The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

Five days after having arrived in Kiev, we got what we had (mainly) come here for – a three-month visa for Kazakhstan. I am personally really happy and excited about this, since for me Kazakhstan is the place I am looking forward to the most. Of course China and all the rest will be great as well, but there’s something really intriguing about this vast country right in the middle of Asia, about which we hear so little in Europe and which is largely empty.

When we got to the embassy on Tuesday morning, we had our first meeting with real Kazakh people. They have a very characteristic facial type, certainly more Oriental than Russian but also not Chinese. I think what makes this interesting for me is that it is quite new and unknown – Chinese culture and Chinese people are quite visible in Europe, but how many cities have a Kazakhtown?

While waiting for the visas, there been some time to wander round Kiev and visit some churches and museums. The second of these was less successful than I would have liked, for a number of reasons. Firstly, just like the hostels on Sunday, one that was in the guide book did not in reality exist, at least not any more. Several more were closed despite being advertised as being open, while another contained completely different works than claimed. And not one had any text in English for foreign visitors. A shame, because there were some interesting things to be seen if only you could read the story behind them.

That’s not to say that I am disappointed with Kiev, far from it. It’s an interesting city, still feeling quite European but also very different from Cracow; for a start, there are almost no Western tourists here. They will come though, I am sure. You can almost feel the place being tugged between East and West, between the sweet delights of the European Union and the old ties with Russia. It is hard to say who will win the battle.

I paid a visit to the Chernobyl museum, which was quite an odd mix of an educational exhibition about the disaster and a huge art installation combining religious imagery with radiation symbols and other things connected with the incident, which coincidentally occurred twenty-three years ago today. Things like paintings of Jesus as a nuclear scientist, and an ark filled with burned children’s toys, very odd.

Another museum interesting mainly for its bombastic approach was the museum of the “Great Patriotic War” as they call WWII in the former Soviet Union. It consists of a complex on top of a hill covered with tanks, missiles, artillery, and socialist realist sculpture, with patriotic songs blaring constantly from loudspeakers. Topping all this is the enormous statue “Motherland” which towers above Kiev, sword and hammer-and-sickle shield held aloft. Very impressive.

The churches here are very richly decorated inside, as much so as Catholic churches. One unique thing about the Orthodox religion are the icons – squarish paintings of saints and so on which you pray to and also kiss. For hygiene reasons, each is behind glass and has a little cloth to wipe it clean.

The hostel where we have been staying offers a few interesting activities, none of which we have unfortunately got round to trying. Providing that you book at least three days in advance, it is possible to go on a tour of Chernobyl itself. It is only 100km or so from Kiev, which is close enough for me, thanks. Other exciting activities included tank driving, and best of all, AK-47 shooting. Have a go at the world’s most popular automatic weapon!

At the hostel we have also met various fellow-travellers (the literal translation of “Sputnik” incidentally). These have included a Dutch/German girl and a Volga German. I have been very curious about meeting one of these – they are a German-speaking minority from the former Soviet Union about whom I have read but never seen in person. We went to see The Marriage of Figaro with them the other night at the opera house, but like much in Kiev this was not quite as expected. I was looking forward to real live opera, with all that “Figaro! Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!” and such, but this was actually the ballet version. So lots of very impressive jumping around in tights, but alas no singing.

We also spoke to a Dutch couple who were travelling towards Hungary by train, and a young pair from Moscow who were staying in the room next door; in fact, we had to go through their room to get to ours. They were the most fluent English speakers we have met in this country, and before leaving yesterday morning gave us a huge bag of Russian sweets. We should really have brought some Dutch liquorice and Scottish shortbread with us for such occasions. They also shared their vodka with us, and answered our many questions about the history of this country. This is quite a sensitive area, since Russian and Ukrainian perspectives on many things differ. Many Russians still consider Ukraine as part of the “mother country”, but plenty Ukrainians would see things differently. Of course this is a very familiar story.

