Postcards from Poland 1: Ignorance is hell

Imagine arriving in England for the first time in Hull, or rather somewhere like Hull but 3x larger.

The docks you pass on the way in are so oversized that the JCBs look like tonka toys. When you finally catch a glimpse of something that is not huge and industrial - a church spire - you laugh at the incongruity.

You speak less English than the chimps in London zoo, you have no map and all the signs are long conglomerations of consonants, which could be sentences, words, abbreviations or accronyms. You don't even know how to pronounce "Hull".

Any attempt you make to ask directions illicits a similar response to if you had rabies and people sternly ignore you, some turning away in the hope that if they can't see you perhaps you won't bite.

The centre is dispersed and incoherent, making navigation a game of chance.

Take a moment to create a picture of this place in your mind. Then remove all the glass, for Szczecin is opaque. Not quite literally, of course, but this place is impenetrable. Any glass-fronted bar or cafe (there's a couple) are full of outsiders huddled in hushed conversations witha smattering of locals seeming to beleive that to be Western is to be seen. Every other establishment must be entered through a huge wooden door to determine what it is.

This is Poland.

What will not be told

So you will have realised from my previous entry that you were not destined to read about my catestrophic bike failure in the outskirts of Berlin (deemed irrepairable by the first bike shop i took it to), my subsequent rescue by a drill-wielding knight in shining lycra, my explorations of an abandoned amusement park, my attempted adoption by a probable serial killer, my musings on the differences between Germany and Poland having cycled the same stretch of the rover Oder/Odra on both sides or my hilarious descovery that Poland's currency is mot the euro.

blog off

this is not a blog entry.

i'm not into this blogging malarky:

1. this cunt of a computer in this wretched polish internet cafe just lost a long (and needless-to-say erudite and witty) entry, which i'm currently too enraged to rerwrite.

2. sleeping in a forest does something to a man that makes blogging seem about as relevant as self-flagalation.

3. computers make me think of real-world things that take me away from my dream-state existence.

1282 kms

Well, I made it to Berlin. It's not all been easy, least of all the diametrical switch from forest-living, stream-washing cycle-bot to mansion-dwelling, beer-fuelled Berlin night-owl but so far... So. Much. Fun.

It's almost 13 days exactly since I arrived at Dieppe ferry port to disappointingly English weather. I hadn't gone very far (about 30kms) when i saw an oak tree sitting about 100 yards from the road - an excellent rainproof camping spot. A premature stop but at least I was drying out.

Belgium has been the surprise highlight. I didn't know much about it before, only that they're good at beer and they don't know what language they speak. (i got by with a mix of french, german and english, which more-or-less sounds like flemmish but isn't). i plotted my route to germany by looking at a map and riding through the green bit without many towns. very hilly, forested, an abundance of rivers... not the flat tedium that i was expecting. Some of it was pretty tough going - i ran out of food and water on the hottest, hilliest day so far - but mostly it's just been beautiful.

I've participated in both ends of the cycling spectrum. firstly: a race! let's call it 'the tour de belgium'. i was pootling along when i was snatched from my reverie by a passing pellatron. we were near the top of what turned out to be a longlong decent, so i put my foot down (alternately and repeatedly) to try and keep up with them. before i knew what was going on i was also passed by camera crews on motorbikes and in an open-topped 4x4 (i like to think that i made it into the belgium cycling press). i got completely carried away, reaching 58.3 kmsph and missed my turn. when i stopped for a break before heading back up this endless hill i was passed, in the space of about 10 minutes, by hundreds of serious-looking lycra clad cyclists with not a wave or a smile between the lot of them.

I also passed my Belgian cycling proficiency test with a bunch of 9 and 10 year olds, though i didn't wait around for the certificate.

One night... I can't have been asleep for many minutes when I was woken by bright white light shining into my tent. I was expecting to hear sirens or the yapping of hunting dogs or whatever humming sound an alien spacecraft makes during landing but instead was shaken by deep rolls of thunder that seemed to be just a few meters above me. For the next few hours I was privy to a storm, the power and proximity of which I have not witnessed for more than ten years.

Berlin, of course, has been a ton of fun. I've been staying in the British Ambassador's gargantuan residence with Jules (the ambassador's son) and 8 of our friends, ostensibly to support Bunty for her Berlin tour but mainly to explore the renegade nightlife of this highly-charged mecca of hedonism and pretentiousness. We've been to some radical places that I don't think could really exist anywhere else, such as Bar 25 - a huge outdoor compound of crusty chic, minimal techno and pirate deco almost exactly like the hippest corner of an English festival, say the secret garden party. A real temporary autonomous zone. Except that it never stops... and looking at many of the (somehow still beautiful) revellers neither do a lot of people here.

It's been a blast but i'm ready for sweat and dirt and the open-ended road...