DAY 10: Schrödinger's Cat vs. The Little Frog

So, after flummoxing about last night, trying to find the border in total darkness, this morning we made one of those "Hmmnuuuuh!" discoveries (where "hmmnuuuuh!" roughly translates as "What a pair of dumbass tourists!").

Cycling about 20m to the end of the road from our pensjon, we found ... wait for it ... a bridge! It was about 50m long and it went straight over the river and into the centre of Görlitz.

Scott Goes to Poland

Görlitz-Zgorzelec Bridge, Germany/Poland, 09.08.12

So we cycled over to Germany for coffee (I don't think I'll ever get sick of saying that*) in a brilliantly decorated, slightly rundown and cavernous cafe restaurant. What a life, eh?

Cavernous and Full of Coffee

Görlitz, Germany, 09.08.12

On the way into town, we discovered a rather curious fact: namely, that the endlessly entertaining Jesus of Nazareth is alive and well, and has been baking bread and cakes in a German town this whole time. Either that, or he did die and then bugger off to heaven for a while, but now (much in the manner of, say, Jason the Texas Chainsaw Guy), he's back.

Why German Bread Tastes So Divine

Görlitz, Germany, 09.08.12

Suitable caffeinated, we then took off in the direction of a city called Jelenia Gora, which is about 65km from Zgorzelec. Didn't expect to get all the way there, because it's a long way and we'd started quite late. But there were a number of towns on the way where we could stop and find accommodation for the night if we needed to.

The first 24km were awesome: wide panoramas of spacious open fields, a couple of quirky villages (including one which contained a post office that seemed to have its own tomato patch), and a zippy downhill ride through lush green valleys which were among the most beautiful I've seen in this generally rather picturesque country. 

We then approached the little town of Luban, and this, sadly, was where the smooth run ended. Just before the turn-off into the town centre, Scott's rear wheel axle snapped in two, rendering his bike pretty much useless as anything other than a poor man's ginko** machine. Luckily there was a bike repair shop in the centre of Luban, but it was closed. So we found a cute, cheap little hotel on the town's outskirts and settled in.

Little Frog

Luban, Poland, 09.08.12

I taught a Skype lesson at 8pm, and then decided to go into the centre to try and grab some food, since we'd sort of forgotten about dinner with all the other stuff that had been going on. When I got there, everything was closed except the Źabka (it means "little frog", and it's a convenience store chain that's all over the country), so it was dinner from plastic packets for the second night in a row. 

(Btw, I'm posting the Źabka photo here mainly because I think the little frog is really cute :-)

Much worse than that, though, I had to make the journey on foot, because earlier I'd left my bicycle in the back yard of the hotel, and when I went into the yard to get it, it had disappeared. I looked around for ages, thinking the bike had been moved to make way for an incoming car, but nope: completely gone.

So now it's 11pm, there's no light in the locked reception area (i.e. no-one to ask about missing bikes), and I've got a big ol' Schrödinger's cat on my lap. Either the owners have put the bike into their garage to make sure it isn't stolen (they mentioned something about a garage when we arrived, but they were speaking Polish so I didn't understand much), or it already has been stolen. 

If it's the second one, it means we've gone from having two more or less working bikes to having one broken one between us, in the space of a single day. And that, of course, means our cycling trip is over. 

At this point, I just hope I can sleep. 

Good night!

** Not sure why borders fascinate me so much. Maybe because I was born in Australia, where there basically aren't any. (Well, there is one, but it's, y'know, The Pacific Ocean. Kind of a different thing.) Or maybe it's because I've spent most of the last seven years in 'visa countries', where crossing a border is a big deal and often involves quite a bit of bureaucracy, or at least a lot of suspicious looks from armed guards. D'know. 

** ginko = a Japanese form of gambling which involves big yellow machines full of silver balls that rattle and roll around madly, before some of them are spat out into a plastic cup – much like the ball-bearings inside a broken bicycle wheel, which rattle and roll around madly before spitting themselves out onto the road. The major difference is that it's quite possible to understand the bicycle ball-bearing system without being Japanese, whereas the principles underlying ginko are – at least to me – utterly beyond a foreigner's comprehension.

DAY 9: Frontiersmanship

"Your bike looks much better than mine", says a voice from behind me.

Turning around I see Scott, rolling slowly along on a blue-grey bicycle that looks as if it had been handed down through at least two generations of German owners before he bought it in Leipzig on Monday.

We're on the platform of Zgorzelec railway station, which turns out to be one of the weirder railway stations I've seen. The platforms are cut into a hillside, and they look quite new, shiny and evenly paved. The station building is an entirely different story. 

Standing on top of the hill, completely unconnected to the platforms, and utterly shapeless in its decrepitude, it's both strangely attractive (if you like a bit of decrepitude) and just the tiniest bit creepy. Neither of us can locate an entrance door, though there are numerous broken windows that you could use to gain entry – assuming you were, say, either homeless and freezing to death, or slightly mad.