Earlier in the week we saw something quite horrible. We were at the top of some steps leading down into the metro station, when a man fell from edge of the entrance above the bottom of the stairs, perhaps about seven or eight metres. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye, but when I looked properly he was lying face down on the concrete and not moving at all, with blood dripping out of his ear. I have no idea if he was alive or dead. People just stood and stared without much interest, in fact nobody even seemed to be bothered to call an ambulance. It was quite a surreal situation, as if I was watching a film; all I seemed to be able to notice as he lay there was his belly sticking out from between his trousers and his jumper, squashed outwards by the floor. This seems a very cold and heartless thing to say, but I was really too shocked at the time to respond rationally to what happened. Of course even now I keep thinking about it and getting the shivers.

One thing that goes without saying on such a trip is your wardrobe is quite small. I have enough clothes for a week’s cycling, and exactly one shirt, sweater, and pair of trousers for the other days. I had the idea that it would be nice to find a nice old shirt or something here from the 1980’s, something from the time when Western fashions were not available, and so I was quite delighted to hear of a huge clothing market on the other side of the city. When I got there it was indeed as described, but of course everything was of much more recent origin that I had hoped. Still I got something new to wear for the opera that was not really an opera. Interestingly there were quite a lot of black people at the market, about the first I have seen since leaving Amsterdam. I had no idea there were any here at all.

Yesterday, before leaving Kiev, I sent home a parcel of things which have proved to be unnecessary – one pair of shoes, extra gloves, and so on. As I had been expecting, this was no easy process; I had to fill in the same form four times (saves on photocopies I suppose), the package had to be opened, the contents inspected, and re-sealed, while no less than four staff members at the post office kept themselves occupied with the matter. Luckily there were no other customers at the time. It was for some reason necessary to apply a variety of marks to the parcel with stamps and ink, although these were too smudged to actually read. Strangely the form which I needed to fill in so many times was in Ukrainian and French, neither of which I can read. No-one seemed to care that I filled it in in English, and then only the half of it. I am very curious as to whether the parcel will ever actually arrive at its destination.

Of course I cannot avoid mentioning the food. This has been a bit more varied than earlier, with my favourite being the Ukrainian dumplings with cabbage or sweet cheese, and a sort of sauerkraut-like dish but with carrot and other vegetables. Sweet bread with poppy seeds is also nice. They also sell a huge range of dried fruits and nuts, my favourite being sugared cherries. Delicious.

As nice as it has been to hang around in Kiev and to have a fixed place to sleep for a few days, it’s now time to move on. There is no great rush now, since our Russian visa is not valid until the fifth of May. So as we head towards the border a relaxed week and a half awaits, with luck.

Yesterday’s arrival in Kiev did not go as smoothly as I had hoped. In all our rest-day cities so far, we have followed pretty much the same procedure: upon arrival, find the tourist information office, book as cheap a room as possible, and go there immediately. Clearly the zone in which this is possible is now behind us.

The map of Kiev which we had bought earlier in the week in Rivne didn’t indicate the location of any such office, and the electronic information points dotted around the city didn’t help either (ideal if you want the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture, no use for hotels). So we went to the main railway station, with the idea that there might be something there. Nothing.

Whilst getting something to eat at a nearby café, I tried asking a security guard with the aid of a Russian dictionary. He phoned a friend (Millionaire style) who could speak English, from whom I learned that no such office existed.

After cycling round and engaging in various attempts at conversation which lead to nothing, we ended up at a hotel which had rooms, but at twice the price we could afford. Clearly Kiev is a little different to the Ukrainian countryside. They did however point out that the café next door had free wireless Internet, which allowed us to find the addresses of a few hostels.

When we arrived at where the first of these was supposed to be, we were most pissed off to find that it did not exist. The same was true for the second, by which point it was dark and I was beginning to feel the victim of a very stupid joke.

Not expecting much, we headed across town towards the third address. Again no bloody hostel, or so it appeared. Running out of options, we headed back to a hotel we had seen on the same street, in the hope that it would be cheaper than the first.

It was more than three times as expensive. As we stood in the street trying to think what could be done (I was ready to find a park and camp), a bloke standing next to the hotel said something along the lines of “you are looking for a place to stay, no?” in English. Ah, yeah.

“You know what a hostel is?” he continued, and as we furiously nodded he turned and said something to a hotel worker standing in the doorway. “Follow him”, the first guy said, and we thanked him very much.

The hotel guy lead us back along the street to where we thought there was no hostel, and down a back alley. It turned out to be there all along; it was just tiredness, the darkness, and pessimism borne of a wasted afternoon which had prevented us from finding it.

