Continued.....
Here's a few pics from Thursday and the diary continued!
This is the Menin Gate in Ypres - a memorial built by the British Army to all those who served on the Ypres Salient and were lost in action, but who could not be found - truly humbling.....
Menin Gate
This is Haus Dumicketal in Drolshagen - 60km east of Cologne - biker friendly hotel, secure garage, fantastic food, and race themed bedrooms - recommended! Its also located in a beautiful forest location and there are some great roads around the area
Bright and early Thursday morning outside Haus Dumicketal - ready to set off towards Vohenstrauss near the Czech Border.... from left to right RodH, Baggers, Royum and 998gsb
Ducati Franfurt - Sophia on the ramp....
Baggers turn! - the exhausts were turning blue and cooking the carbon end cans, and the rear cylinder was turning biscuit coloured - CO% was discovered to be 2% and was adjusted to 4% - seemed to transform the bike!
Thursday:
So after the unplanned stop at Ducati Frankfurt and fun and games with sat nav - we decided to switch back to the Autobahn and just get over to Vohentrauss - we left Frankfurt around 3.00pm and still had 500odd kms to go to get over to the Hotel Stop.
We arrived at Vohenstraus around 8/8.30 tired and damp, although the last 30km of roads did make up for the miserable weather and delays we had suffered. Vohenstraus is around 10km from the Czech border to the NE of Nuremburg. The Hotel was basic but clean and welcoming and the food was good!
We awoke in the morning to fine rain and drizzle. Now there had been some rumours circulating that Royum had brought a johnny with him and that it was XXL one. We put this down to the flamboyant scotsman simply bragging.....but the rumours turned out to be true....
We noted with some amusement, that Royum must be a true scotsman as he used this johnny several times........eee, the Dirty Dirty B.....d!!!
Getting ready to leave Vohenstrauss.
We left in the rain, and it pretty much rained all day - all the way across Czech.
The border was unmanned but had clearly been a fairly scary place in the past. It now just seemed to be a huge truck stop complex.
The road across to Prague and Brno was mostly better than we had expected although the standard of driving in Czech bordered on the suicidal. Czech cars appear to be specially constructed with movement sensitive indicators which come on, when the steering wheel is turned by more than 5 degrees in either direction......they appear to have absolutely no regard for what may be steaming up behind them when they pull out, nor any regard for who or what they cut up when pulling back in, and mirrors appear to have been banned.
It rained incessantly through Czech and at times there was around an inch of standing water on the carriageway. We stopped at several service stations to shelter from the rain, and we were pleasantly surprised by them - far superior to anything we have here in terms of motorway services.
By late afternoon, the rain had ceased and the sun had come out, and it was starting to get quite warm - we passed signs for the Autodromo Brno Grand Prix track, so we were close to Brno.
It probably sounds a strange thing to say, but we all really felt like we were in a completely foreign country as the language is so so different to western Europe both oral and written. In most western block countries, you stand half a chance of guessing what a sign might say. Due to the way the language is spelt and written in Czech - you have no chance whatsoever.
We battled with traffic jams, cobbled streets, tram lines and trams with limited stopping abilities and finally made it to the hotel and checked in.
Grand Hotel, Brno
This hotel is allegedly the best hotel in the city......personally i thought it was ok but dated and rather overpriced for what it was - 140 Euro per night, with additional charges of 33Euro for the garage.
We went out for a meal in the city that night and the hotel recommended a small restaurant in a basement in the centre of town. It was an italian - and the food was pretty good and astonishingly cheap - 3 course meal for 4 with beers - £30.
After a good meal, we retired back to the hotel for coffee and bed. The plan in the morning was to go sight seeing around the city centre, but I wasn't overly impressed by what id seen so far....
The hotel was clean but felt a bit "1970s". Baggers bless him was rather shocked to note two middle aged hookers frequenting the hotel bar everynight, sat at the bar, openly reading from cover to cover porno mags (or "bash mags" as he called them!) - I really think he was genuinely a bit shocked by this!!.
Saturday:
I was woken this morning by some muppet at 5.30am in the morning hammering the hell out a large metal gate at the tram depot just across the square from the hotel. The trams started at 6.00am so there was no chance of getting back to sleep!
Bored, I picked up the Tom Tom and started looking at the map of where we were......I realised that we were very close to the polish border - only about 160 miles......Day Trip Anyone ??
9.30am - all breakfasted and suited and booted and off we set on a day trip to Polzski........ Oscweiz to be precise. Perhaps not the most pleasant of destinations, but its not the sort of place you would fly to as a destination and it seemed daft not to go as we were so close........
Oscweiz for those that dont know, was a small Polish village which was taken over by the Nazi regime during world war II. The inhabitants were all evicted and Auschwitz was established, followed shortly after by Auschitz Berkenau camp II.
The journey over was lovely, with good roads, beautiful sunshine and pleasant scenery - including the screen wash girls at the service station we stopped at!!
The main motorway from Czech in to Poland is brand new funded by EU Money and was really good - just a shame thed didn't finish the slip roads!. Coming off the shell grip motorway, the slip road just stopped - turning from Shellgrip in to a rutted, broken concrete track --- eeeeeeek!
We were also struck once we left the motorway by just how many filling stations there were! In some villages every other building was a petrol station!!
Then we arrived at Auschwitz - I dont intend to even attempt to describe the place - but I will say that it was a deeply deeply moving experience and very eerie. There is woodland around the camp, and the trees were full of little song birds.....inside the camp there were no birds and no bird song - it was just completely silent. It was plane Weird.
The poor victims had to look at this sign every day - Arbeit Macht Frei - Work is liberating.....
This is Berkenau....the scale of this place is truly staggering.
An infamous view
Trying to take in what we were seeing
This was a truly emotional day (for me any way) and I think the others felt the same. It was a nice day, but it wasn't if you know what I mean. We were all very glad that we had decided to make the effort to come and see it.....I think we were all a bit numbed by it.
We set off back to Czech and Brno
Ducatisti stop at the Polish Border with Czech Republic.....
To be continued.....