A problem with this with cycling is that the flap at the front gets blown up by the air, from simply riding at a certain speed, so the front flap only worked well for hiking it's fine.
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2024-2-18: Finally updated this page, wrote down in particular my experiences in eastern Poland but also updated the earlier part that I wrote down already in July 2022. 2024-2-23: Added the trip to Trzebnica, I think as of 2024-2-23 this is almost everything of interest from my trip.
Pictures: Still to be added.
I put place/city/town names in blue with italic.
Note: You can email me about any of the topics I write about on these pages, via the link on the top-left of this page.
Note 2: Some pictures made with my phone, of many of my trips of which I've not uploaded a lot of pictures from my main camera here yet, can be found on my VK page where I give more views/information on various topics related to life in the countries that I visited. See: http://www.vk.com/w.h.scholten
Pictures/video: I uploaded some videos on my youtube channel from these trips. I lost my RX100 camera later on on this trip when I was in Kiev (Ukraine) on the subway. I had not transferred the photos from the RX100 so the photos/videos that I have are only from my phone (Samsung A52S, pictures are fine, but not as good as from the RX100). I tried a Fujifilm X-S10 later in 2022 but it's just not good for travelling. Perhaps for beam shots for bicycle lighting, but for travelling I've now gone for an action camera, the DJI Osmo action 4. I will report on how well it works, perhaps I will buy a RX100 VA or Canon G7X III at a later date.
I had travelled already enough by bike in Poland the last time in 2017 to get an impression of what cycling there is like both within Wroclaw and longer tours between cities. This time I wanted to make some bike trips to look at houses, villages, because after selling my house in NL I have been looking online for houses in Ukraine and in Poland, the latter after a suggestion from my friend in Wroclaw. I found a lot of nice houses for sale in Poland, but what is it like in reality, i.e in what neighbourhoods are they located, what types of neighbourhood are there (I mean villages, newly built areas, facilities such as shops, markets), what would it be like to live in certain areas? This is something I hadn't paid much attention to on the last trips also because I wasn't looking for a house to buy. I was mainly looking for style of houses, nature, bike paths.
I spent a fair amount of time in Poland this year (and in 2023) and so also went shopping in lots of supermarkets and small stores.
In supermarkets there are for example: Biedronka, Dino, Lidl (German), Spar (German), Carrefour (French). Which supermarkets there are varies per region.
in smaller grocery stores: Zabka.
A big problem that I encountered not so much yet in 2022, but a lot in 2023 when making longer bike trips, is that lots of drinks, especially softdrinks, contain artificial sweeteners. In 2023 I often bought fruit juice for on trips, and most of them contain godawful sweeteners such as sacharine (the worst, gives me an long awful (not aweful! :) ) aftertaste), acesulfame/aspartame (usually used together) (give me a less strong but still bad aftertaste), sucralose (reasonable). In 2022 Lidl had a fantastic blackberry fruit juice, but in 2023 I couldn't find that any more, they only had blackberry fruit juice with artificial sweetener. I don't see people getting thinner so the problem is simply eating too much! All this sugar reduction is irrelevant if people just do a little bit of exercise! I eat and drink all I want and I don't get fat because I bicycle enough.
As of 2023, it is very hard to find any soft drink or fruit juice in Poland that doesn't have godawful artificial sweeteners.
What I really liked in 2022, and still in 2023, is Biedronka's own brand yoghurt drink, esp. with banana flavour. It is called: Fruvit.
The morons in NL are putting sweeteners even in products such as curry sauce... Soon there is no choice but to make all food from scratch because of this fake-healthy trend pumping you full of artificial junk.
My friend loaned me his old bike with Shimano Alfine 11 speed hub with thumb shifters, so I could try that hub out on a long trip. It switches very easily between gears, much easier than the Rohloff hub.
I tested this hub thoroughly on the trips I made, in range and in switching. I was also thinking about gear step size during these trips and I measured my cadence, as I recently got a reply from Kindernay (27-6-2022) about their hubs, as I had contacted them to buy their 14 speed hub but they stated they could not say yet known when these will be available again due to issues such as with suppliers. And so they suggested their 7 speed hub. So when in Poland making these trips I seriously considered the issue of gear step size to decide on whether the 7 speed hub was acceptable.