Finally we had somewhere to sleep and shower – a tiny room with a ventilator pipe which makes a very loud noise every time someone switches on the light of the bathroom next door, but a million times better than no room at all.

One disappointment remained, however. We have been cycling like mad people so as to reach Kiev and apply for our Kazakh visa today, Monday, in the hope of getting it by the end of the week. Unfortunately today is Orthodox Easter Monday, not next Monday as we had been lead to believe, meaning that the embassy is shut. This will likely mean we cannot leave until next Monday at the earliest, adding extra cost and eating into valuable cycling time – we really should reach the Russian border by 5th May, when our visa becomes valid. But there is nothing to be done about it.

Meanwhile, time to stop writing and see the sights. Also, it has been brought to my attention that the map and photos have been a bit messed up. Hopefully all should be working now.

The first day and a half in Ukraine had not left me very optimistic about the progress that we would be able to make, but after L’viv both the weather and the roads improved enormously. There is clearly a lot of investment being made in improving the main highways, although there is not always much traffic to drive on them. This can make cycling a peaceful but quite eerie experience, as for sometimes up to ten minutes at a time we have had four lanes of road to ourselves. Unfortunately this has become less and less frequent the closer we have got to Kiev. What is also nice is when they have built a whole new road next to an existing one so as to double the number of lanes, but where the new bit has not opened yet. Here we have had a piece of asphalt kilometres long and two lanes wide for us alone.

On the first night after L’viv, we camped as usual as far from sight as possible without straying too far from the road. Unfortunately Astrid was not feeling too well, and we also failed to make a very good start the next morning when our bikes, particularly mine, got completely stuck in the clay-like mud between our camping site and the road. What followed was a comical attempt to clean the mud off the wheels in a large pool of water at a nearby petrol station. This merely resulted in even more mud becoming attached to the wheels, brakes, and myself, while I was trapped balanced on tiptoe trying to avoid getting water in my shoes. The only way out of the situation without us both getting our shoes soaked was for Astrid to wade bare-footed into the muddy water and push me out. The petrol station workers clearly found this very amusing.

Although we had travelled not more than a few hundred metres from where we had camped, the sight of a little shanty town of wooden huts, caravans, and wood stoves nearby was enough to necessitate an early coffee break. There was also some sort of holy well next to all this, from which water streamed at great speed from a huge wooden barrel with a picture of Jesus on it. Luckily the water turned out to be not only holy but also clean, providing us with enough for cooking and drinking for the next few days.

On Tuesday, we had the time to take things easy and so stopped for a few hours in the town of Dubno. While we were there we visited an ancient castle, full of tunnels and underground rooms which of course got me very excited (all boys like tunnels and caves, you see). While there I came across a bunch of blokes welding things in a workshop, and asked them (by pointing and so on) if I could use their bench vice and hammer to fix the little metal thing which sits on top of our petrol stove so as to allow a small coffee pot to be used with it. It was good to be bending and hammering things again – I miss my tools and workshop in Amsterdam.

After this, while we were packing things in, we were approached by a man talking very fast at us and waving his arms around maniacally. This he continued to do despite it being obvious that we could not understand him at all. So we started shouting nonsense in Dutch and English at him, to try and illustrate the pointlessness of the situation. Some security guys from the restaurant next door came and tried to get him to go away, explaining that he was some sort of evangelist. We cycled off with him still talking, but even this did not get rid of him; ten minutes later by the bakers, there he was again. Hopefully we have lost him now.

Later the same day we reached Rivne. We had decided to spend a night in a hotel here in place of a proper rest day. We had some difficult actually finding any hotels, until we came across a new and expensive-looking one. With the intention of just asking if they knew any other (cheaper) hotels in town, we walked nervously into the gleaming marble hallway and up to the huge reception desk. Amazingly enough the price of a double room was so cheap that we ended up staying there, certainly the first time in my life that I have been able to book a room in such a place. I realise I keep going on and on about how things are getting cheaper and cheaper as we move east, but I must admit that it does feel nice to feel rich for a little while. It also makes you very aware of how obscenely rich we all are in the west, compared to the greater part of the world.

