Welcome to The Last Dictatorship in Europe, comrade – Belarus
Jon’s in Poland and Mike’s in Belarus The Border Queue, 13 hours Brest Main Street They like their war memorials There is a little known cure for the frustration caused by BT and that is to cross the Poland Belarus border. If you’re frustrated at hanging on for 40 minutes to an Indian call centre, 9 and a half hours crossing a border and it will make it feel like an instant response! The bureaucracy here is astounding and a real throw back to communist days. Guards let you inch from one queue to another in your vehicle and eventually you arrive at the Belarus customs. They need half a Dozen...
Read MoreFlash Bangs and BT
The rebuilt centre of Warsaw Warsaw, waiting for ‘W’ hour. I’m not the worlds biggest fan of dogs and when they bark all night long I’d happily shoot the little darlings, of course when you’re thinking this you never in a month of Sundays expect to actually be given a gun to carry out the evil deed, so I was heartily relieved that when this scenario raised its ugly canine shaped head on our first night in Poland and it was Mike who was handed a Glock 10 pistol and not me! Its the last thing you expect really, asked if we slept well by the camp site owners Mike and Ali said the dogs had been...
Read MoreGdansk
What a beautiful city! And as usual, we turn up in the middle of the annual street fair which added to the atmosphere but rather hid the magnificant buildings. We stayed at a campsite just up the coast arriving mid afternoon and decided to cycle in to the city. Perhaps not the best idea as it was Lindas first cycle since her back problems and it was also 16km away. It was however a lovely ride all on dedicated cycle paths through leafy suburbs and showed us how prosperous this part of Poland is – best get your plumber in now as I can’t see them staying in Britain much longer! The...
Read MoreIt’s unusually hot for the time of year!
Now we are back in the EU we’ve spent a bit of time catching up with our families and have learned that the weather hasn’t been the best back in the UK. Well, you’d all better brave yourselves as we will be home in a few weeks and with us the heatwave and an Indian summer will arrive! Since we left Turkey the first time every place we have visited has been exceptionally hot. People have told us so many times “Its unusually hot for the time of year” that we’ve lost count! And, when we’ve left an area we’ve checked the weather forecast and it has...
Read MoreFarewell Russia
We arrived at the border at 11am with about 40 cars infront of us and at 17:30 we got Into the customs area! Russia is surely the king of bureaucratic incompetence. The customs have 5 lanes to clear cars so with the queue probably around 10 miles by the time we got to the front we find they have two lanes open. They make everyone open every door, bonnet and boot and don’t touch a thing just stare miserably into the boot. You almost think they expect someone to open their boot and inside will be a large bag with “drugs” written on it! Once you’ve had your car checked...
Read MoreFarewell to Moscow
Like Napolean we left Moscow in smoke a bit earlier than planned. The smoke seemed to have booked in for the next week so we decided we’d leave two days early. We’ve seen most of what we wanted to and will hopefully get another chance to visit in the future. So yesterday was our last day in the city and we spent it at the fascinating Museum of the revolution. There’s a helpful sheet in English for almost every room and it was really interesting to see how the revolution changed the way of life of the average Russian. We thought it was a bit too rosey eyed view of the past...
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