After the night of the most frivolity by the whole group together – wine, vodka and dancing – there might have been the occassional body worse for wear, something you really don't want when you are going to spend all day in the bus again. Bruce's glasses and jacket had to be returned to him in the morning – just as well he was not one of the suffering ones - or was he!

Yesterday our tour director had organised for a young fellow to come around and offer his souvenirs for sale to us. She had lost track of him for a year or so as he had been at university but he was back for the summer. She had known him for years, first meeting him when he
helped one of his 6 brothers to sell souvenirs. The boys were orphaned years ago and had looked after one another the best they could and managed to get themselves all educated. The young man was back again this morning to see us off at 0745 and some people on the bus helped to make it worth his effort.

We received our passports back this morning as we would need them for the border. After they were all handed out one of our number had not received hers. The driver turned around without most of knowing he had and headed back to the hotel. The missing passport had been found in the pile of passports for another tour group. Luckily they had not left the hotel yet and our companion was very relieved to have her passport. She might have had to swim across the border had it not been found.

The next stop was lunch at a small town about 5 minutes from the Belarus side of the border. Brest is one of the Hero Towns of Belarus – a Hero Town is one that suffered heavily at the hands of the Naziis during WW2. Lunch was back to the traditional meals of Russia and Belarus consisting of a nice salad, often as in this case, a very nice soup, the main meal with our ration of potatoes followed by coffee or tea and cake. This town was a small town rebuilt after the war but nowhere near as beautiful as Minsk. Stretching our legs as best we could it was back on the bus.

At the border we drove past over 100 cars queued for customs and immigration and right to the front of the tourist bus queue. An hour later and we were off. All of the cars are searched here – reminded us of the USA border with Mexico. Thinking that the worst was behind us a cheer went up in the bus only to be told the same amount of checking was going to done at Polish immigration. As it turned out it was only half an hour. The whole process at both borders was in record time for our tour director who was very pleased. The Polish officials were much more pleasant to deal with than the Belarus officials. Our tour director said that this was once not the case and it has taken the Polish officials a few years since independence from the Soviets to change their disposition.

We took back roads instead of the freeway into Warsaw as there were a lot of roadworks reducing the number of lanes to one. This was much more interesting as we passed through some little towns, however the road was very bumpy.

In the evening we had our farewell dinner which was part of the tour. It was a nice dinner to leave on and we all said our farewells. It appeared we were the only ones staying on with everyone else going to the airport at various times in the morning. We have all exchanged email addresses and we have undertaken to copy many of our photographs to one of the tour members and send them to her.

This was a really good trip. There were a number of characters on the trip as one would expect but no one our tour director could not handle. The history, architecture, politics, museums, food and people we met made it wonderful. This was all helped by the weather with rain on only one day and then not all day. Apparently the tour company are already changing the trip for next year to cut out the two days of driving back from Moscow. That would be a good move.

The Blog is not over yet as we still have a few more days in Poland before heading to Canada.