After having a much-needed shower (it doesn’t stop feeling amazing after so long without), we went for something to eat. The restaurant where we ate had a sort of cheesy 1980’s American theme to it (neon saxophone on wall, etc.), and luckily a menu in English. What was most bizarre about this was a page featuring a very detailed list of the prices that would need to be paid for anything damaged in the restaurant. Their clientele are presumably either very clumsy or else quite wilfully destructive.

When we returned to the hotel several hours later, something quite unexpected happened. We were approached by a man and a woman who had apparently being waiting in the lobby for us for quite some time. They were a reporter and photographer from a local newspaper (and also husband and wife), and had come to ask us about our journey through Ukraine. Of course we were happy to answer their questions, although I later regretted being as open as I had; I don’t really like the idea of too much attention be directed towards us. I am beginning to become aware that we are very visible in a way which was not the case earlier, simply because we are the only cyclists heavily-laden and equipped for such a journey to be seen on the roads of Ukraine. On the road we are constantly greeted by tooting of horns and friendly waves from truck drivers and construction workers, but I am a bit afraid of attention from either criminal types or indeed the authorities.

Despite this I am very happy with our time so far in Ukraine. This is the first place that really feels very far from home – the strange alphabet, horses working the fields, Soviet-era trucks and Ladas, Orthodox shrines next to the road, and of course a new and exciting range of food to eat. The other day I ate a delicious oily doughnut-like thing from a market with grated carrot and cabbage and mashed potato inside, much nicer than in sounds. Ukrainian pancakes with cottage cheese are also delicious, but my favourite thing so far has to be a chocolate bar called “Yo-Ma-Yo” which is quite indescribable, something like nuts, chocolate and nougat but slightly sour and cheesy as well. A further strange but tasty combination is smoked prunes with whipped cream.

There are of course many trivial but startling differences from home. I was in a shop in Rivne which proudly displayed cat food neatly arranged in a glass cabinet for which a key was required, and later saw a tank of water in a supermarket with live fish inside and a small net with which to select an unfortunate specimen to become your dinner. Also, you can buy plastic carrier bags which appear to be from one of many western shops and brands. The idea is presumably that you can make it appear that you have been to Hugo Boss, for example, without the expense of actually going there and buying anything.

Ukraine is not a very wealthy country. Of course we could get a room in a hotel with a shiny marble staircase for less than a youth hostel in Germany, because they people who work there earn a fraction of what they would in the West. It is easy to forget this.

Poverty and scarcity is neither romantic or pretty, but it does deliver some absurd and comical situations. For example, I was astonished the other day to see a group of people trying to shove a cow (well, a larg calf) into the back of a Lada. I didn’t know if I should have more sympathy with the people, or with the terrified beast.

In the West, people have dogs as pets and walk them regularly. Here, they roam hungry in the streets, or else people tie them to a stick with a chain and leave them until they grow insane with boredom and despair, having worn the circle of ground around the stick to dust. I find it hard not to feel depressed at such sights, and to remember that perhaps people have other priorities than the mental health of domesticated animals. But still I can’t accept it.

I have the idea that Ukrainians are quite lazy. I don’t mean in the sense of being bone idle, but more that although they do work and are helpful when needed, they would rather not. In the West, if you work in a shop or café, you are expected to keep yourself busy and be alert even when there are no customers or things to do. People here prefer to sit watching the TV while working, and although they will get up help you, they will sit back down again as quickly as possible afterwards. I am not critical of this, and in fact it’s maybe a sign of a more healthy and relaxed attitude towards work and life in general.

Yesterday we reached Zhytomyr, the last large town before Kiev. Here we took the bikes, which had become totally filthy, to be cleaned at a car wash. It is very nice to see them looking like new again, and should hopefully keep the rust at bay for a while yet.

Not so nice was the flat tyre I got just as we here heading our of the city, the first of the trip but inevitably not the last. Big sharp nasty nail, no idea how but it got stuck right through the inner tube and out the other side. Fixing it was not a problem, except that I immediately had three guys swarming round me being “helpful”. Of course they mainly just got in the way and I was also totally paranoid about what their intentions were, since I could clearly not keep an eye on our bags and fix the damn tyre. In the end it worked out OK and one even gave Astrid a keyring as a souvenir, although he kept saying “Euro, Euro” afterwards. I hadn’t asked for his help and wasn’t going to give him anything, and in any case we don’t have any bloody Euros. I don’t feel bad about being suspicious, I would act exactly the same way back home.

