Eastern Europe Trip

As is starting to become habit-forming, we woke this morning to misty skies and broke camp whilst the sun tried its best to break through… as it started to appear we left the campsite and rode along a narrow lane (it might have been a cycle-path but we didn’t get stopped!) to rejoin the main road towards Wurzberg. The roads were just perfect, beautifully smooth tarmac, hardly any traffic and through what I now consider to be typically Germanic scenery – rolling hills lined with deep-green trees and through small sleepy villages…






From Wurzberg we took the autoroute past Schweinfurt, Bamberg and Bayreuth in order to make some progress, and then back onto scenic roads as we wound our way to the Czech border at Schirnding. We stopped at the guardhouse, where a very bored looking German border guard stared at me until I handed over our passports (not sure whether he was simply wondering why I had stopped!). He then proceeded to study the back page of my passport with great interest… and that’s the page with my next of kin details on, not the one with my photo! When he had handed them back, we rode the 10 feet to the next booth and repeated the exercise with a slightly more amused Czech border guard (think he must have found his German counterpart’s actions as odd as I did!). He took a lot less time and waved us on and into the Czech republic…

Unfortunately the signs proclaiming this fact, that would have made a great picture, were at the side of the dual carriageway and not somewhere where we could stop, so my David Bailey moment had to wait a few more hundred metres until we stopped at the first service area… for a much needed drink as the sun was now out and the temperature was rising rapidly…






It’s odd how simply crossing a land border can change so much, but the crossing from Germany to the Czech Republic seemed to mark more than a simple man-made line between two nations. First, there was the dramatic change in the weather. Sure, it had been getting gradually more sunny over the last hour as we approached the border, but no sooner had we crossed it than it became baking hot! Then there was the general feel of the country – the different languages on the roadsigns, the increasing number of industrial factories on the horizons belching out clouds of smoke into the light blue sky, the increasingly spartan landscape as the trees receded back into small clumps revealing endless plains of crops… But oddest of all were the women stood in the middle of the road at the intersections. At first, I thought they must have broken down and were waving to flag down helpful passing motorists for assistance. That would certainly explain how come there were in the middle of nowhere dressed in all their finery… then I noticed the absence of broken-down cars… and then that their finery wasn’t the sort they’d wear to church on Sunday, more like to the disco on Saturday night when out with their mates on the pull… that’s when it clicked. Oh, better stop staring and focus on the road ahead ;-)

We carried on riding for a while longer (and the ‘ladies of the day-time’ became less frequent as we got further from the border) until we passed through Karlovy Vary and saw a campsite sign pointing down towards the river. We followed a little winding road for miles until we arrived at the site – Na Spici at Radasov – which was just beautiful. Whilst Tracy sat on her bike baking in the sun, I wandered into the campsite reception to try and book us a pitch. My Czech is somewhat worse than my Outer Mongolian, so it was with some significant relief that I discovered the proprietor spoke excellent English. Within minutes I’d checked us in, bought a map of Czech campsites, discovered where the showers, toilets, restaurant and other facilities were and then wandered back with a smug expression on my face to explain it all to Tracy. She guessed instantly that he must have spoken English… seems she knows about my linguistic skills too…

After a quick shower we turned the bikes into a drying-line and headed off in search of a cold beer (or two)…






Suitably refreshed we headed back to the tent for a little while to read and rest our aching bones before wandering back to the restaurant for dinner. The food was excellent with starters of cold meats – pork and salami – followed by a hearty main course of rich meats. We also attempted to learn some Czech, trying to get the waiter to explain how to pronounce “thank-you”… it’s something like dverky-wee vam…