This is all a bit post dated! We have not connected to the internet for a while and have been travelling a lot so there is plenty to catch up on…

The Nazi concentration camp complex near Krakow is an excellent reminder of peoples’ weakness. The two of the three main camps that are complete and accessible as a museum cover an area which took us an entire afternoon to meerly brush over. The monsterous size of it really hits home that one person did not create the thing or even dictate its construction, it must have taken an army just to dream it up. We spent an afternoon walking up and down lines of barbed wire taking in brutal examples of practical solutions and efficiency. The area is dead flat and the needle sharp wind has a lot of run up before it thumps you, this made it cold in the sunshine of October with a fleece on, let alone in January when its snowing and you’re naked.

We decided not to try that particular experience. Having organised an exciting place to stay in Berlin with our favourite social website we carried on West. The EU’s contribution to Poland (apart from providing work) is the superb roadside lorry parking facilities. The toilet was so nice and the mirror so effective that I promptly shaved the majority of my ginger beard off with a blunt razor. The nice attendant man even filled up three gallon water containers for me whilst I was doing it!

The roads have suddenly got a lot better and the scale on our map has increased; this means we suddenly seem to be travelling much faster! Krakow was amazing despite the drab background. We walked pretty much the entire city in search of a launderette before spotting one advertised: “The only Launderette in Krakow” it said. We reckon its the only one East of Krakow too as our washing was beginning to walk by itself! Make sure you visit this launderette if you go to Krakow with dirty washing (not that you’ll have a lot of choice), it serves coffee and tea and there is free internet and comfy sofas in a bright and inviting environment!

So, after our 2 weeks of travelling by train it was great to be back in the van and have some freedom back. As L’viv is fairly close to the border with Poland (our next destination) we envisaged a couple of hours driving then maybe an hour or so going through the usual formalities to leave Ukraine and enter Poland. We had no such luck.

After enjoying our 2 hours of freedom driving west at 1pm we hit a queue full of Polish and Ukrainian vehicles, which we guessed to be the border crossing. We were instantly offered the chance (using a combination of Ukrainian, charades and pictionary) to queue-jump: only 30 dollars/euros/hryvnia (we had several offers from several different dodgy-looking guys). Being cheap and also from Britain – where queue-jumping is considered a social evil – we naturally refused their persistent offers. We were told therefore we’d have to queue for maybe 10 hours (until 11pm) to get to the border – we assumed they were probably exaggerating but still, this we could deal with.

After witnessing a frustrating number of other people paying to push in further up the queue and having lunch and dinner in the van it was dark and we started taking turns in getting some sleep on the bed in the back of the van. After 3 hour shifts through the night we finally made it to the Ukrainian exit border at 6am after a wait of 17 hours. (The queue from when we joined it to the front was only about 140 cars and maybe 500m long, so our average speed was an impressive 29 metres an hour!) Here we had the van thoroughly searched for the first time on the trip and then queued a further 7 hours waiting to get to the Polish frontier 200 metres away.

The shining, golden gates of the EU were so close! When we got to the Polish border we joined the queue for EU citizens (which of course the cheating, queue-jumping Ukrainians couldn’t get into. ha) and were through in minutes after a quick check and showing some photos of our trip to the Polish customs guy! I love the EU.

Total time to cross the border: 26 hours. Total distance covered: 1,500 metres.