Sunset Reflected in Railway Station Building

Zgorzelec, Poland, 08.08.12

So as I mentioned, Scott has ridden most of the way here from Leipzig, and I've come from Krakow. But why here, specifically? Well, because this is where Poland runs out and Germany begins, so it just seemed like a fun place to meet. We even had a vague plan to rendezvous Cold War novel-style on the bridge which links the two countries, and make a clandestine exchange. Just couldn't quite figure what we could exchange – given that neither of us had taken any prisoners or was in possession of sensitive information – so the plan never quite worked out.

Anyway, Zgorzelec itself didn't impress us very much at first glance (my Polish friend Basia tells me that the town's name means "gangrene", so perhaps that's not surprising!). We were a lot more taken with Görlitz, though, which is about a 2km ride from the opposite river bank. We rode into town as the light was fading, and found a cozy little Altstadt with a nice laidback feel to it. So we decided to stay for a quick coffee and a catch-up, before heading off to find our accommodation back in Zgorzelec. Thing is, though, a "quick coffee" can easily turn into a two-hour chat with Scott, so by the time we got back on the bikes, it was absolutely pitch black.

Needless to say, we didn't find the border on our first attempt, and we got thoroughly lost a couple of times before finally getting back across the river and locating our pensjon*.

All that remained, then, was to drink and smoke and eat peanuts (in lieu of dinner) until two in the morning on the street outside our pensjon, thus guaranteeing a late start to the cycling the following day ... but hey, this is what one must do when catching up with an old friend in a small Polish frontier town.

I'm sure the oversized hedgehog who lives in the long grass near the pensjon was very glad when we finally called it a night. Not only could he have some piece and quiet at last, but he was also free of the annoying Australian who kept coming up and trying to pat him.

"Why can't those Australians leave us hogs of the hedge alone?"

Because you're just too damn cute, that's why.

Good night :-)


* A kind of budget hotel, often family-run, with a sort of 'homey' atmosphere (at least in the good ones).

DAY 8: Adaptability

So the plan changed a bit. Or some might say "a lot".

Yesterday morning I was in a cafe in Krakow, writing my 'Clash of Civilisations' essay, when I got a message from my friend Scott. The message was basically this: "I'm in Leipzig, and I'm going to see a man about a bike. Riding to the Polish border after that – can you meet me in Görlitz on Wednesday?"

To put that in perspective: the distance between Krakow and Görlitz by road is 428km. In my first five days, making my way slowly by bicycle and super-slow regional trains,  I'd managed to cover a little over 200kms.

I'd actually determined some rules of thumb before leaving Lviv, which were these:  if you can get there in a day on the bike, do it. If you can't, get a train. If it costs more than 10 Euros to get to the next destination by train (paying for myself and for the bike), you're going too fast.

So yeah ... this was a bit of a change.

Meanwhile, Muhammad had caught up with me. I'd more or less done the research for the essay, but hadn't started writing. The plan was to stay put in Krakow for two nights and one full day, and write it there. (It's due today, btw.) As it turned out, my full day in Krakow was taken up with other stuff, so yesterday I had a mountainous task before me: write 2,500 words in a single day, and get to the next city, Katowice. That meant either a 2.5 hour train journey or a full day's bike ride.

My decision: "Alright, then, let's do this thing. I'll start the essay in Krakow, get myself to Katowice and finish writing there. Then I'll race over and join Scott."

So I sat in Krakow and wrote for as long as I could, then grabbed a train. At 7pm, having just arrived in Katowice, I had a little over 1,000 words written. So I wandered into the centre, chose a cosy-looking cafe as my venue to finish off the work, and sat down to coffee and Greek salad and Islam.

Six hours later I was still at the cafe, and I'd been befriended by the Moldovan family who run it. This was great on the one hand – they were extremely warm and friendly, and even gave me a lift back to my hostel afterwards – but it meant that I hadn't quite finished writing when I got back at about 1:30am.

I finally submitted the essay just before 4am, and collapsed on the bed to be woken five hours later by my alarm. Some helpful advice from the receptionist got me to my next destination, which was Gliwice, and from there I travelled to the low-key, moderately cute town of Opole, where I am now. So far today I've done two 'short hops' by regional train and 33kms of cycling, but there's more to come. I'm booked at a hotel in Wroclaw tonight, and that's another 100kms from here. So we'll see how long my 'rules of thumb' can last!

One of these days, I'll have a 'normal' holiday ... you know, the kind that are advertised with phrases like "Relax, unwind and recharge your batteries in beautiful xxxx" and "Put your feet up and forget the cares of everyday life in xxxx".

