Auschwitz Concentration Camp wasn't just one camp, it consisted of Auschwitz I (the base camp), Auschwitz II-Birkenau (the extermination camp) and Auschwitz III-Monowitz (the labour camp) as well as 45 satellite camps. The Germans took over this part of Poland in 1939 and destroyed villages to make way for these camps. Our tour took us first of all through Auschwitz I and then through Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Auschwitz I - The first thing I noticed about the cam...

We left Druskininkai headed for Warsaw. We arrived in Warsaw about 3 in the afternoon. We decided to head straight into Warsaw and have a look around and leave the next morning for Krakow. So we drove into Warsaw and found the old town relatively easily. We found a car park on the street and a man came up to Loche to tell him because it was the weekend we didn't have to pay for parking, but we could pay him to look after the car for us. Loche said no and we ...

Tuesday 2 July we packed up the van and headed south towards the capital of Lithuania - Vilnius. We were actually staying about 30 km's out of Vilnius in a little town called Trakai. This is quite a popular tourist area - everyone comes here to see the Island Castle. This fairytale castle is built from red bricks and dates back to the late 1300's. It sits on an island in Lake Galve and you get to it via a footbridge. The caravan park we were staying at is on...

Matt, one of Loche's mates is married to Jurga who is Lithuanian and they live in Klaipeda. Matt, Jurga, Tomas (11) and Marija (7) put us up and showed us around for 10 days. There was enough room at their house for us to set the van up. It was so wonderful to talk to Jurga and learn about the culture, food and history of Lithuania. Matt & Jurga work with Amber - Amber is fossilised tree resin that is about 50 million years old (give or take a few millio...

On Friday 14th of June, we left Berlin and travelled north into Poland to a little town called Niechorze on the Baltic Coast. This is was such a pretty area and obviously a Polish (and less busy) version of Noosa. There is sand on the beach (not rocks like on the Mediterranean) and bars and pretty houses that reminded us of Austrian architecture. We were nicely surprised by the caravan park, the toilets and showers were all very new and clean, the pitches were...