Update 2024-2-18: Kindernay was likely not producing any hubs at this point for other reasons than issues with suppliers, and therefore suggested to me the 7 speed hubs that they had in stock. See also Kindernay, and information on their bankruptcy end of 2023.
I wrote in 2022 at the time: I may just go for the 7 speed hub and put that in my Cannondale touring bike. This has a range of 4.28x, which means 6 steps and each step is 4.28 ^(1/6)=1.27. This is fairly large but possibly good enough.
I thought about this hub while making bike trips in PL and as this 7 speed hub was very expensive (EUR 1148), not much less than the 14 speed hub (EUR 1438) I wanted to consider this carefully first. This suggestion lead me to analyse what gear step size should be in transmissions, which lead to the first proper analysis of this anywhere it seems, from which I could deduce the appropriate gear step size, and for that you only need to know what cadence range you find comfortable. The square root of the highest cadence/lowest cadence is approximately the optimal gear step size. See for more on this my bicycle section here: Cadence and gears. I show here exactly why a certain range and gear step size is one of: bad, useful, good enough, and optimal...
With the Alfine 11 switching went well, though a bit off in some gears, i.e. it didn't always engage fully which meant that sometimes it would switch to the other close gear. I adjusted it a few times during the rides with the barrel adjuster and looked like it switched fine since then. [ 2024-2-18: Actually, it was never perfect, always 1 gear would be an issue. ]
The range was fine at the top end but not enough at the low end so I had to cycle up some not very steep hills with too much effort. If the gearing were made smaller with a smaller chain ring at the front or a bigger cog at the rear, then the top end would be very limited. So I experienced what I later calculated on that above page on gear step size, which is that the range of the Alfine 11 is a bit too limited...
My conclusion for the Alfine 11 was: Gear range a bit limited, gear step size is fine, gear selection doesn't work perfectly, changing gears is easy, but gear selection doesn't always work well with 1 gear being off. All in all it was not bad but not great.
Wroclaw is a place where apparently Germans come to 'see what they lost' as my friend told me on an earlier trip when he thought he heard Germans talking. The style of buildings is similar to what you find in eastern Germany before crossing the border. You can find the central 'Rynek' (in Russian/Ukrainian: Rynok) = market (square), which is a tourist area with many places to eat. I had seen this on some German TV programmes before the first time coming to Wroclaw.
I made some longish trips by bicycle to go visit certain areas and I wanted to try to locate some houses that were for sale in those areas. Exact locations are usually not given on sites such as otodom.pl and I didn't want to involve realtors yet, I just wanted to visit some houses from the outside and to see in what locations they were situated.
I made various short trips within Wroclaw but the 1st long trip was on 2022-7-25 to Sobotka, about 50 km from Wroclaw, near or on a big hill, which is located in a region that my friend said I should check out for a house to buy as that region is very picturesque. On the way there I would get to a place where one newly built house was located that I saw on otodom.pl that I wanted to have a look at, at the edge of Dobkowice.
What I noticed first on this trip to the Sobotka area, when I was on the way to a way point Dobkowice, which is not even a village, just a few houses, is that the landscape is similarly structured to in NL: farm land with along roads going through or past them there are few trees (not half a forest as in Ukraine!), so you are riding in the open everywhere. This means no shade from wind nor sun. When you see a bunch of trees it is somewhere that is not along a road but for example on a small hill. It was sunny, ca. 33 C, and there were almost no places to rest in the shade; the few benches I saw were in the open too. It was windy, a headwind most of the time. As I was looking at everything to get a good impression of what it would be like to live in Poland, this was no problem on this trip, but it is something that will be an issue if you live there and ride a lot in such areas when you want to just get to your destination, not look at houses you've seen already many times, and then the too open landscape is annoying (not enough wind shade, not enough shade from the sun when wanting to relax).
This is worse than in NL as there you regularly have at least several bike paths between villages and towns with a lot of bushes beside it giving wind shade on these sections. On a 110 km trip to a place near Utrecht not long ago for example I had plenty of open roads along fields or along rivers, but also fairly picturesque parts with a lot of green that acts as a wind shield.
I managed to spot the house at the edge of Dobkowice that I had seen on otodom.pl, it was nice, exactly as in the pictures on the website, but being there is different from what impression you get on a site where pictures do not show you everything you want to know. On otodom.pl, with some houses there are 3D pictures and overview pictures from the sky but still that is not the same as the overview that you would get being there.