Right now, though, this holiday seems pretty close to perfect )))

DAY 4: The Joy of Place Names

Covered about 80kms yesterday, which is the minimum pace I'll have to keep if I want to get to Zgorzelec (i.e. the German border) in a reasonable time. About 45 of those were by train, and then, after waiting out a fairly ferocious downpour that started the moment I left the railway station, I did the other 35 by bike.

I ended up in the small town of Ladna, and I simply had to stay there, for reasons related to the Russian language. Let me explain:

A World of Bad Joke Potential

Ładna, Poland, 03.08.12

See, in Russian, the word ladna (spelled with an "o" on the end, but pronounced with an [a] sound) literally translates as "ok". However, the meaning changes depending on your tone. 

It can be used in a friendly or neutral way, but with the right intonation it signals something else – something more like the English "Yeah, whatever", used to indicate either that someone you're talking to is being unreasonable, or that you're totally unimpressed with something, or that you just really don't care.  

Altogether, then, ladna can mean anything from "Yep, no problem" to "I'm completely over this, can we move on please?" to "You're talking crap, but I can't be bothered arguing 'cause there's clearly no way to penetrate your stupidity". Such a versatile little word )))

So as I rode past the amusing signs saying things like "Glass Factory: Ladna", "Supermarket: Ladna" and so on, I of course had many juvenile chuckles to myself, imagining a signwriter who was just horribly, terminally bored with his job. 

Never turn your nose up at free entertainment, I say :-)

Incidentally, two days ago there was a town called "Lazy" about 10kms off my route. I considered going there just to get my photo taken next to the town sign, but in the end I couldn't be bothered.

(Next time you see me, you can slap me for that joke if you like.)

The scenery today was more dramatic than yesterday. My cycling route skirted around the edge of a low mountain range (actually I'm not sure if you'd call them low mountains or tall hills, but ladna, doesn't matter), so there were some valleys of splendour and the like.

I particularly appreciated the wildflowers on this part of the journey. At this time of year, Poland essentially becomes a sea of wildflowers. On every square metre of land not otherwise occupied, they spring up in their millions, adding bold, broad strokes of yellow and occasional splashes of purple or white to the landscape. If there's so much as a vacant lot between two houses, the wildflowers will claim it and thrive on it. They look especially vivid late in the day or after rain, which were exactly the conditions in which I saw them yesterday ... hence the appreciation, I guess.

Look at The Pretty Flarsl

Route E40 (Ładna-Tarnow), Poland, 04.08.12

You know, while I was cycling today, I had a moment when I suddenly thought "This should be my life". I mean, it is my life, in the sense that I'm doing it now and I appear to be breathing (sometimes very heavily!). And there are obviously good reasons why it can't be a full-time thing – family, the need to make a living etc. etc.

The thing is, though, other than the factors I just mentioned, most of the stuff that generally keeps us stationary seems kinda empty to me when I get 'on the road'. I don't need a nice house or even a 'place to call home'; don't want a car; couldn't care less about flat-screen TVs or a backyard lawn or the familiar faces of neighbours or any of that palaver. The world is ridiculously large (as you realise only too well when you try to traverse a little bit of it by bicycle!), and so varied and interesting, and life is way too finite for my liking! 

So I ask myself: what the Hell are we all doing, missing out on so much by staying in one place? Why don't we all just gather together our loved ones, get rid of all our unnecessary stuff, work out a way to earn money while mobile, and disappear into the blue?

I know that's a horribly flawed and idealistic argument, and the lifestyle it recommends is virtually impossible to sustain (especially on an English teacher's salary!). Still, those were my thoughts last night and I'm recording them faithfully here, cos y'know, I sometimes do that.

Meanwhile, to the guy who makes those insanely delicious fruit-and-spice-infused vodkas in Kazimierz (the 'Bohemian Quarter' of Krakow): I'll see you tomorrow night, my friend!

Take care everyone :-)
Anthony.

DAY 3: Sleepy Rural Jihad

A much easier ride today; I had 50kms to cover, but still feeling a bit sore from yesterday, I did the first 30 by train. I disembarked near the small, rather sleepy and relaxed town of Łancut, and cycled into the centre.

Peaceful, Bucolic, Somewhat Idyllic

Łancut, Poland, 02.08.12

On the way in, while passing a completely nondescript-looking building, I got a timely reminder that my other mission – Islam, civilisational clashes etc. – is still a topical one, and that I'm not the only person with these issues on my mind.

Peaceful, Bucolic and ... Jihadist?