If all goes well and nothing else bursts, we should reach Kiev tomorrow. Here we’ll have to wait for a few days (hopefully not any longer) for our Kazakh visa, meaning a wee break from cycling and a chance to see some sights, laze around a bit, and of course wash some clothes. And ourselves.

Yesterday we reached country number four, Ukraine. This was a bit less straightforward than I would have liked, but all the same fine in the end.

But first something to sum up our ten days in Poland. The morning after writing my last message, we were invited in for tea and cake by the family in whose garden we had camped. This at least takes care of one regret that I had been concerned about, namely not having seen the inside of a house in Poland. Sometimes it can seem that our constant cycling, punctuated only by visits to cafés and supermarkets, gives us a very superficial view of where we are.

The cake and apple pie was home-made and delicious, cooked in a huge wood-fired stove which dominated one side of the kitchen. On the wall hung a picture of the Pope, this time the current German one and not the previous Polish one, whose greatly-enlarged portrait can be seen all over Poland.

Before we left, the husband who could speak German once again warned us about Ukraine, and insisted that we take some of the delicious cake with us. When we opened the packet later we discovered that there were also sandwiches inside, and some apples. This is certainly a very hospitable way of treating a couple of strangers who turn up unannounced wanting to sleep in your garden.

So, what is my opinion on Poland? What I wrote last week was fairly brutal in terms of describing the state of affairs there, but was no more than the truth. On the other hand, I am being quite harsh with Poland because I think it has a lot of potential. The only thing that separates here from where we come from are the rather unfortunate accidents of history that Poland has had to deal with during the last century (invasion, occupation, Soviet domination, etc.). I expect that things will continue to improve very rapidly here.

What I have liked have been the various sweet things I have eaten, Żywiec beer, plenty of empty forests to sleep in, and strangely enough the Polish road signs; they have an endearing, slightly clumsy cartoonish look. Certainly more interesting than the plain old western European ones.

On to Ukraine. This border was always going to be interesting, because it is the first real border of the journey so far, and the edge of the EU. That would mean guards, customs, and passport checks.

We had the very naive idea that we would just be able to cycle past the queues of cars, wave our passports, and sail on through. This was not to be the case.

The basic problem is that it was not allowed to cycle through this checkpoint. Instead, we would have to place our bicycles into some form of vehicle and be driven through. A border guard on the Polish side helpfully arranged for us and our bikes to ride inside the otherwise empty van of a man who was also queueing to cross the border.

The Polish guard was however not at all convinced that the person in the photo in my passport was really me, leading to more delays, and Astrid had the same problem on the Ukrainian side. Here there was also quite a lot of confusion and queueing, including when we needed to fill out immigration cards. They needed the address of the hotel where we would be staying, when of course we will not be staying in one. The man with the van gave us the name of a (possibly non-existent) hotel in Kiev to fill in just to get the thing finished, and at one point his small son even filled in part of my form to save time. This all worked out OK in the end, although to a Westerner used to open borders it did seem like a huge hassle for nothing. Plus it felt like cheating a bit, since we ideally want to cycle the whole way. 500 metres in a van won’t hurt I guess.

As we were finally leaving the border point, our driver, who of course could not speak English, thrust his mobile phone into my hand. To my surprise there was a voice on the other end speaking Dutch – a friend of the van driver. He asked me some questions about where we were going and whether his friend could give us lift to L’viv, which I politely declined, and expressed amazement when I explained that we would be cycling across the whole country. Before handing back the phone I asked him to give our thanks to our man with the van. A very indirect but still effective method of communication.

And then we were there. The former USSR. What immediately struck me as strange was the four-lane road in front of us with absolutely no traffic on it, save a Polish truck every few minutes. Also, there we suddenly no more tractors being used to work the fields, only horses. These two things together combined to make the whole place strangely quiet. Where the road is asphalt it is even worse than in Poland, whereas in other places it is made from huge slabs of concrete which I found quite okay to cycle over. There was very little traffic aside from a few very old and dented Ladas.

