Episode 5

Lyn went up to London and collected the passports from the Chinese visa agency on a glorious summer day and enjoyed a walk right from Monument tube station to the visa place then on past St Pauls to Blackfriars bridge and alone the Embankment as far as Westminster Abbey. Being such a lovely sunny day there was a great many people about enjoying the sunshine as well as the usual hordes of camera clicking tourists.

She says that she sat on a bench and enjoyed a lunch time yogurt and watched a bunch of mobile phone waving youngsters taking photos of anything and everything then forwarding them to some poor recipient on the other end. She then continued her walk ending up at Victoria station where she caught the train back to Arundel. Sounded like she had a good day but she didn't take me with her and she didn’t give me an excuse either, but then I’m only a stuffed toy so apparently I don’t get excuses.

Finally we were ready to leave: On Friday morning we left Arundel to catch the ferry from Dover. Once at Dover we went a short way up the coast to Walmer to visit an elderly friend in a nursing home there. This friend Joan, is someone Lyn used to work with in Salisbury Rhodesia (now Harare Zimbabwe).

Just as we got into the queue for passport control at Dover we got a call from the father of one of the fellows on a motorbike who is going through China with us. He had some parts for the bike that has been the subject of an ongoing saga over the past few weeks. Now, at literally the very last minute he had the parts and wanted to come and give them to us. Bloody hell, talk about timing! We went through passport control, gee! Where’s my passport, don’t think I’ve got one, just as well no one asked for it, the humans had theirs (that had been another drama too): Had no option really couldn’t turn around so we waited just inside. We could only afford to wait a few mins or miss the ferry. Just as we were about to move off the port police phoned, they now had the bag of parts and were bringing them along to us.

As soon as we had them we headed off to '’check-in’’. There we waited in an unbelievably slow moving queue of about 6 lanes. We’d got in the slowest moving one too, but really couldn’t do anything about that either. The person at our box processed one to three that most of the others did. The end result was that we missed the 2pm ferry. However, as it wasn’t our fault the woman at the check-in asked if the 4pm one would be OK; I mean to say, what damn choice did we have at least we didn’t have to pay more. Once we got into our boarding lane with a couple of hours to spare we say and ate our lunch before going for a walk around. Most of the others in these lanes were people who, like us, should have been on the 2pm ferry and because they weren’t there were some very angry customers. The fellow in the car in front of us uses the ferry regularly and said that the check-in procedure had been speeded up lately, however it all fell flat today and he was one of those very angry people.

When we did get on board they took me up to the lounge and took my photo, then bought a coffee. That too was big mistake, damn awful coffee so I was told. The crossing to Dunkerque was quite smooth and we arrived about on time, 7pm local time. Called at one of the local hypermarkets to stock up on a few items then headed off out and camped at a truckstop overnight.

The first thing Lyn wanted to do was to go and find her Great Uncles grave in the Military Cemetery at Lijsenhoek in Belgium. This proved to be relatively easy, and she found the grave stone quite by accident quickly. The site is very well cared for with a great many roses in bloom at present. There are some large willow trees by the entrance and some huge yew trees in the middle as well as other trees and flowers. A new visitor’s centre built of mostly glass has yet to be fitted out. It is on the site of the Military hospital where most of these soldiers had been taken and where they died. The surrounding area is farming country with large hop and potato fields, and nearby the small village of Lijsenhoek. All very peaceful: Mind you I got left in the car and had a snooze.

We returned to the motorway and carried on heading east. At Lille we had a great deal of trouble with roads and ended up going in circles, I damn near got dizzy. One way or another we made it into Luxembourg leaving behind the flat countryside of Flanders and coming into very hilly country.

We unintentionally ended up in the city of Luxembourg and had trouble finding our way out because of extensive road works and almost no signs. There was much swearing coming from the front seats, if I had hair it would surely be curly by now.