Generally sellers on otodom.pl have pretty good pictures of their house and inside that house, and those are often much better than the pictures on Ukrainian sites such as dom.ria.com and olx.ua. I discussed this with my then friend (later not any more) in Zhytomyr: Why are the pictures of houses often so abysmal on dom.ria.com and olx.ua, that do not properly show what you want to see? Especially often not shown is the entire house and the surroundings. She thought it could be on purpose to get people interested to contact the realtor (and then they could entice you to visit the house in question). More on this in the trip report for 2022 in Ukraine.
Being there in person gave me the real feel for where this house was located, what facilities there are, if any, such as small shops, and what else there was such as public transport. What was clear already on the trip so far, was how few buses ride in any areas, how few bus stops there are, and how few times per day buses come there... The house itself looked very nice, but as a whole it didn't attract me because of where it was located, which was close to a few other houses that you don't see on the pictures on the site, on a small plot of land, directly next to farmland with very little in the way of facilities such as shops, and on a road with too much traffic. You would need a car for just about anything to travel to Wroclaw... Also the price was fairly high, for the same price I had seen much nicer houses in esp. the east of Poland often with developed gardens and a lot of land (5000m2 to 10000m2).
A few km before Sobotka an example of the impatience of many people in cars was a woman passenger gesticulating because I was standing a little towards the centre of a T-intersection. I gave the "whatever" signal (shoulder shrug + head movement to indicate "I don't care"). These idiots could pass easily, it was another example of this 'in a hurry' impression I get in PL in many places.
This trip to Sobotka and back was, with some small detours, 93 km in total, and most of it was in the open, there were just a few short sections on the way back (I took a different route back) where there were more than just a few single trees dotted beside the road. On other sections there were bunches of trees here and there but not along the roads.
In Sobotka I turned around, back to Wroclaw. I had planned to go a bit further in the hilly area to Sulistrowice, but upon reaching Sobotka I had the "no" feeling about this whole area. I was hesitating, looking around, it looked nice there, a bit hilly roads, nice style buildings, but I went back. On the way back I thought about my impressions, I asked myself: "Why didn't I find it appealing?"
Some things came to my mind thinking about the surroundings:
On this 93 km trip taking 5 hours of relaxed riding and much more time in total (ca. 9 hours) due to looking around, making pictures, I saw just 2 local buses, one near Wroclaw, one near Sobotka, and I saw only 2 bus stops...
Later in 2023 I did see a few more local buses within Wroclaw that were going to other cities. Perhaps the routes I took meant I didn't see these buses and they were going along the big roads only?
I used a hiking cap with flap on the rear and a flap at the front that should keep the sun out of your eyes and off of your neck:
A problem with this with cycling is that the flap at the front gets blown up by the air, from simply riding at a certain speed, so the front flap only worked well for hiking it's fine.
This trip of a bit more than 50 km in total was interesting for newly built houses that I came across and an issue with a road where I thought I had to ride on the main road for cars, but there was a bicycle path just hidden behind a bus stop and bushes. I only realised this on the way back, where I used it and then came to the place where I thought I had to ride on the main road as there did not appear to tbe a bicycle path.
The place where I spotted a bunch of newly built houses was in/near Ligota Piekna. I found it odd and uncool that a bunch of detached houses were built in the same style near each other. Why not different style houses? Then you can immediately find your house! Further often the houses are built on fairly small plots of 700-1000m2, whereas PL is far bigger than NL, so why not bigger? Well, strangely you have the same issue in Ukraine.
One place in particular looked weird to me, a bunch of houses on a plot of which I think the developer wanted to use the space such that he could put as many houses as possible on it by placing these houses around the edges. Because of the fence in some parts at the edges, this with the placing together gave me the feeling of 'prison compound' :)
After this place I went through the village Wysoki Kosciol. This looked to me much cooler because of having trees rather than open land, houses were mostly old, though some new or renovated. The roads here were in somewhat hilly terrain.
Arriving in Trzebnica I think that I felt that this was a nice area, nice houses, similar to Olawa I think, but the same as everywhere else in PL, I don't get the "yes" feeling.