In Javoriv, the first town we reached, there was some more confusion whilst trying to get some money at the cash machine. The problem was that we had no idea how many of whatever the currency here is called is in one Euro. It turned out that it’s about ten, meaning that a pint of beer in the café where we ate later cost about 30 Eurocents. Today I had some and it’s delicious.

On the road near to where we camped last night there was a hotel on a small lake. I had the notion this morning to go swimming in it, but before doing so went into the hotel bar to ask if this was OK, with the aid of some pointing and hand gestures. “Yeah, sure”, was the answer I think, “as long as you have some swimming clothes on”. So I did. I am sure they thought I was nuts.

Soon after, we found ourselves cycling through a thunderstorm. This made the journey to L’viv, the first big city in the Ukraine, pretty horrible. The rain filled up all the holes in the road, meaning you were never sure if the pool of water you were about to cycle through was actually a hole 10cm deep. Not good for the bike and no fun at all.

On the way, we passed a very strange sight: old women mending the road with shovels and hot asphalt. Equality is one thing, but I wouldn’t really want my granny out in the cold and rain doing thins kind of work. I have no idea if this is a leftover relic of Soviet-era collective sharing of public works, or pure necessity because there is no-one else to do it.

As for L’viv itself, we didn’t stay long enough to see much of what looks like a pretty grey and uninteresting place. One other strange experience though was a visit to the supermarket: for some reason they choose to fill the shelves with loads of the same thing. I mean as in six shelves high and three metres long with one type of mayonnaise. And not only in one place; we were looking for Snickers and found huge amounts of them in three different parts of the store. I guess it’s better than the empty shelves of the old days – in fact maybe that’s why they do it.

One thing which has surprised me is how straightforward the Cyrillic alphabet is to learn. I had expected it to be as impossible as Arabic, but in fact it doesn’t take too long to remember that a “C” is actually an “S” and a “P” is an R” and so on. Of course there are lots of weird symbols which don’t look like anything at all in the Latin alphabet, but mostly they relate to a sound which is familiar.

The crappy weather and yesterday’s hanging around at the border mean that we are a bit behind schedule, so it’s time to get to sleep so as to be able to put in a good day tomorrow. This may be difficult since we are camped right next to some sort of railway yard where they are still moving trucks and engines about even at 11pm.

Oh, and that’s another thing. I didn’t realise until we had already been in the country for a few hours, but we are now in a different time zone: 2 hours ahead of GMT. Now it really feels like we are moving.

Monday was supposed to be my one relaxed non-cycling day of the week, but not for the first time things worked out less than ideally.

It all started out well, since we arrived in Cracow quite early on Sunday. This meant that some of the things we had to do could be done then. For example, I really needed to find a sports or outdoor store and buy some new shoes. The discovery a few weeks ago that only my newest and most expensive pair of trainers prevent pain in my knees meant that I had only one pair suitable for cycling, which is not really enough for ten months.

By mid-morning Monday I had found some decent shoes at a good price, and we had wandered round Cracow a bit and had breakfast. One thing that needed to be sorted was that the middle finger on my left hand had become swollen round the nail, and had got worse in the past few days. Better to get it seen to now, rather than later.

I asked at the hotel (actually a student halls with private rooms) where I could find a doctor,and they gave me the address of a medical centre.

When I got there I was told to come back in half an hour and “maybe the doctor will see you”. After half an hour there was no doctor, and I was told to go to a hospital on the other side of town. When I got there it took ages to find the emergency department, owing mainly to my inability to understand Polish. When I had stood in the queue for a while I was told that they could not help me, and that I would have to go to another medical centre much like the first one.

Of course I was already getting quite pissed off by this point, but since there was not really an alternative short of ignoring the finger, I went anyway.

At location number three things got even more complicated because no-one whatsoever could speak any English. What I managed to understand from the receptionist is that I needed to return at 6pm. This I did, at which point a doctor was present, who could also speak no English. German didn’t work either. She just sort of stared at me like I was an idiot, until a colleague who could speak a little English told me to come back the following morning at 8am and see the surgeon.

As frustrating as this was, at least it meant I could stop thinking about it for the rest of the evening. As can be imagined I was very sceptical if anybody was ever going to help me, or whether I would have to hack the damned thing off myself.

The next morning came, and sure enough I was told that they could not do anything about it there, but that the hospital across the street could maybe help. Here, after waiting around once again, hallelujah, I was seen by a doctor.