It had been decided that we would pass fairly quickly through Western Europe so as to get as much benefit as we could from the expensive visas that had been obtained. On this dull Sunday it seemed that the autobahns and traffic conspired to slow our progress. I had been sitting in my favourite possy with a view out the windscreen admiring the passing vista of small woods and ope n fields, not to mention the passing traffic when there was a sudden slowing in the proceedings and for the next hour we covered a mere 6k’s as we shuffled along. All this due to some road work where 2 lanes converged into one and because there had been quite a lot of traffic filtering in off other roads.

The weather deteriorated into drizzle as we skirted around places such as Heidelberg and Wurzburg along the way passing several small clusters of wind turbines, mostly working, and some solar farms. Don’t think the latter would have been producing much power as it was raining quite steadily at the time. I did see the Rhine River as we crossed it on a fairly high bridge that gave a good view off to the south.

After another long hold up on the autobahn we came to the lovely city of Bamberg. It was once quite an important city and has a lovely Cathedral on the hill and a bishop’s residence along with the Abbey of St Michael.

We walked around the old medieval city with its lovely painted buildings. I was in Lyn’s backpack and enjoyed a good view. There was a busy market in one of the city platz with most fresh fruit and veg. Most of the old city is on an island in the river with the cathedral and the Abbey on the hillside above.

Unfortunately the Cathedral was closed the day we visited so we could only visit the New Bishops residence. This building dates from the late 18th Century and was very lavishly decorated in the rooms that we were shown. The ceilings were decorated with stucco friezes and frescos with many of the walls coved in silk wall paper. In one of the main reception hall the ceiling was painted so that it appeared to have a balcony up there. From one of the windows there was a great view of the formal garden below and from another over the red tile roofs of the medieval city.

The old bishops’ residence formed another side of the large cobbled platz. However in the courtyard in front of this residence that now houses the local history museum there was tiered seating for a sound and light show that totally ruined the ascetics of the whole scene.

Just a short way further up the hill we came to the fairly modern church of St Jacobs. This is the start of a very long pilgrimage for the truly dedicated to Santiago de Conpostella in Spain some 2840k’s away.

A little way further on and on top of another hill sits the abbey of St Michael. Here the church was open and we went in to have a look though it wasn’t anything special.

We had done our walking around between light rain showers dodging into something of interest each time the spots got a little too persistent. As we headed back to the car it began to sprinkle again but we reached the car before we got wet. It stopped again shortly after.

Continuing east before we left Germany we passed several very large solar farms. Some of them ran for 500m along the road, about 30 rows of panels with each row 2 panels high. Be interesting to know just how much electricity they produce. We crossed into the Czech Republic and saw another solar farm. Keeping to minor roads and avoiding Prague we encountered some very heavy storms. Thunder and lightning rattled around all day and rain tipped down frequently. When the sun did come out it was very hot.

Near the pretty little town of Jicin we did a walk through a nature reserve where there are many sandstone and basalt pinnacles. It was a lovely walk with lots of up and down steps in and around the pinnacles and great views. Again I did it the easy way in Lyn’s back pack. That was until it started to tip down with rain then I was stuffed down inside the backpack and a rain coat put over the top so I couldn’t see a thing, but I didn’t get wet either. The tipping rain, continuous lightning and thunder made further exploration of the area next to impossible.

In the town of Jicin we walked around and someone offered to buy me, when Lyn said I wasn’t for sale then the man asked her to make another like me for him. As if that would be possible, I’m truly a unique creations, a one off, as if I could be copied willy nilly, I ask you!!!!! Phew! I wasn’t sorry to leave there:

We continued on eastward: it was a fairly slow trip because of the many villages that we passed through. At one place we came across a large war memorial and stopped to have a look and eat our lunch under a shady tree. I got my photo taken as I tried out the array of tanks and guns on display. After due consideration of a career choice I think I will be a General and let the peasants be the ones to get shot at by other tanks.

In the eastern part of the country we came into the Tatra mountains that continue on through Slovakia. We did cross a corner of Slovakia, we didn’t stop there but kept on into Poland and headed towards the town of Oswiecim.

The three days of storms had given way to scorching hot weather and the Poles were out and about enjoying the sunshine, the girls in skimpy tops (I admired a few of them) and some of the men shirtless. I bet there will be a few sunburnt bodies tomorrow.

