Hello Pretty Poland: Part 1

Ever since starting on this bicycle trip from Lund, I've always told people who hosted me in the cities I've stopped by that I would start writing this blog.  Today I have the chance to start writing about it in Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic which is also the birthplace of Skoda and where I surfed the couch of friendly and chatty Zdeněk.  It has been 13 days since we left Lund in rainy weather with bags of food, clothes, a tent and other camping necessities.

The first day we cycled through familiar country and roads from Lund to Ystad.  We started really early, 8 am to catch the ferry which leaves Ystad for Świnoujście.  The ferry ride was uneventful and we spent about 6 hours enjoying the company of other mainly Polish people on the ferry.  After reaching the Polish border town, we quickly bought some water and food and camped in a nearby housing estate.  The mosquitoes were a real nuisance but luckily we had anti insect ointments that we could apply on our exposed arms and legs.  We woke up to the sound of train whistles and wheels grinding on the tracks which then made us realize we are actually just beside a busy railroad.

The lake near Szczecin

We cycled for about 70 km down south towards Szczecin but will not reach there on the second day.  We passed by Wolin National Park through some really rocky road and some really nice scenery of the Szczecin lake.  We camped again in the woods that evening feeling really tired from all the cycling and actually did not really cook dinner, which in the long run is a bad idea.

Poland's worst Frytki shop!

We could finally reach the first big city of Poland on the 14th August, 2 days after starting our journey from Sweden.  We had a really nice lunch in a nice restaurant beside a river since Polish food prices are way below Swedish ones.  Szczecin is a port city with lots of harbor cranes and warehouses.  When we were there, the Straz were having some sort of festival near the Sea Museum.  Some sort of fun fair with stalls offering Polish sausages and food were aplenty along the street.  We did not manage to find a couchsurf-host in Szczecin so we stayed in the youth hostel Cuma close to the city center.

The hostel we stayed at.  Just like any normal one

Raspberry flavoured beer anyone?

The next morning we headed south again towards Gorzów Wielkopolski to meet our first couchsurf-host of the journey.  We manage to enter the city quite early in the afternoon and we had crepes for lunch.  Waldek met us next to the cathedral in the city center and brought us to the place where he stays which actually belongs to the church parish.  We had the whole floor to ourselves!

The view from the top of the church tower

That night we also tried our hand on Polish scrabble and constructing English words!  We ended up with too much Z's and C's which were common in Polish but not so in English.  We met Waldek again later for dinner after his prayer meeting (Waldek is a catholic priest) where he helped us read the Polish menu and introduced us to the Polish dish: pork, potatoes and salad.  The next day, he managed to sneak us into the cathedral to have a look at city from the bell tower.  He also told us about the history of the town, how it was German before the war, which was then called Landsberg an der Warthe and the sad story of Russians destroying most of the town when advancing towards Berlin.