He knew immediately what it was (I forgot the medical term as soon as I heard it) and prescribed me antibiotics. He said that the thing would swell up quite large after a few days, which was naturally not really what I wanted to hear. When this happened I would need to visit a hospital again and get it cut open. “It is not ready”, he explained. Yippee, can’t wait.

I am reluctant to complain in this sort of situation, because it is after all my problem that I am in a country where I cannot speak the language. What is really annoying though is being passed around and told bullshit because no-one has the time or can be bothered to help you.

This is kind of the nightmare I had of what would happen if one of us got sick on this trip. In this case it was a pretty minor thing, but I would rather not think of what would happen if either of us were to get really ill or injured. Fingers crossed we don’t have to find out.

Meanwhile we have been back on the road for a few days and are spending our last night in Poland. I am currently sitting listening to the rain fall outside our tent, always a lovely sound when you are wrapped up warm inside it. It is pitched in the garden of a farmhouse which we came across while carrying out our usual evening strategy of looking for some secluded piece of forest in which to camp. As soon as we had got the tent pitched, the family who live here produced a set of chairs and a table and tea with sandwiches for us, and there followed as best a conversation as could be managed between us. The youngest daughter if the family was learning English at school and was able to talk a little, although the phrase book she had did not help very much; it was full of such sentences as “I’ll have a Scotch on the rocks, please”, “take these suitcases to my room”, and such like, which were not so useful at the time.

Later the husband of the oldest daughter, who could luckily speak German, arrived. He asked if we were worried about our safety further east, which freaked me out a little bit. Should we be? On the other hand he did say that the Germans consider the Poles as lying thieving no-goods, which they certainly do not appear to be to me, so perhaps they themselves just have some negative ideas about their neighbours to the east.

So, tomorrow afternoon then should see us cross the Ukrainian border, leaving the European Union behind and entering what was once the Soviet Union. Needless to say I am as curious as always as to what will be different there.

And here is a picture of a nun who was behind me in the queue at the first clinic in Cracow. The city is indeed full of nuns. I guess even they get sick from time to time, sore knees from praying or whatever.

We have now spent almost a week in Poland. In the hope of making up some time for the expected wait later in Kiev for our Kazakh visa, we have been cycling 90 or 100km every day. This is quite a lot, and has left us exhausted at the end of every day and me in no mood for writing. But I will try and do so anyway.

First back a bit, to our wonderfully luxurious rest day in Görlitz. You will not believe how good it feels to stand under the shower or to sleep in a real bed after six days of cycling and camping, and the delicious dinner which we ate just made it all seem too good to be true. Görlitz is also a really nice place, a real undiscovered beauty spot. Very pretty, a bit like Prague in fact, and no tourists besides us. And cheap, and friendly folks. Definitely recommended, if you can work out how to get there.

The morning after came, and it was back to reality. After spending the last of our Euros, it was time to make the short journey over the bridge to Zgorzelec in Poland.

This was most certainly a culture shock; I would never have imagined that such a short distance, across an unrestricted border at that, would bring such a change.

It’s a bit difficult to say what this is, besides a few obvious things. Firstly, the language thing; instantly, we could no longer understand anything that was written or said. Secondly, everything is in a notably worse state of repair – I know I have already written that about the east of Germany, but this time the difference was much greater. The roads are full of holes, buildings are cracked and dirty, and there is dust everywhere. The drivers give much less room to cyclists, and judging by all the squashed animal corpses by the roadside, not much room for anything else either.
Our first contact with people was at a petrol station on the road east from the border, since we needed some fuel for cooking. Enough for about a week and a half for 50 Eurocents.

For some reason the guy working there was very interested to know how from me much a certain headlight bulb in his shop cost in Germany. Clearly I had no idea. Aside from this, he and his sullen-looking colleague seemed to have little interest in helping us, even making taking money off us seem like a tremendous effort.

I had heard that people drink a lot here, and being from another hard-drinking country I was curious as to what this meant. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence to back up this claim: I saw countless empty vodka bottles by the roadside, many shops in the remotest parts of the countryside selling nothing but petrol, car parts and alcohol (surely a deadly combination), and at one point even a man in a tractor drinking a bottle of beer. Worst of all, many many sad little memorials by the roadside with names and photos of loved ones killed in car accidents. This may be though as much to do with the terrible roads and the crazy speeds that people drive at, and this is not the only country where this happens – it seems to be very much a catholic thing.

