A week off driving around Lithuania, Poland and Germany (2 – 11 Sept 2009)

We ended up changing our cycling plans for the next section of the trip, as Alex’s father had 10 days to waste and wanted to spend them with us. So we ended up in a hire car again, our bikes were locked to the hostel balcony, and we spent time wandering around, first in Vilnius…

 

Hot-air balloons over Vilnius

 

 

Math-based graffiti

 

 

Vilnius cathedral

 

 

Polar bear – there’s a lot of street art in Vilnius, and a lot of hippy arts students floating around

 

 

Traditional Lithuanian food: Cold borscht (beet soup), eaten with sour cream and dill. As tasty as it is brightly coloured.

 

Then in Lithuania, travelling up to Rokiskis to visit ancestors (not my ancestors, but definitely someone’s ancestors).

Then across Poland, through small country towns, on huge highways, bumpy roads, past billboards and flashing lights and McDonalds and Coca Cola and skyscrapers. I’m terribly glad we didn’t try to ride across Poland – we weren’t planning to cycle the whole way, but until we reached Vilnius we hadn’t worked out exactly where we would cycle.

We ended up in Berlin, where we spent a couple of days trying to see as much as we could – even a couple of weeks wouldn’t be anywhere near enough.

 

Old segment of the Berlin wall

 

 

Deutsche Demokratische Republik

 

 

The Brandenburg Gate

 

 

Hippos in the sun at Berlin Zoo

 

Then down to Dresden…

 

Kreuzkirche, Dresden

 

 

The Elbe, Dresden

 

And back across the border into Poland, and through Lodz and Warsaw, where old buildings fought for sky space with high-rises, and advertising covered everything. Both seemed fairly charmless cities, but maybe that’s the car travel talking. It was lovely and sunny, so it can’t be the rain colouring my opinions this time.

Then finally back to Vilnius (via Stalin World) to pick up the bikes and hop on a bus back to Poland (yes, a ridiculous way of doing things).

 

At Grutas Park (a.k.a. Stalin World) – a sculpture garden of Soviet-era statues and relics collected from around Lithuania