Day 6 - Częstochowa, Poland to Bratislava, Slovakia - 2433 miles

On leaving Częstochowa we finally drove past an Auchan hypermarket and I bought some nice quality German shoes at even nicer Polish prices. Just before the border with the Czech Republic we stopped to spend the last of our Zloty but large signs all over the place made it immediately obvious we would need our remaining cash for road tax vignettes for Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria if we were travelling on the main motorways. This system generally means, if you want to drive on motorways and some main roads, you buy a chipped sticker which is put in the window of your car and can be read by various cameras along the way. A rather morose woman sat in a booth selling the vignettes and changing currency in Euros. I asked her if we needed a vignette for the Czech Republic but she initially suggested she didn't know. I was discussing with Kit what to do and said maybe we should carry on to the border and see what was available there when she came on all charitable and helpful. She came out of the booth and showed us a large map of Europe. She showed us the shortest route through the Czech Republic didn't take motorways so we wouldn't need to pay the tax but we did need to pay tax for Slovakia and Austria. I should have suspected a sting but didn't. It was a cash only transaction and I didn't have enough Zloty. I remembered we had some Roubles left and it came to enough for the road taxes and a hot drink each. Anyone using this system should check prices before they buy in each country. Sellers that appear 'official' on the face of it may not be and will add huge 'commission' to the actual prices for the taxes. We were well and truly ripped-off in this fashion and I later discovered we had paid three times the normal price. I had read that buying vignettes in advance speeds your passage through a border but very little is gained. They are available for sale at all the appropriate border crossings. My advice to anyone is to check prices and pay at the border.



Our satellite navigation system is set to take the fastest route and a couple of minutes after buying our vignettes we crossed the border into the Czech Republic and continued on roads that looked like motorways to me for at least a couple of hours. We stopped at a rest station and Kit played ‘Schizophrenia Of Love’ while sitting on a not immediately noticed ants’ nest. We crossed into Slovakia without any delay. Both the Czech and Slovakian borders were more or less open with border controls being applied to random vehicles. There is a fast track for EU citizens with vignettes. That said, Kit swears I drove through the lane meant for Slovakians.

Bratislava is the first capital city of our trip and was the busiest traffic since Kaliningrad but the Slovaks drive carefully and there are no holes in the roads so we arrived at our hotel without problem. In Bratislava I had arranged to meet two friends, Daniel Salontay and Shina Lo who are the band, Longital. I met them once before with my brother Steve when we saw them play live in Vienna. No sooner had we checked into our room than Daniel and Shina were there to collect us and show us around their city. Our first point of interest was a gig poster advertising a Longital concert in Bratislava later in the month. I would love to see them play their hometown. There's generally something special about seeing a band play a live hometown gig. We then went to look at the Danube as the sun set and the light faded to twilight. We will see the Danube again in Austria, Hungary and Serbia. It is a river that has featured in my travels before, most notably in 1987 when my wife Chris and I visited Swabia in South Germany. We stayed in a small town called Oberdischingen which is on the Danube as well as the pilgrimage route to Santiago De Compostella. Two friends we made there, Dieter & Markus took us to one of the sources of the Danube at Bodensee/Lake Constance. The river strangely appears from underground as it flows over porous rock and depending on rainfall and other such factors it appears above ground at a different place along its bed. It is possible to walk on a dry river bed and see the river flowing ahead of you. Very strange.

Daniel and Shina took us to Bratislava’s old town next. It was getting ready for the summer season with some restaurants constructing their outside eating spaces in readiness. Bratislava old town has a nice relaxed feel to it but Daniel told us it is like two different places depending on the tourist season. I particularly liked the handful of irreverent bronze satues around the place. The man looking out of a manhole cover is known as 'Cumil The Watcher or Peeper' but it isn't known if he is meant to represent someone spying or just watching the girls go by. The statue holding the bowler hat aloft is known as 'Schöner Naci' who was a well known character in the first part of the last century. Daniel told us a tale of him having been jilted by a lover after which he went to the town every day of his life and gave flowers to the women of Bratislava. I chose to play a song by a statue of Napoleon in one of the town's squares but a succession of tourist kept having their photos taken while I was playing and put me off. Daniel told me I had chosen the most popular tourist spot in the entire city to play my gentle ballad. Instead I played 'I Already Love You' with Kit and Daniel took the video. His style of doing this was animated and fluid so the results are not like our other efforts but he captured the moment well and I like the video a lot. 'I Already Love You' is a song I wrote for Kit when he was still in the womb and it's a strange and beautiful thing to be able to sing it with him now he's all grown up.


