11 August ’04, Wednesday. We had cereal and coffee for breakfast this morning and then off to Poland’s highway’s (and I use the word “Highway’s” loosely…). We have been doing pretty good lately on finding our way out of town compared to a month or two ago. Our trip is still heading North. After examining the map prior to leaving we decided to make our first stop about noon and it would be in Malbork, Poland. Malbork is famous for it’s Teutonic Castle and the 13th Century St. John The Baptist’s Church. I saw a picture of the castle awhile back and it looked quite exciting. The roads today were in most part really good. I’m glad they were so good because I was put to the test with on-coming passing and passing from my side as well. Just about all the roads are two lane, one for each direction and have a shoulder of about 6’ on each side. I’m guessing the rules are, “if the center line and the line at the shoulder are solid then there is to be no passing. Now if the lines are interrupted, the car or truck being passed must or should move onto the shoulder of the road while the car passes”. All this sounds good until you have a car passing you and there is a car passing at the same time on the opposite on-coming lane as well. Then you can toss in the person or people that are biking or have stopped on the shoulder in their car (sometimes so little they are impossible to see) the same instant that both on-coming and going lanes are being used passing. Believe it or not, it seems to work pretty well. The first few times you’ve got 4 cars or cars and trucks side by side on a two lane road is a “white knuckle” trip. After awhile you do get a little more relaxed about it and you’ve just got to keep your wits about it. Well anyway, we did make it to Malbork and we were very impressed with the castle and St. John’s Church. The castle is HUGE and is the largest brick castle in the world and was built by the Teutonic Knights in the 14th Century to protect the timber industry. I was able to take some wonderful pictures of the castle and the church before leaving. On one of the pictures, you can even see were a cannon ball hit the tower during one of the battles.
We walked the grounds and buildings for at least 3 hours and then had lunch prior to heading off to our final stop for the day…..Elblag.
We walked the grounds and buildings for at least 3 hours and then had lunch prior to heading off to our final stop for the day…..Elblag.