July 06-18, 2024
13.5 travel days
8.5 in the saddle
700 km
Click pics for large scale
This eastern neighboring country has already been on my itinerary three times:
- 2007 on my return trip from the North Cape, which led back to Germany via Kirkenes-Murmansk-St. Petersburg-Baltic-Masuria-Gdańsk-Stettin (see here);
- 2009 at my Baltic Sea coastal tour, which, initially planned as a complete circle including the interesting passage through the Russian enclave around Kaliningrad (Königsberg), started in Lübeck and then came to an early end in Riga due to the theft of my bicycle;
- 2011 on my eleven-month Silk Road bike trip from Cologne to Singapore, when I cycled through Poland’s south with a visit to Crakow and Oświęcim (Auschwitz).
The first two times I experienced the magic of the landscape of northern Poland with its countless lakes of Masuria, the traditional cities such as Olsztyn, Elbląg, Augustów and Suwałki and of course especially Gdańsk. Not least for this reason, I also designed my route on the way to son Martin in Helsinki for the reunion with some of these places worth seeing.
But there were also new things to explore such as the beautiful city of Bydgoszcz, which immediately caught me with its charm that I dedicated an unplanned day’s stay to her. And the almost untouched river and swamp areas of the Biebrzánski Nature Park as well as gentle hills and dense valleys of the region before the Lithuanian border in the northeast also wanted to be discovered and developed.
However, I was surprised almost at every reunion, especially at the first visit to Warsaw after around 20 years, by the unmistakable economic upswing and the significant improvement of the infrastructure of this country, in some areas, e.g. digitization in everyday life, quite a step ahead of my homeland.
Even more meaningful this time were the human encounters, new acquaintances such as the touring cyclist Nejirus from Klaipeda, who let me stay overnight in his work flat in Kaunas, the surprising meeting with Fiona and Marc, the friendly nomadic couple from Bern, whom I had already met on the Internet, or especially the reunion with Joanna from Warsaw, whom I had met 15 years ago on a ferry trip to Gdańsk.
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