So I returned and on the way back I was riding a lot in the dark. The cycle paths were fine, not great, but generally in quality not a problem. I don't like some of the transitions from cycle path to road where they cross, sometimes these are almost like curbs, too high to simply ride across, or just uncomfortable. I made some short videos about this and put these on my youtube channel.
The 2nd trip was on 2022-7-28 to Brzeg which my friend suggested as a nice area but I ended up returning once I got to Olawa for 2 reasons: It would be getting dark soon and I didn't think anyway that I would have a 'yes' feeling, as I had it nowhere so far in western Poland in the are of Wroclaw. The route I took to Olawa was suggested by my friend with GPS points, and it was mostly via fairly good bicycle paths with a few sections that were bad.
On one road with concrete slabs I almost lost my phone! I had my new phone in an old plastic phone holder that I mounted on the handlebar that has insufficient grip of the phone. Since this trip I retired that phone mount! The impact of a hit from the difference of height in the concrete slabs in one point was so big that the phone was gone. I was searching for it, thought that I had lost it, then saw it was hanging from the elastic cord that I attached to the phone cover and that I had wrapped around an X-ram mount point for my friend's phone mount. That saved the phone! It saved the phone another time too, so this had been a good idea.
The ride to Olawa was nice besides that and the city looks nice, nice houses, organised, clean, but nothing grabbed me, just as in just about any place in Poland I just don't get the feeling that I get in Ukraine in most cities, of: 'cool'.
On the way back I took a different route via Stanowice and Siechnice. Here I felt that I had no choice: I had to ride on the road with cars, which was a bit uncomfortable. The alternatives were extremely bad roads within those cities and on smaller roads or paths along the big road. One of these smaller roads was a ravel road with a washboard pattern which was extremely annoying! The feeling I got this year on all trips in Poland was: There is just 1 good road to go from A to B, there are almost always no alternatives! Riding with the cars I didn't get any problems with motorists who might feel I shouldn't ride there. It is allowed... I noticed on this ride back to Wroclaw a lot of buses, not local buses but long distance and international buses (the type of Flixbus, Sindbad, etc.). The plus side of riding with cars/buses was that I wanted to ride faster which was good to get back a bit earlier :)
On all the roads I rode on, I felt it was worse than in NL, the roads are often terrible:
Riding with cars, as I had done on my previous bike trips in Wroclaw and other cities, is doable but not comfortable, it is unlike riding with cars in NL on shared roads where cars may only go 60 km/h. In NL it always feels unproblematic as not many people speed on such roads and there is not that much traffic. What is done very well in NL is to separate traffic to villages/towns/cities and traffic that is just on the way through to other places. For example I saw 2 houses on a road in between other villages, so there was no big city near, and yet I counted about 1 car per minute. This may not seem much but it means you can't relax in your garden. This is likely everywhere in this region as roads to get to main roads are not split off enough (i.e. traffic isn't encouraged enough to take the bigger high speed roads) from settlements. There are houses in NL next to roads too, but then more out of necessity (lack of space in NL). For a house placed in a rural location I would not want it to lie on a through-road to highways, but with a long path away from such roads and with a shield of trees, also separated in such a way from farm land to minimise hearing noise from farming machinery [ I know what this is like from where I lived in NL, close to farms but not adjacent to them ]. In this region I saw neither.
The annoyance I felt is due to various factors, too many cars, cars going too fast, bad indications for what is a cycle path (or is it a side walk only for pedestrians?) and where to get to the cycle paths, etc.. I made some estimates but didn't do a in depth check of what cars were going. They seemed to be going at least the speed limit of 70 km/h (speed limit on such roads is 60 km/h in NL), but whatever the exact speed, it felt uncomfortable, similar to Germany on 70km/h roads. In Germany I did measurements showing a lot of people were driving far faster than allowed there.
On the whole motorists kept good distance, but what I saw in Wroclaw I saw everywhere else as well from the driving style: They all seem to be in a hurry...
The train is a more viable option for middle to long distances. My friend had suggested I could take the train from Sobotka back to Wroclaw (with bicycle, trains often have spaces for bikes) if I felt too tired, but I wanted to see more of the area and so I bicycled back to Wroclaw via a different route.
To get to a train station, similar to NL or anywhere actually, you need local transport to the train station. Besides using your bicycle to go to the train station, which means leaving it there hoping it won't get stolen, or walking which is rarely an option, there is barely any such transport.
