Dale & Nicky OE: Szczecin, Greifswald, Wismar, Luneburg

Firstly apologises to those that may have received a blank e-mail after my last post, I was testing out putting a youtube clip into the blog which worked but it seemed may the e-mail notification didn't.

Anyway this raises a good point I have uploaded a bunch of videos to youtube. Have a look here http://www.youtube.com/user/daz230 and may subscribe to my channel?

Anyway on to the goings on.

We left Berlin and headed to Szczecin in Poland, we didn't make it there until late afternoon and had a quick look around and stumbled across a performance by the 'representative artistic ensemble of the Polish Armed Forces' in the Castle grounds, didn't understand a word but fun none the less. Next stop Wolin National Park (far NW corner of Poland). We visited a few places including a reserve which has European Bison and than a nearby seaside resort. The park was mainly forested and there were mountain bike and walking trails. At an info sign we bumped into a Polish guy that has been living abroad for 19 years first in Denmark, then Germany and now Canada (10 years). I must have spoken with him for about an hour about things. It was like a first hand account of the things we have been reading about in the exhibitions. He refused to toe the communist party line in the Russian controlled days and this caused difficulties for him in his career in Poland (he had a Masters in Mechanical Engineering or similar). He used to spend 1/2 of the year working in Germany to make extra money. When he comes back to Poland they sort of try and interrogate him, he is supposed to tell them everything about what he did who he dealt with etc. When he refused to discuss all his personal business they stamped his passport to say he could no longer leave. I think he said after this his life went on a downward spiral and after some years he decided he had to get out. He managed to get on some sort of group trip to Denmark and despite his passport situation got approved and didn't come back. In doing so he had to leave his wife and 2 children. He was not able to reunite with them for some years until his wife and daughter got permission to visit him in Germany (his son was held back to 'ensure her return'). His wife and daughter stayed in Germany and some time further down the track his son was able to get out by bribing the officials, he had to give up the families flat/house to some official. He struggled for a long time but now has a good job in Canada and was on holidays in Poland visiting relatives. At 62 this had been a very hard road and was a great insight. His son had just bought a VW camper in Canada for his wife and small child so he was quite interested and had some thoughts he might do likewise in the future.
Anyhow this second trip into Poland has put us in a much better frame of mind regarding Poland. On our first visit i feared everything including my teeth were going to fall out due to the state of the roads and everything looked in dire need of a good spruce up. In this NW corner the roads where fine (NZ standard and above) and there were many buildings that looked new or new ish and there was a general feeling the things were being maintained. We noted that in terms of yard space and size of homes they were fairly similar to NZ, you certainly couldn't say that for the UK.

On 'fix the van Monday' we had our exhaust welded in Szczecin as just prior to getting to Berlin it had managed to shake itself apart. In the afternoon we completed our visit of Szczecin, we bought a walking route map and did some of that and made a brief stop at the 3rd largest cemetery in Europe. Then we returned to Germany as we are going to visit some towns on the North Coast but unfortunately we hit a snag. Fix the van Monday has extended into Tuesday as our only 6 month old starter motor I had done in the UK gave up leaving us stranded in Greifswald. We found a garage that towed our van but we can't get fixed till the morning. For those thinking gee they must have stopped for repairs a bit well you would be right this is number 6. 1. Fridge not working, 2. Oil Change, 3. Boiler electric board, 4. Front Brakes, 5. Exhaust welding, 6. Starter Motor. This means on average we have stopped once every 10 days to fix something, given my previous complaints about dealing with mechanics this is getting tiresome and unfortunately we need to visit a motorhome specialist ASAP as we have an electrical upgrade we need to do so that will be number 7.

Szczecin

Greifswald

Okay so it gets worse unfortunately that afternoon an hour down the road the new one started to play up. We got to a garage and they rang the first garage for us and long story short we had to go back to Griesfwald the next day. Fortunately an English guy that lives in the area saw our van bonnet up outside the village garage and came to see what was happening and he helped with interpretation and generously offered for us to park up and spend the night at their place. We ate with them and watched American Pie - the Reunion which was quite funny. Then the next morning we went back to the garage and they checked it out and we had to wait until the next day for a replacement part so we finally got away again in Friday about 11.30. Luckily it didn't drag on over the weekend. So 3.5 days later and hundreds of Euros lighter we were off again this time to Luneburg to visit my friend Antje via Wismar (Unesco World Heritage town). We stopped for nearly 2 hours in Wismar and made it right on time around 6pm to Antje.

Wismar

We spent a lovely weekend with Antje and her boyfriend David. The weather was good and we had meals outside. Luneburg was quite pretty and we visited their Saturday market. On Sunday we went out into the heathland for a hike. The heathland is like the moors in England. It was great to catch up with some more friends we haven't seen for so long and really recharged our batteries for more touring. The van has been starting so fingers crossed there.

Luneburg