our hotel turned out to be occupied so we had to sleep 'on the camping', where there were some rooms. After dinner we went to bed early. I was sleeping all day, except for when we had to change from train to bus or something :) The next day we had to wake up early, we started our walk through Bialowieski Park Narodowi (the only part of primeval forest left in Europe!) at 6:00 AM. Our guide showed us many tree species and especially woodpecker species. He even knew the Dutch names of them! He also showed us tree trunks where, according to him, smurfs were living. We walked in the forest for 6 hours. After that I went to sleep immediately. I was still ill, and living on only yogurt and ice cream.
At 4:00 PM I went into the forest again with half of our group, with Stefan. Stefan spoke only Polish and Russian, so we had to understand his gestures. He was very strict, walk on, walk on! He was angry because we were wearing 'disco-clothes', too bright colors. We were looking for bizons (wisents), but we only found traces of them. At the end he took us to some piece of land surrounded by a fence where there were bizons! On the photo you can see the bull on the left. There was also a baby bizon!
At night we drank vodka outside with 2 Irish guys and a Danish guy. Because of my angina, I could drink vodka like lemonade! The next day was a resting day for me. In the afternoon, Anne, Jolanda and me went for a biking trip to the Belarus border. The other people of our group had been there in the morning, and were able to take a lot of photos before they were sent away. We wanted this too! When we arrived at the border, there seemed to be nobody there. So I crawled under the bar, but then a Polish soldier came running out of the bushes! He was angry, and took our passports and wrote down all our info. He said we could be arrested and we should pay him money, but after a while he let us go. Quite an adventure! The next day we took the bus to Bialystok again, where we almost got on the wrong train to Elk. Just in time we found out the train to Warsaw stood at the other side of the platform! In Warsaw we first went to our hotel. What a luxury after the last hotel! We even had a tv in our room with 70 channels... Anne and me went for a walk trough Warsaw. Near the hotel there was a University, quite different from our University in Wageningen!
At night we had our last dinner together in a nice restaurant. Meanwhile there was a thunderstorm, unfortunately we missed it because we were eating.
After dinner we lost the group (too bad for Jolanda and Celeste, we were planning to go to a karaoke bar! :) )
Next to the hotel there was an internet cafe, where we spent the rest of the evening.
The next day Anne and me visited the Culture Palace, very funny! I've never seen a weirder combination of museums. First an exposition about football shirts collected by Stefan (don't ask me!), then a museum about the war, then wax statues and finally an exposition of old cars. There we discovered this very modern Fiat Multipla, and the wheel is at the right (of the photo)!
After a dinner at Kentucky Fried Chicken we left to the station to catch the night train to Hannover. Celeste entertained the group by giving everybody a new look, she even entertained the people in the train next to ours with this :) In the middle of the night the German border patrol woke us up... Try to find your passport then! But he gave me a stamp so that's alright. The next morning we arrived in Hengelo on time. We said goodbye to everyone, and together with Loes I traveled back to Wageningen. It had been a very nice trip! |
