Poland

After another long and somewhat painful border crossing (not everyone should speak English, but it makes it a lot easier when they do) we made it into Poland. We drove through the lake district to "Wolf's Lair", Hitler's WWII headquarters. It was mainly destroyed but there are enough remanats to get an idea of the complex. Simon was in his element and I had to stop the full Fawlty Tower's goosestepping on a few occasions. We then drove down to near the Belarussian border to Bialowieza National Park to see the untouched forest and to look for European bison. After our tour (which was primarily trees and mushrooms, not an animal to be seen if you don't count mosquitos, of which there were plenty!) we drove south to stay the night in the unexpectedly nice Kazimierz-Dolny, a town that used to be a big port off the Wista river. We had a really good dinner and camped on the grounds of a mill-turned-restaurant. The next morning after a trip through the market and a quick breakfast we started on the fast, European-funded road to drive to Krakow. We had forgotten that in Poland, the best route is the most direct, even if it looks like a white, country road. We spent hours stopped for roadworks, accidents and once for no apparent reason at all. The only good thing was that it was raining the whole day so we didn't feel like we were missing too much. Since it was too wet to camp we found a lovely pension in the former Jewish area of Krakow (also called Kazimierz) and settled in for the night. The next morning we explored the town in beautiful sunshine and were impressed -- it is really a great place. We went to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the afternoon and then drove into the Tatras to cross the border into Slovakia to go rafting in the Dunajec Gorge . . . E

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