Krakow is the second largest and one of the oldiest cities in Poland. From 1038 to 1569 it was also the capital. Nowadays it is seen by many as the cultural capital of Poland.

If you are an aviation fan, there is a must see, which is the Polish Aviation museum. This museum has some unique aircrafts in the world like the P11. All the others were destroyed by the Germans during the second World War. There is also a unique Herman Gohring collection. Many russian airplanes like mig, tupolev etc can be seen here. The unfortunate thing I believe is that most of the planes are put outside and not well maintained.

After this impressing visit to the air museum, there was another museum we wanted to see as were getting deeper and deeper in the second World War history. It was the former factory of Oskar Schindler. He was an ethnic German industrialist, German spy, and member of the Nazi party who is credited with saving the lives of over 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories.

The museum gives you a very good image of Krakow during the second World War. There is a small section about Herr Schindler as well but in my opinion it is more about Krakow itself. Nevertheless it was interesting stop to make.

When we came out of the museum, we saw all of a sudden some race cars flying low by. What a nice coincidence, it was the Gumball 3000 guys who were in town 🙂

We visited some more places like the rynek again, but also the very big and probably most touristic Wawel castle.

Larisa got hungry so we went for some zapikankas 🙂

We knew about some free jazz performance in the evening, so we checked it out. Nice to have some music again in the evening. It was a young jazz quartet, they played very well! The night before we had been to a chopin piano recital, which costed 55 zlotis. I am a great fan of Chopin piano music, but strangely I liked the jazz performance better.

Time for our last night in the mosquito hostel and say goodbye to Krakow. We are riding to Ukraine tomorrow. Exciting to see how fast we can get over the border!

Today was a rather busy day. We had slept well in the centrum hostel, so there was lots of energy to do things 🙂 As an experienced visitor of Wroclaw, I showed the old town to Larisa. We slept in the centrum hostel in the Świętego Mikołaja which is a very good location to start from. We started the tour at the Saint Elizabeth church. Unfortunately the tower was closed. Actually it is quite simple to see the important things here, just follow the dwarfs. Yes that’s right, if you look well, you will see them at many locations around the stare miasto.

The rynek and the ratusz are the next place to see. I think the rynek is together with the one in Krakow one of the biggest in Europe.

After going to the market to buy some food, we wanted to see where the city was founded almost 1000 years ago. This should have been on the Ostrow Tumski, aka cathedral island, which is a small island on the river Oder.

We went back to the stare miasto to look for more dwarfs and we found them…One of them was sitting behind bars. This was the old prison of Wroclaw.
It is interesting to know that later on, in Kiev in the national war museum, we saw a guillotine which has been used in this museum.

OK, by now it was getting time to checkout from the hostel and ride to the KL in Auschwitz.

After a nice ride we arrived in the afternoon at camp 1. There are many tourists here. We secured the bike and checked in for a guided tour. This tour takes about 3.5 hours but is a must do if you are interested in this history. We had a very good polish guide. He told us all the facts but made the impact very clear also, and most importantly made you contemplate about it.

After camp 1, which is the smaller camp, we went to camp 2 Birkenau, which is a really large camp. You can compare it to a small town. Most of the barracks here are gone. Looking from the watchtower you get a very good overview of its size. For me it was one of the most appealing afternoons so far.

It was getting late, I think we were the last visitors of the camp that day. We didn’t have a sleeping place for the night yet. The plan was normally go to Zakopane from here. But the weather was too bad for the mountains. We knew Krakow is an interesting place to see so the decision was easily made. We have booked a hostel in the center and off we went again. One small detail here, we didn’t take the highway but the local smaller road of about 60km to Krakow. This was a bit more difficult than expected. It was a really small road, with quite some lorries on it, it went up and down with a lot of bends having small stones. The darkness was falling and it was still a bit rainy. Coming from the E40 highway, I had to work a bit here, but we arrived all well in Krakow!

When you stroll around the rynek in the stare miasto and the streets around, you will hear the music play. It goes from classical to jazz and rock. The first night in Krakow, after our Auschwitz visit, we had dinner in a restaurant called Koko. The kitchen was polish and the prices very economic.

When we came out and walked along, all of a sudden I was surprised by some nice piano tunes. As a player myself I have a good ear for piano music and the player. It appeared to come from a restaurant so we entered to have a look. We sat at the bar. The restaurant was already closing, it was after 10pm but we stayed until the last guests. The artist was Vitaly, and he was from Kiev. He was a sax and piano player and had a very big repertoire. We really enjoyed listening to him and were invited by him to come back the next evening.

The day ended very nice in this way and we were pretty tired by now. I was already forward what tomorrow would bring. Cheers everybody…

Our first stop was made in Bad Hersfeld. When you see Bad in a German town name, it mostly means there is a Kurort or wellness center. But no time for us to visit it. Just stopping for the night and trying the local food and beers.

The next morning it was pretty cold, at around 15 degrees, we were already wondering how we would get through Tajikistan well. There are mountain passes over 4000m there. It will be in summer. We wore our thermal sports underware, a thin fleece, and bmw rally 3 suite with the windproof layer. The only option I could imagine was getting real thick thermal underware. I had this still from the army, but I left it home because it was quite heavy and voluminous. Let’s see if I made a mistake here.

We noticed another problem while we were riding through Germany, the connection between the gpsmap 62st and the bike’s battery got lost now and then. Inspecting the cable I saw some rust. I decided to stop over at Touratech OST in Dresden to get a new cable. Unfortunately they didn’t have it, nor was it available on our way in Poland. They would ship it to Donetsk. Let’s see if we get the cable. I did a quick fix but putting some toile isolant around the cable and cleaning it a bit. It seemed to work a lot better now. When it was raining hard I took out the cable and rode on the gps battery.

In the meantime we reached the Polish border, we are still in the Schengen zone, so no problem to cross this border. In the evening we arrived in Wroclaw and checked in at an aparment in the center. We went for some local food on the rynek and to bed afterwards.

This is the route we are planning to follow through Europe until Donetsk.

As you can see, we mainly follow the E40 highway. The plan is to ride to Donetsk and make it there for the 31st of May as it is my birthday 🙂

But on the road there are some places we would like to visit. Keep tuned and follow us through Europe!

The moment to leave home and ride eastwards is almost there.

I am now in the process of gathering all necessary items for the trip.

The VISA process, which is quite some work as well is almost finished.
Today I got my Mongolian VISUM. The consul was a friendly guy and all went smooth.

I am now the proud owner of the following VISA’s: Russia, Kazachstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Mongolia.
Larisa is also proud, she does not need any VISA for this trip!

Today feels a bit strange. It is my last day in the Sports Kine Center of the UZ Gent Hospital.

The trip we are undertaking will be strenuous at times. We are travelling on a heavy bike through all sorts of circumstances. The desert in Uzbekistan will be soaking hot. The high mountains in Tajikistan will be freezing cold.

We will not only drive all the time of course. Places will be visited, and if possible some mountain hiking will be done.

Unfortunately I have to deal with two sports injuries at the time. An old problem which is my shoulder instability, is playing up again. A more recent injury is jeopardizing my physical preparation: runners knee.

BUT, I have been training well thanks to Jan at the sportkine. To be honest, my shoulder has improved a lot with the exercises. The knee is a bit tougher, let’s see how it goes!

We are now at T-19 days. There is still a lot of things to do.

Check the preparations section for more details.