Oswiecim is the Polish name for what is a very infamous place, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp from WW2. It was really two camps; Auschwitz was a former barracks of the Polish military and the original camp in 1940 that got enlarged over the years. Birkenau was a purpose built camp that housed a vast number of prisoners here that that three purpose built gas chambers were constructed. These were blown up by the officials the day before the camp was ‘liberated’ by the Russians on Jan 27 1944. The crematoria too were blown up. Many bodies had been burned in an adjoining field, can you imagine the stench that must have hung over the place.

Back at Auschwitz there were a couple of rooms there and an underground bunker where gassings had taken place before Birkenau was built.

I got to sit on the gallows where the Poles hung Rudolf Hόss in 1947, he was the first Commandant of the camp and the instigator of many of the evils that happened there.

In total 1.1million Jews were sent to the gas chambers here, around 20,000 Gypsies, a great many Russians and Poles. The true numbers will never be knows, those figures are just the best guesses the experts can come up with.

It was an interesting visit and I attracted quite a bit of attention though I really don’t know why, after all I’m just a stuffed toy. There had been a large number of Israelis visiting today, most were young and in various uniforms, so many in fact that it makes one wonder who is left home to guard the country.

Along the way Lyn has noticed that many of the deciduous trees are showing autumn colour. Considering that it is barely summer and not a particularly dry one it does seem a trifle early to have autumn in the air. In some parts of the Czech Republic the trees were quite yellow.

In the eastern part of Germany, the Czech Republic, and in Poland we saw a number of saw mills where the local timber is processed and passed many logging trucks along the way. In Poland especially there seemed to be a great area of plantation forest that was being harvested and replanted.

After about 3 days of storms, Lyn dodging rain drops to cook the dinner, the weather fined up and turned really hot, mid 30’sC .That apparently was just what the farmers were waiting for as in the next few days they were all out there busy making silage in those big round plastic covered bales and running around on their tractors chocking traffic in some of the villages. One or two villages had a sign saying no tractors in the town but somehow, perhaps the farmers can’t read, not much notice is taken.

Once we got into Lithuania and Latvia the fields of rape were still in full flower showing large patches of bright yellow among the deeper green background of oats and trees. Saw a number of small dairy herds and in some areas of Poland people seem to have just a few cows and you could see someone tending them in the afternoon.

On a very hot afternoon we arrived at the Latvian/Russian border. The queue of cars and trucks, a separate lane for each, stretched maybe a kilometre back from the border, so we came to a stop and didn’t move at all for quite a long time. Eventually after about 3.5 hours we made it through the Latvian side. I really couldn’t understand why it was all so slow on that side and all they did was to check car papers and passports, no searches or anything like that. After that, although the Russian side was slow, that was to be expected as we were going into Russia and they are quite pedantic about procedure. Eventually, though, well after Lyn’s and my bedtime we made it through to the other side. It was 11pm local time. We pulled into a service station, almost like a western one, and camped along with about 20 big trucks. At least in this part of Russia service stations have improved in the last 14 years. Even had a usable toilet and a shower, with an ATM across the road. Now what is the world coming to!

When we left the next morning we drove past 12-14k’s of trucks lined up waiting to cross into Latvia. We all wondered just how long it would take for them to get through as they seem only to process a handful and hour.

Being the observant stuffed toy that I am propped up here with a great view out the windscreen I did notice that as soon as we crossed the border we left all the agriculture behind. We didn’t see any for about 250k’s, and then only a small amount. There are quite a lot of tiny villages with no visible means of support. There didn’t appear to be any industry, no logging and no farming. Just what do these people do for a living?

The EU countries have cleaned up their act quite a lot, there isn’t near as much rubbish strewn about as there once was particularly in Poland and the Baltic states, but in Russia it just hasn’t happened; there is rubbish everywhere: The road map my humans bought has the major roads marked as motorways but they turned out to be not much better than they were years ago. Still just two lanes mostly:

© Lynette Regan 8th July 2012