After a day off, another holiday was on the way. Crashing at Matt's house on Saturday night the following morning we collected the two girls and waited for Kristian at Stansted before boarding our plane to Krakow for my fourth holiday of the year. I had visited Krakow three years before, spending a day there between Warsaw and Lviv in Ukraine, however I had not had the chance to visit Auschwitz or the Salt Mine, and being with four friends too, I was not so both...

The coach to Warsaw (which was going onwards to Minsk) took 12½ hours and crossed the Czech-Polish border through the Krkonoše mountain range (where despite being 20˚C and in the sun, snow and frozen lakes were still easily seen), and then across the Polish countryside and through the cities of Łódź and Wrocław before finally reaching the Polish capital. Whilst at the border, our passports were checked (despite both countries be...