The weather forecast was right, the morning we left Krakow the rain was freezing and slush was thick in the street. Even before we left the hostel there were signs that this was going to be once again a trying section of the trip. I had, as usual tried to lighten the load a bit before another push, books, receipts and such get cleared out of my bags. This time I had decided that the pepper spray days were over, so not even thinking I left it in the middle of the table, innocently thinking that everyone would know it was pepper spray even though it was in Cyrillic. We aren't really sure what happened, but the theory is that someone looked at the spray can said "I wonder if this is perfume?" and sprayed it in the air, because a few minutes later we were all coughing and choking trying to escape the hostel as quickly as possible, an alternative theory is that someone was trying to gas the hostel because they found the staff there as rude as we did.
Our love affair with Poland started to fall apart as fast as the freezing rain from the sky, it wasn't that we didn't like it, it was just making us nauseous. As soon as the temperature dropped everyone turned on their heat, which apparently is entirely coal powered, every chimney was spewing black coal smoke and it was choking us as we road (luckily the thick cloud cover kept the smoke in) after about 3 hours of riding we were positively sick. We quit after just 60km, which really wasn't to disappointing considering the weather, we had a nice leisurely evening trying to decipher Polish news programs (my favorite game, you never can quite tell what is going on, just get glimpses of Obama smiling and Putin looking perplexed). We woke up the next day and packed up slowly, paying more attention to the guesthouse's dog than our packing, eventually we hopped on the bikes only to realize that when the bike mechanic in Krakow said that Levi was going to need a new bottom bracket for his bike, he wasn't talking about the distant uncertain future, he was talking about before we left the city.
Luckily for us when Kona designed it's touring bike, they thought ahead and designed it with the most advanced and cutting edge bottom bracket, only made in America, and it was a Saturday. We went to the local bike shop in town, the owner was a great guy, a cyclist himself, but he couldn't really do anything for us. He called all the bike shops in a 500 mile radius, and they all said we can do nothing until Monday and then we can only order the part. It was another one of those disheartening moments, we went to the coffee shop to discuss our plans. We no longer live our own time on this trip, it is scheduled, we are due to meet my boss Adrian Cyr on the 5th of December to bicycle the last 1100 kilometers to Porto, in St. Jean Port de Pied, and on the 25th we have to be in Hamburg to see my friend Arne while he is on vacation. A three day delay sitting in a small Polish town is not what the bike trip needs right now, so we made the hard decision to take the train to Prague (200 miles of skipping) and visit my friend Robert for a few days and get the bike fixed then, therefore getting to see Prague at the same time as killing time.
We walked back to the bike shop a little pissed at how things were going (luckily I encountered a large friendly basset hound on the way to cheer me up), but as soon as we entered the bike shop we got some good news, the guy thought he could fix it, it wouldn't be perfect, but it might last til Prague. "It might last 1000 kilometers or 2" was how he put it.
All of a sudden we were back out on the road and flying, the rain was less, the coal smoke dissipated and we were new men, it was as if we were given a second chance. We flew along the much improved Polish roads, pedalling to our hearts content until we hit Katowice, Poland. Katowice is an industrial center of Poland, or at least was, it kind of reminded me of old textile towns like Lowell in New England, a lot of brick buildings that seem to have little going on in them. Our arrival also coincided with the five o clock everyone get home and turn their coal furnaces on, so our impression of Katowice was not particularly charming. We started our evening search for a hotel, which has become one of the most interesting parts of our day now, for some reason even the most remote roadside hotels and bed and breakfasts seem to be full almost every night, I am beginning to think that we might not look like the most desirable guests given our muddy and scruffy appearance. As soon as we started looking however, our search was cut short by discovering that it was neither "1000 kilometers or 2" but instead 70.67, Levi's bottom bracket was done. It was disheartening, particularly considering we now had to fly back into the center of Katowice in the dark and try and find the train station to go overnight to Prague. We did successfully navigate the city to the train station, using a combination of Russian and English to get directions. All of a sudden we were hopping on a train putting our bikes in the bicycle car (!!!!) and heading to Prague, we would be there by morning (again a small loss of 300km on the odometer).
It is extremely weird to arrive in a city ahead of schedule, at least for us, particularly considering that we took the train and didn't "earn it" but I got over it as soon as we started walking around Prague and got one of those great street sausages. We met up with Robert Klima, a friend of mine that I worked with at Adrian's Restaurant with. We stayed for 3 days at his house with his wonderful family. For us it was a very strange sensation to be around young kids, we have become somewhat uncivilized and primal in our 7 months on the road, and just to be in someones house and in someones company I think had a good effect on us. Hopefully by the time Adrian joins us in France we will be semi normal people, or perhaps we will bring him down with us, "ever blown a snot rocket in a busy city street Adrian?"
One of the best new developments about getting to Prague was that from here on out we should be able to ride almost entirely on bike trails, from Prague to Hamburg there is a bike trail along the Elbe river, and it is supposed to be mostly downhill. A downhill, car and truck free ride to Hamburg, why didn't we just ride around Europe twice instead of crossing Russia?
We left Prague with Levi's bike fixed, our mentality somewhat more civilized and our stomachs ready to enter roadside sausage country, we rode down to the river in the center of Prague and just like that were on our way direct towards Germany, it was great, a nice wide bike path along the side of the river watching the cars climb into the mountains on either side and watching our path stay flat as plywood, everything seemed perfect as we headed into Germany, hell we might even make it in one day...
But then I forgot what my history of travelling in Europe is like
ellski
RSS Feed