Everywhere that there are houses there is the acrid stinging smell and thick smoke of whatever sort of fuel they burn here. This may now be the EU, but it feels very far away and closer to the experience I have had in Turkey than to Germany or Holland.

All of this makes it sound like I am trying to paint a very negative picture of Poland. This is not my intention at all. I can only go on my first impression as regards to the behaviour of people, and of course it is very easy to focus on superficial differences and lose sight of the fact that in the end things are not so different.

Also, there is progress being made here, and people seem to have a certain sort of pride in the place. When we stopped in the town of Jawor the other day, we were served perhaps the most delicious ice cream I have ever eaten by a guy who spoke perfect English, and who was very enthusiastic to hear about our journey and where we were going next. To the Ukraine, we said. “Oh, I was near the border recently but I couldn’t visit”, he said, “because I didn’t have my passport. Oops, forgot, they’re not in the EU of course!”. Later, in the same town, the guy who served us pizza in a newly-opened, chic but cheap restaurant took me to find a book shop, since I wanted to buy a Polish dictionary. He explained that the whole town centre was being regenerated, and would soon look completely different. Not quite the empty wasteland drained of all talented youngsters lured to the West that I had perhaps expected.

There is a problem which all travellers face, and about which I am sure much has been written. This is the problem of distinguishing the unusual from what is typical. To be more specific, whether what you observe in a new country tells you much about the place, or is instead just a one-off event. If I see something unusual happen in Amsterdam or in Glasgow, I know it is strange because I know the place. A newcomer though has no way of knowing if this is normal or a freak occurrence.

This is what I am always thinking about, and what has been the starting point for trying to work out what I should make of Poland. Is it normal here to drink beer while driving a tractor, or was this just one degenerate idiot?

It seemed to be the case that as we moved east, the level of poverty visibly decreased. Yesterday, in Gliwice, we most improbably came across a vegetarian restaurant. We ate three meals plus dessert between the two of us, so delicious and affordable was it. All this cycling certainly gives you an appetite.

As mentioned above, we have been cycling close to 100km per day. I was quite pleased with this, until a couple of blokes on racing bikes stopped and spoke to us while we were having a break this morning. The one who could speak English boasted that he had been cycling 250km per day, with baggage, in France. This morning they had already clocked up 120km. They proudly explained that they had to get back to work tomorrow, down the mine digging coal. Tough as brick-shithouses these Poles.

After all this, we arrived today in Cracow. Here we will spend a well-earned rest day. It’s a little bit strange to be in a big city once again, and certainly one so touristic as this one; everywhere there are Irish pubs and places with names like “Crazy Bar”, and plenty of foreign faces. I don’t think we have seen one non-Polish person all week before now.

I am happy to say that while it is less easy to find little cafés than in Germany, there are more than enough different sorts of cakes, pastries, and other delicious things to allow something different to be tried every day. I have not learned so many Polish words, but one of the most important would have to be piekarnia – bakery. The Polish seem to have a particular love for toffee and whipped cream, to which I lend my wholehearted support. A nice touch is that you buy cake by weight, allowing you to order little bits of several types or one huge chunk of whatever is your favourite.

As mentioned before, the cycling itself is almost a meditative affair, allowing the mind to wander but without really leaving enough space for any deep thinking. So instead, I find myself focused on the most trivial and bizarre things.

For example, yesterday we passed a football field where a match was being played, right next to a cemetery. I wondered if the ball had ever been accidentally kicked from the one to the other during a funeral, and had landed in the grave. Or, even better, had hit the priest on the head, causing him to fall into the grave, on top of the coffin, knocking him stone dead to the horror of the assembled mourners. I have no way of knowing if this has ever happened, but it is kind of nice to imagine that it could be possible.

And finally something more serious once again. I had no idea until I looked at the map yesterday, but the town next to which we stayed last night is called Oswięcim, otherwise known as Auschwitz. It is possible to visit the former camp and the museum there, but I don’t intend doing so. I know what happened there, and that’s enough for me.