Łancut, Poland, 02.08.12

When I finally got out onto the highway, the roads were much better than yesterday. For most of the way I was riding on a pedestrian/bike path, separated from the highway by a deep ditch. Hooray for that! The worst thing about riding long-distance is that you get those moments when an enormous truck passes you less than a metre away, displacing enough air to knock you off course and remind you of how vulnerable you are out there. The fewer of those moments I have, the happier I'll be :-)

I also invented something today called the "handlebar clothesline", for the purpose of drying clothes while on the move. Obviously this was intended for highway use only – I'm not that much of an exhibitionist that I want to ride around town with my underwear flying like a flag on my bike! Sadly, though, I have to report that it wasn't quite the success story I'd hoped for. You need to tie your clothes firmly to the bars, and that means relatively little of their surface area is exposed to sun and wind.

Oh well ... maybe I'll find a way to improve on the first version.

Small-town Euro Cuteness on The Rynek

Rzeszow, Poland, 02.08.12

I'm in Rzeszow now – a very pleasant, smallish city in Podkarpatskie (literally "beneath the Carpathians") province.

I've actually been here once before, and it was only about a month ago. I came to see off my friend Scott when he returned to England after living in Ukraine for four years. (Wizzair, the UK budget airline, flies to and from Rzeszow, so you can sometimes get ridiculously cheap tickets to London from here.) On that occasion, half the town turned up in the rynek* to watch the final of Euro 2012. This time it's a bit quieter, which I certainly don't mind ... in fact, the laidback atmosphere is far preferable to the throng of sports fans.

Ok ... that's about it.

Tomorrow I'm out of Podkarpackie, and into the neighbouring Małopolskie province, of which Krakow is the capital. Woo-hoo! Krakow, here I come (yet) again!

Good night )))


* I used this word in the first entry too. It literally means "market" (in Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and probably a few other languages), and it often serves as a label for the main square of a town. Stick with me, and your Polish will improve every day :-)

DAY 2: Deceived

It lied to me! The bastard lied! How could it do that?

By “it”, I mean the internet of course. Our beloved information superhighway lavishly embroidered the truth, mercilessly stretching credibility on the rack of deceit in order to fashion the kind of spurious tale that you expect from grandparents when they tell you how they spent their youth. In the middle of its fish-that-got-away story, this so-called "internet" (if that's even its real name) turned dramatically to its audience, held its hands as far apart as they could go, and said “No kidding, it was THIS BIG!”

Whoever would’ve thought it could do that? I mean, it’s the internet, right – the medium of our times, domain of scrupulously tested and verifiable fact, a pristine beacon of unbiased truth in an otherwise compromised world. I’m shocked, appalled and disappointed. 

Well ok ... not really.

The thing is, when I looked up the distance from Przemsyl to Jaroslaw, the first answer I got was 23km, but that was as the crow flies*. I looked for actual road distance, and found first a site that said the distance was 27km, then later another which said it was 33.

Being an optimist, I added 27 and 33 together, divided by two and came up with a probable distance of 30kms. And that was what I thought I’d have to cycle today … that, along with the 10km from Krasiczyn to Przemsyl. 

Wrong!

After riding for about seven or eight kilometres out of Przemysl, I saw a sign that said “Jaroslaw 34kms”. So it seemed the further I rode, the further away my destination was :-( 

Two years ago I cycled 55kms through southern Finland, and it was a great day. Quite difficult and strenuous in places, to be sure, but really, really cool. I’d finished by about 2 or 3pm, and then I could just relax and say a fond and somewhat sad farewell to one of my favourite corners of the Earth. (I was due to fly out the following day.) 

As I mentioned before, I'm not in such good shape now as I was then, and today that was obvious. However, I was also carrying a lot more stuff on my back than I had in Finland – dragging a laptop and a couple of uni textbooks along with you really makes a difference when you’re on a bike.

Anyway, about 8kms out of Jaroslaw, I was so exhausted, and so many bits of me were in pain, that I really didn’t think I’d be able to make it. I walked beside the bike for a couple of kilometres, and even that was an immense effort. Seriously … I was screwed. 

.

Eventually I found a roadside service station and rested there for a while, drinking canned iced coffee and trying to forget that I had to get on the bike again in a few minutes. It revived me a little, and in the end I made it to Jaroslaw, shattered but more or less alive.

And after all that, guess what? The town is completely uninspiring! Really. 

Maybe I missed the good bit (always possible), but unlike the places I left behind today, and unlike Rzeszow (where I’ll be tomorrow), I see no charm here at all … it’s basically a collection of shopping malls, interspersed with some car repair places and petrol stations. 

Still, what a brilliant problem to have, eh? While so much of the world is struggling to get rid of horrible impurities in their water supply, my big issue is “Hey! I had to cycle further than I thought!” 

Damn privileged is what I am, no question.

Tomorrow will be a lot easier. I need to have a less intense day, or I’m never gonna get this essay written.

Will let you know how things go. Until then, stay well and happy )))

Anthony.

* (If English is not your native language and you haven't heard this expression before, it means "in a perfectly straight line".)