We then ate in a very cool Slovak restaurant. Kit had a cold trout dish followed by a turkey steak baked in cheese. I had snails in garlic butter followed by wild boar served with a vegetable puree and sliced dumplings. We also tried a traditional Slovak dish of a potato hybrid gnocchi/spätzle in a sheep’s cheese sauce with bacon. The meal was top quality and really good value for money. My kind of food. I can't pretend to know Slovak cuisine from this one meal. All the dishes were similar to others I've eaten in Italy, France, Germany and the Czech Republic but Slovakia is a country finding its identity, emerging from years of being governed from Prague. Over dinner we discussed the differences between Slovak and Czech culture. Daniel and Shina said a lot of things the general gist of which was that the Slovaks are more Slavic in nature and the Czechs more German. Over the next few days I hope to be able to understand the meaning of that concept more than I do now. I understand what being German means with a lot more depth than most. I always feel at peace when I'm there. I always feel like I am among my own people but I have such a strong connection and identification with Slavic culture. There is an abstraction that I instinctively understand. It puzzles me that after a lifetime of knowing nothing about Slavic countries that I make statements like this. It is also the case that German culture changes as you move around the country and that the history of the 20th Century changed the linear development of German culture. Prussia disappeared and the Prussians settled in wider Germany. At the same time Eastern Europe heavily influenced one part of the country while Western and American culture heavily influenced the west of Germany. In Slovakia a similar process appears to have occurred. After years of being overshadowed it is beginning to discover, celebrate and understand its roots



We walked off our meal by wandering round some of the less touristy areas of the old town, through the Jewish Quarter and up to the castle where there are great views of the city. There is also a space-age design bridge over the Danube that from certain angles looks like a martian tripod from War Of The Worlds invading the city. Before long it was time to part and head back to our hotel. Daniel and Shina are special people and it was nice to make their acquaintance again. They have a spirituality that is hard to define and is also reflected in the music they make. Kit and I loved Bratislava. The Slovak capital seemed to us to be a relaxed and civilised place; a reflection of the Slovak people we met. I will return.

Back at the hotel we discovered we have no internet so the blog will fall behind by a day but I should be able to catch up tomorrow in Vienna. Vienna is but a short drive from here so we should have plenty of time to get things done. Famous last words and all that.

Day 5 - Kaliningrad, Russia to Częstochowa, Poland - 1852 miles

We rose early at 7am hoping if we got a move on we would be able to escape Kaliningrad before the rush hour traffic. Much to our despair last night we realised we would lose an hour's sleep as Russia is 2 hours ahead of UK time although we would regain an hour once we'd crossed the border back into Poland. Ahead of us was the longest drive of the holiday as Poland has virtually no motorways.

Breakfast was a welcome meal after having missed an evening meal the night before. Our Russian breakfast was much the same as other European breakfasts but we were served sweet blinis and salad in addition to the usual cold meats and cheese. We didn't hang around after breakfast and got on our way. My first task was to reverse the car down the road the hotel was on and negotiate the potholes through the car's rear window. We then entered Kalinigrad's rush hour traffic. Our plan to get away early had failed and Kaliningrad was in full swing. In addition to the poor quality roads we now had to contend with Russian pedestrians who walk into and across a road whenever and wherever they want, causing yet another hazard. Russian pedestrians must either have right of way or be completely mad. I quickly became thoroughly stressed all over again attempting to avoid mad drivers, potholes and death wish pedestrians. After well over an hour we eventually found our way out of the city with a combination of the Sat Nav's compass and moderately good luck. We were not sorry to see the back of Kaliningrad.
Some of the route on the edge of the city was poor quality, single track roads but we eventually found some decent motorways and headed for Mamonovo which we knew to be near the border. It was going to be easier to find our way back once we were out of the city as if we went too far west we would simply meet the coast and be able to follow that. As we approached Mamonovo there were signs to the border which we followed but once again this led to a closed border crossing that looked as if it was under construction. We back-tracked a little and found a sign that said Mamonovo 8km. We turned onto the road to find Russia had saved its best for last. This 'main route' to Mamonovo turned out to be a dirt track through woodland. We would have been better off without a road. It took us another hour to drive 8km on the worst road I'm ever likely to drive on. It was so bad I drove most of it in first gear at a snail's pace. Astonishingly, we met traffic. When we finally reached the end I was so relieved that the car was still in one piece.