This shows how car-centric it is in Poland. Almost no buses but lots of cars means more traffic, more noise. The noise was everywhere, even in villages it is clear as background noise from highways that you can hear almost everywhere, similar to how it is in Germany. Speed limits should be set to 50km/h km in any built-up area with speed reducing measures such as traffic obstructions (not speed bumps), that would already improve everything a lot.
I observed more of 'life' in Wroclaw while making some walks and the importance of the car here too became more obvious as I walked for example along flats and shops. Everything is full with cars, near the flats side walks were only on 1 side and/or narrow to give space for cars.
My "no" feeling in general thus comes from the following:
Thinking back to the other cities I visited and cycled through: There were good cycle routes (such as the earlier trip Gdynia, Sopot, Hel), but the love in PL for the dangerous, polluting, noisy, car didn't make me enjoy it much in other places.
Perhaps it is different in eastern Poland? [ That is what I wondered at the time, before going to eastern Poland. ]
I met my friend and a friend of my friend who returned from Australia to PL. For various reasons he was probably not going back there, one of which was that he disliked the authoritarian government and the nonsense related to the chinese flue. He was going to renovate a small house he owns near the border with Belarus which was not that far from Bialystok, so perhaps I could ride with him to that area, look at that house which he was thinking of selling, and share the cost of petrol. He had things to do in Wroclaw which would delay going there and as I had an appointment in Bialystok I took the train. We talked about Ukrainians being in Poland, causing relationship issues due to men being interested in the women. Of course mainly women, many single, fled Ukraine.
On 2022-8-3 I travelled by train to Bialystok (in the north-east of Poland, not far from the border with Belarus) with the same bike with Alfine 11 hub, starting early in the morning and arriving about 12:20. It was a hot day as it had been on all days so far in Poland, which is cool for bicycling :) I went here to visit a company that makes various products (not just for bicycles) and we discussed a possible cooperation. Then in the afternoon, about 15:00 I thought about directly going on a trip to the south east where I wanted to look around for houses, or on whether to stay a bit longer in Bialystok. My friend suggested a camp site just outside the city. I had a tent with me that I had left with him after my previous trip in Poland in 2017 where we stayed a few days in Chalupy on a camp site (after which I went on to Lithuania by bus, from Gdansk), so this was an option but I had a look on booking and found a hostel and decided to try that first as the camping was not free anyway so why not get a proper roof? :)
I stayed a few days in Bialystok in this hostel, which is more a house split up into separate rooms and where I had my own room (I think for others ditto, or a room shared with 1 other person). There was a shared kitchen where you could talk to people staying there. It was interesting that the people running the hostel (hired to run it by the owner from Poland I presume) were from Ukraine, IIRC from Kharkov.
A lot of the people staying there were Belarusian truck drivers... We talked about various issues in life, what they thought about life in western Europe (to where they were driving from Belarus), differences between personality of people in say the Netherlands and Ukraine, etc.
After a few days in Bialystok I went on my trip to the south east on 2022-8-5. I was thinking of cycling to 2 places where I had seen some nice houses for sale and in a (seemingly, judging from satellite photos) nice area, to see what it was like in reality. These places were: Tomaszow Lubelski, and Lipsko (about 50 km from Lublin). This would mean about 300 km of cycling.
I had cycled in and near Bialystok (I think up to 10 km rides or so, not that much) the days I was there, bicycle paths were pretty good quality! There were a few nice places in that area of Bialystok but also weird ones such as bicycle path in an area with detached houses suddenly stopping with a sign blocking you where you would need to get off and go back on the main road. When leaving Bialystok the bicycle paths were excellent but that quickly changed and it slowed me down a lot. I got into areas with very bad cycle paths, or even paths that were obviously just farmers' tracks, and a lot of sand paths. I made the mistake of following one and thought "let's continue and see how far it goes". Well, I had to walk a lot of it and it was many kilometres. This is one of the problems in Poland, getting stuck in a place where all routes are bad, and on the maps that I used it was hard to see what roads are really like (Osmand+, but I tried Komoot as well in 2022 and it had the same problems). After this long road I came to a place with a lot of trees, thought I would stay and relax a bit there after very strenuous walking/riding, but it turned out there were these amazingly annoying stinging flies!
