August 29, 2015
Klaniny, Poland: Change of mind
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I RANG my friend Jan last night. We met when Steph and I were riding across northern America a few years back. We were the only people on a campground at a place called Binford, he going east and we west. He wrote that same day a year later to say "hi" and we've been in touch ever since.
Jan lives in Warsaw. He urged me not to ride the last 200km into the capital because, as he put it, it'd be two days of nothing. Ride to Torun, he said, and take a train from there. I agreed and said I'd see him in three days.
This morning, over coffee with my German neighbour, I looked at my map. If I knocked off a long day, I could get to Torun tonight and have a day off to eat gingerbread. Torun may be known for many things but it is, apparently, the birthplace of gingerbread. Or, if not that, it's good at making it and has been for centuries.
I don't even know I like gingerbread, or even quite what it is. But that's the point of bike touring, isn't it? To travel. To try new things. And to eat.
It didn't take long to change my mind. It wasn't the distance, because I did all of that and maybe more instead. It was the traffic. The single road to Torun so harmless on the map turned out uncomfortably narrow and busy. Polish drivers have been immaculate throughout this ride and never once have I been hooted or treated peremptorily. But a buzz-saw factory wasn't what I wanted. Now and then, yes; all day, no.
I turned in the road and went to plan B, which was a campground in a village of unsurfaced roads that lay off at an angle. It meant riding 10km back into Malbork, which was a pain, and then back to Tczew and the long metal bridge that I crossed yesterday.
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But I did spot the Russian cemetery beside the entrance to Malbork. For years, the Russians fought the second world war alone. They drove the Germans from the outskirts of Moscow to the centre of Berlin. They advanced at twice the speed of the West. Twenty million Russians died, of whom nearly nine million were sailors, soldiers and airmen.
Some, too many, lay in the cemetery to my right. They had died in just 1945, sometimes even 1946, a year after the fighting ended. There were no gravestones, just discreet plaques each side of the entrance, one disrespectfully half-hidden by garden refuse and rubbish bags.
Next door was a Commonwealth cemetery.
I enjoyed riding back over the long metal bridge closed to all but cyclists and walkers. But getting out of rather than into Tzew was a challenge that cost an hour. The problem was that neither my map nor my GPS recognised any way but the obvious road south. And that was a torrent of traffic.
I wriggled around town to find another way, but another way there was not. Well, you've had that experience yourself, so I won't dwell on it. After several false attempts, I set sail and gritted my teeth. I lived. And before long there was a bike path, so my wounds didn't bleed excessively.
I bumbled along, on a rolling and demanding road and then on ways more charming. And one by one the roads became more rural, until in the end I was on a trail of thick dust compressed by tyre tracks. I came slowly, cautiously and dustily into Klaniny, a novel enough sight that children ran out to stare and then to smile.
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I rode on to a campground deep in the woods on the other side. And then I spotted Hans in his Jeep, waiting for me. He said he would be after I phoned to ask where he was. He and his wife live in a corner of paradise in a house overlooking the campground and the lakes and forest beyond it. We had cold drinks together on the terrace.
"I'd been retired for two years," he told me, "and I didn't have any thoughts of doing anything at all. And then a family friend said 'I have a job for you, a special job.'"
At that point he was in his mid-60s and living contentedly in Alkmaar, the city north of Amsterdam where tourists flock to weekly cheese market in which traders carry loaded trays on their head.
"He said this job was on a campground, but not in Holland. He knew we had an eye for campgrounds, because we'd been to a lot in Holland and France and even in America. He said he'd restored a campground after it'd been abandoned for two years. It'd been run by a couple who'd fallen out and divorced. Now he wanted us to run it, to be paid for it.
"Well, we weren't sure, and when I asked where this campground was, he said Poland.
"Poland?
"We had no intention of going to Poland, let alone live there. But we went for a weekend and we fell in love with the country and with the scenery and the quiet remoteness of the camp site. So we said yes, and we've been for three years."
It's a shame, he said, that people in the West don't yet think of coming to Poland.
"Polish people haven't got a good reputation there, because people say they're taking their jobs and that they drink too much, which is a problem. But in fact Polish people are really friendly and they'll do anything to help and, if you don't understand, they'll find someone who speaks English or German.
"But... the language is a problem. I try to learn it but it's just so difficult."
Today's ride: 137 km (85 miles)
Total: 5,167 km (3,209 miles)
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