#EURO 2012 on bicycle 6

English version:

Across Poland

I left Bad Freienwalde with ”good legs” after a needed day of rest. The owner of the pension recommended me to bike along the River Oder on my way to the German-Polish border. It was an incredible beautiful journey on newly paved bike lane with a view to a country on the other side that mostly imagined me of big overgrown jungle.
Having to ride across Poland made me excited, and then my legs got extra power from above.

Cyclists in Poland was not common, and certainly not behind the city limits, so I was fully concentrated when a truck passed me with an arm's distance and 100 km/h. But I got used to it and arrived Lubniewice slightly ligh-headed.

In Lubniewice I lived with a Polish family who had invited me via Couchsurfing.org. They told an interesting life story: The man, Hassan, had settled in Poland from Syria, as his father came here to study in the 60s. Hassan and his Polish wife had adopted three Polish brothers, born of an alcoholic mother who could not take care of them. They could not adopt the boys before it already was too late so that one of them fx had learned to steal from stores.

Now it anyway seemed that Hassan and his wife had got track of their three beautiful, happy boys, but it had also demanded blood, sweat and tears, Hassan told me. I could not stop smiling when I saw the children now: they played and laughed together in the garden - where could they have ended up? Hassan's ability to master more of the world's spices was reflected in many beautiful Syrian/Polish dishes during my stay; they tasted so complex that I now understood what the heart is required to put together such diverse people into such a nice and beautiful family.

130 hard kilometers to Poznan – I reached the first European championship host city! Here I lived with a young girl who was a friend of the family in Lubniewice. New bike lanes were brought up near the stadium, but with the non-functioning traffic lights, messy buildings and kilometers of barricaded roads it seemed that this Polish university city were neither ready nor very much worried about being host city of Euro matches a week later. The Polish flag was frequently waved throughout the city; poles honked merrily at the sight of the Polish and Danish flag on my bike, and jelled out different chants. There will undoubtedly be a big party in Poznan!

With a head wind and heavy rain, it was 100 wet ond cold kilometers to the city of Konin. Luckily I never felt alone along the main road where prostitutes acted as cheerleaders for a single-cyclist as me. Their perfumes smelled much better than car exhaust, but unfortunetely I had no space in my trailer ...

Konin was more quiet than the central square of Them (my tiny home town) on a Sunday evening, which, for those of you who are wondering, very very quiet – but Konin have more than 80000 inhabitants... Everything was gray too and my thoughts on the mass executions during the second World War in the woods north of the city not exactly made a cozier atmosphere.

The following morning the sun shone again and I took a jolt of 175 km. to Sulejów. I was starving as I arrived at a local familys house, and so they invited me for dinner. Unfortunately, I was served the world's largest black pudding sausage, not my favorite food, and a Polish beer to rinse my esophagus. For courtesy sake I exclaimed "mmmh" and asked if it was homemade, which they replied with: "yes yes, it IS fresh, we almost bought it." And then I asked for some ketchup - it was worse than eating sheep heads in Indonesia. The day after they shouted ”breakfast ready”, and I had no other choice...

"Across Poland" was endless hospitality and thousands of breathless hours - In the horizon I could catch a glimpse of Ukraine, L'viv and the Danish fan camp.

T-spotter