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We spent a wet day in Malbork. The Polish can teach us a thing or two about queuing !! We queued for 30 mins in the rain for tickets to Malbork castle, only to get to the audio guide point to find we had the wrong tickets and we could not change them – grrr. The same tecnique is even used to by take away food – order and pay at the till, message gets passed along the line to the lady who produces your ice-cream. The system does fall down when you can not speak the language and you are not near the items to point at. Malbork castle is the largest Gothic castle in Europe and very impressive. The Lego version of the painting of the Battle of Grunwald was less so.

We have seen various Polish folk art and even the Polish stonehenge. Its a bit smaller than ours. Polish tourist sites are quite hard to find as Tourist Info generally are fairly clueless about their local area or you have to pay to find out what is nearby !

We headed to the coast past Gdansk due to the lack of campsites inland. Our first stop Ustka was very nice with a coastal promenade and air hockey. Air hockey is BIG in Poland and Ian has now beaten me 4 times. Ustka also had the Museum of Bread which had to be seen. After our 5th coastal town we had kind of had enough but we had sampled Gofry – freshly made waffle with squirty cream and fruit topping. We met loads of other cycle tourists on this route, possibly doing the Baltic cycle route the other way around.

Poland has been fairly good to us but we have had some massive downpours and 2 days of punctures followed by a tyre blow out which has made the rear passenger rather nervous. Also we have had trouble finding campsites or accomodation. On a rainy day on the coast we tried to get a room but no-one was interested in taking in 2 people for 1 night only -they are obviously making too much money. Ian recently got our first tick !!! The tick remover we had was useless and he still has some of the jaws attached that we can not get out. It has not turned septic yet………..

On the Polish side of the German border were loads of cigerette shops, petrol stations, food shops etc for Germans to dash across the border and save money – and I can see why, prices here in Germany are at least 4 times those in Poland.

Its been raining in Berlin and we were not in a good mood as the lady train conductor ‘helped’ us buy the wrong tickets so we had to pay twice. We have visited the Bauhaus museum – lots of nice stuff. Berlin is VERY big and its having the ‘London effect’ on us. I’m not sure how long we will last.