I struggled on for quite a bit longer. Eventually I made it to a better road, although one was gravel with washboard pattern in it. The paths that were rideable were often bouncy, i.e. you would bounce around on them if you went too fast because of the bumps. It was getting late and I had selected a possible place where I might be able to stay the night (booking.com was not very useful in this area) which was in the city Bransk, where there was a hotel listed on Osmand's information when selecting to display places for an overnight stay, and went to a large hotel in the style of a log cabin (this hotel is called 'Gosciniec Branski'). I asked a woman with a car about which roads she would suggest to avoid the type of bad roads I had encountered so far. So I took the road to Bransk, then located this hotel. There were preparations for festivities going on. I asked one of the waitresses if they had a room. She didn't speak English so she asked another waitress who said that they were all booked because of a wedding. She couldn't really recommend anything so I went outside, did some searching on the internet and found something. I tried calling but the person who answered didn't speak English. I went back inside to ask the waitress to talk to him in Polish. Yes, they had a place for me, and they wanted to know when I would be there. It was another 10-12 km or so, but I thought it was 7 km or so and made a bit too low estimate off of this smaller distance for when I expected to be there. Off I went. Thank you to the waitress! So I got there a bit later also because of the bad roads and going the wrong way a bit. When I got there a guy, his wife and I think it was his niece who spoke English and who worked in Belgium normally, greeted me. I rented what was a small house with a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. It was the nicest place I had stayed in Poland, relaxing, beautiful nature. I don't remember what I paid per night... Perhaps 30 euros? They gave me a tea bag to start my first evening off well too :)
When unpacking all my stuff I couldn't find my short green trousers (and my favourite belt). They were gone! In the bags on the bike I had my tent, a sleeping mat, drink, food, clothes etc. I had changed clothes to more comfortable clothes for cycling not long after leaving Bialystok, and I had put in and taken out various bottles of drink as I needed to drink a lot due to the high temperature, I went to shops to buy some drink in almost every town I visited! I suppose at one point I hadn't closed the bag properly as I had too much stuff and was often taking things out and back in, especially bottles with fruit juice etc., and I had not taken enough care to at least put something on top of clothes. The very bad roads in the farm land that I went through in between and just after the sand paths often made me bounce up and down on the bike. These trousers probably bounced out on one of those roads. Should I go back? I might have to trace back via those godawful sand paths! I wasn't sure what to do. The next day I wanted to ride back to search a few hours but it rained so I did a few other things, bicycled in the area, got some groceries, and browsed the internet.
On the 3rd day (2022-8-7) I left the agro-tourism place to continue my trip but first I would re-trace my route in the opposite direction a little to see if perhaps I could find my trousers within a reasonable time. I was just thinking of giving up when I saw my trousers on the side of the sand road (rideable by bike, not one of those loose sand paths were you can't ride your bike at all, the bike I was using had 32 or 37 mm tyres which were not enough but I think even with 50mm tyres it would be very difficult to ride on those sand paths). The place where I found my trousers was in the village Godzieby. However, it was missing my favourite belt! And the box with ear plugs that was in one of the pockets was also gone. Not cool! Perhaps children played with it? I asked some children who were there playing outside, if they knew something, but they didn't speak English, nor German, but wait, did they speak French when talking to each other? Weird. I decided to see if there were people at the farm as the trousers were lying exactly at the exit. I talked to the farmer, in English and Russian, but he hadn't seen anything. He asked the children who were his children, but they didn't know anything. The farmer offered me a rest and some food, soup, tea, and inside the children were curious to talk to me. It was difficult as indeed they spoke French as they normally went to school in Belgium (where the farmer's wife works), but my French is poor, I have had no practice in it for ages. I tried and we did get to talk about various topics also with their Grandmother. I tried translation but mobile internet was very poor there so that only worked occasionally...
The farmer suggested where to ride to for the next trip and where to find a place to sleep as all in all it got to be fairly late, so I was back on course to my destination which was originally the Lublin region. The children rode along for a while. I made a picture of the farm, and them, I will upload that as thank you for them as they wanted to be in a picture that I made :)
I was in farmer's land and on one very good newly made asphalt road a guy in an expensive car felt the need to ride close to 200 km/h. In Poland it feels very similar for a cyclist to riding in Germany from the way motorists drive.