Our progress through the border crossing felt painfully slow but took 2 hours, the same length of time as coming. We were kept waiting for what seemed like ages in a queue and a curious Russian came to talk to us. I told him we were from Liverpool and he said he was a Beatles fan so we played a few Beatles tunes on the iPod. He went on to tell us the story of his life but when he got the interesting bit about him working for the Russian secret police the traffic started moving and he disappeared. This time we attracted different sorts of attention and more difficulty from each Polish check than with the Russians. A Polish officer clearly thought we were not geniune and thoroughly checked my passport as if she felt it was a fake. She was also unimpressed by the photos. I'm older than I once was and carrying a bit of extra weight at the moment which means I don't look like my passport photo and Kit's passport photo is an awful one. She spent ages looking at the photos and checking our faces. We just had to grin and bear it. Actually, that is exactly what Kit did which led to the seriousness of the officer's expression breaking into a smile for which she added another ten minutes wait onto our time before letting us move on. After passport control, customs control and the checking of our car and my driver's documents we came to a final security check. This time the officer came out of his hut to talk to us. He asked me to open the car boot and my case for a cursory look and then interviewed us about what we were up to. I told him the whole story about visiting 18 countries, singing a song in each one and looking for my mother's birthplace and he shook my hand and said, 'Oh you are good people. You can go through.' Russia was finally behind us and we both breathed a sigh of relief. I have to say that every Russian we met was friendly and kind, including the border guards, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Russia and its people. I would not recommend going to the Kaliningrad area though and anyone who travels there in a car has to be out of their tiny little minds.

The drive to Częstochowa was a bit of a slog. Predictably, we found ourselves in queues of traffic which grew slower as we approached cities. Our route took us past Auschwitz and I half-heartedly suggested we stop for a look. Having been before we decided to press on. As we progressed the weather improved from drizzle to beautiful spring sunshine and the Polish countryside was again very pleasant. We stopped at a couple of garages for coffee and chocolate to help keep fatigue at bay. We've come to enjoy our stops along the road and have been trying different chocolate products we've never seen before with varying success. There is good coffee to be had along the road in Poland but the chocolate bars leave something to be desired. We've been buying way more than we can eat and have a shopping bag that is gradually filling with various exotic products.

We arrived in Częstochowa early evening and headed straight into the city which is famous in Poland for being the birthplace of a pope and the home of a painting of a black madonna that is said to be able to perform miracles. Częstochowa has consequently become a place of pilgrimage for Poles but is less well known in the rest of Europe. Try to find an entry for it in a UK guide book and you will mostly fail. The centre of Częstochowa is little more than a large main street with a boulevard up its middle, Ramblas style, and churches at either end.



We decided to walk in the direction of the Pauline monastery of Jasna Góra, home of the Black Madonna painting. We thought we might as well take a look despite having no pressing need for miracles but we became distracted by the shops along the way. We bought some food in a Tesco store for tomorrow's breakfast but still no shoes so I will have another day driving in my slippers tomorrow. And joy of joys, we found a great record shop. I'd much rather browse a record shop than go to a church or view a miracle. I must have spent an hour browsing the shelves and using the listening post. Polish music is really, very underrated and my interest has been growing in recent years. I bought a couple of CDs and Kit insisted on buying some Polish Pokemon cards for his collection. Darkness had fallen while we were in the shop. We decided to forego seeing the black madonna and instead began to investigate the restaurants.

I have a general rule of eating local food wherever I am but Częstochowa's restaurants were all Italian apart from one Egyptian restaurant. Kit didn't like the idea of Egyptian food so Italian it was. A comparison of menus revealed the likely most authentic restaurant and we bizarrely entered Italy for a couple of hours. The restaurant was run by an Italian and he and his friends were watching Inter Milan on TV. The menu was adventurous and we ordered roast rabbit and sole only to be told neither were available. The waitress spoke no English and had problems understanding my Polish so we entered into 'lost in translation territory' and all of Kit's dishes arrived first followed eventually by mine. Kit had a Spaghetti Carbonara followed by grilled salmon and I had a seafood risotto followed by knuckle of veal with a tomato and mozzarella salad. The food was fantastic, great value for money and full compensation for being not quite what we wanted. On leaving the restaurant we had a strange sensation of leaving Italy and re-entering Poland. We strolled back down the boulevard to our hotel in a very relaxed state. We both enjoyed Poland immensely but today's drive had taken a lot out of us. We were tired and decided to get straight into bed and have a longer sleep before heading for Bratislava.