All the time spent at riding back to search for my trousers and staying at the farm meant I would get close to the agro-tourism place again the evening of the same day I left there! I could have gone there again I suppose but I decided to ride on until I got tired, perhaps even ride through the night. I ended up trying to have a sleep somewhere in a field (close to Czaje Lipki), ca. 10 km further from the agro tourism place. However, it was very cold in the evening in that field, and there were loud weird animal noises which meant that I couldn't sleep at all. After a few hours I rode on... In the morning I rode on a road through a bit of forest, near Kaliski, and thought this would be a good place to rest. I was dead tired! So I lied down. Not long later a guy came there walking with a dog. He said something but I didn't understand so I went up to him, talked in English and he wanted to know if I needed help or something: "No, I'm just resting". We then talked about topics such as the dog with which he was walking, he rescued it, as it had been wandering in that forest left by the owner. He gave it food until it trusted him. We got talking about Ukraine and he said that he had taken in a family from Ukraine... As I was planning to ride to Warsaw where my friend would be going so I could go back with him to Wroclaw), he gave some advice on the road and route to take. We talked a bit more about bicycling, he mentioned that he made 200 km trips with an average of 30 km/h. I said "Not with this touring bike with a lot of stuff in the bags, and you can only do that when you know the roads well and thus also which roads to avoid!" :)
I continued up to Drohiczyn, where there was a nice area near the water where you could relax, benches and tables underneath a roof, and I stayed there for a while to dry out some clothes, to eat a bit and to rest as I had barely slept. Then on to Siedlce, another 50 km or so.
Once in Siedlce I rode a bit in the area thinking about which route to ride to Warsaw (I took smaller roads, not the main road for cars), and on whether I would make it in time to Warsaw. I went on in the direction of Warsaw for about 10 km (I estimate it would be another 80 km or so to Warsaw) where my friend might be able to meet me but I would not be able to get there soon enough even though he was going to be late/busy there, so talking on the phone we decided it was best that I take the train from Siedlce. There are a limited number of places for a bicycle on trains and they were sold out I think for all trains to Wroclaw that day, so after some cycling in the area near Siedlce I went back and reserved a place at a hotel/motel at the edge of the city.
I think it was when riding in Siedlce that I saw some more annoying stuff such as the path for pedestrians nearer the road, and path for cyclists nearer buildings, in one case going very close past the door for what I think was a hotel, or something. That is dangerous, it should be the other way around! The next day I took the train back to Wroclaw where I arrived in the afternoon.
After arriving at the station of
My friend came and suggested a hostel to stay. I didn't know any yet here, so he took me there. I spent a few days there, thinking about what to do, when to go to Ukraine but also looking for a place where I could get the required Covid test done which was said to be needed for entry into Ukraine. My friend said to forget about, just try it, but I didn't want to do that. He later told me he knew someone who went to Ukraine recently and that guy said that nobody checked for any covid test results. This turned out to be correct... I also searched for what a friend in Zhytomyr was curious about: potato bread. I found a supermarket, I think it was a Spar, which had potato bread buns. I tried one and it didn't seem special to me. The next day I took the train to Prezemysl (from there train to Kiev, UA) and I took the other buns with me for her. I also took studentska and professorska chocolate for myself and for her. I really like professorska milk chocolate and white chocolate...
in the hostel I talked to a few people, and 1 woman was of interest. She was from Ukraine and told me of travelling in Europe, such as Italy and I had the impression that she used the situation as it is now, to more easily travel in the EU (possibly with benefits such as cheap/free transport in some places for Ukrainians). She told me that she was from Zaporizhya and she asked me what my favourite place/city in Ukraine was. That is hard to say but possibly Kharkov, Kremenchuk, Zaporizhya. This is what I thought more about since leaving Zhytomyr several weeks later and why I visited in particular 2 of those cities. The other one, Kremenchuk, I would visit in 2023 for a longer period and this may be the area where I will buy a house, more on this to come in the report on 2023, and this is where I want to go in particular for my upcoming trip to Poland/Ukraine in 2024.
I think this is almost everything of interest, I may add a bit more the coming days (and do some proofreading/style corrections).
Travel report: 2022-7-24 - updated 2024-2-18, further small updates up to 2024-2-29 esp. with my report on eastern Ukraine.
Last modified: 2024-2-29