Riding in Poland

[b3tarev3]

Has anyone got any personal experience of riding in Poland?  Looking at riding through Germany into Poland for a look at Auschwitz and the mining area of Silesia  Looked on the internet but can't find anything recent and the ones that i can find don't really sell the place.  Ruts in the roads as long as the M6,  lorries driving at night with no lights on, pissed up drivers, the list  goes on  (sounds just like the UK s'pose) !! Was really looking froward to this but not too sure now.......  :\

[robby boy]

Never done it myself, but theres a Polish guy comes into my work most days, if I remember I will ask him tomorrow for you.

[rustyrider]

Not ridden it but done it 6 times in the car.  I assume you'll be taking the E30, the main Holland, Berlin, Warsaw, Minsk, Moscow road?  It's shit, is the only way to describe it.  You come off German autobahn as you cross the border and are immediately onto a single carriageway with wide hard shoulders.  The trucks sit half on the road, half on the hard shoulder to allow an additional middle lane to be created.  The ruts left by the trucks can be up to 6 inches deep.  The speed limit is 90 kph except when you are within 200m of a zebra crossing or junction when it drops to 70 kph.  The local plod cruise up and down the first 20 miles or so of this road in video equipped, unmarked cars looking out for foreign registered vehicles that aren't aware of this rule.  4 years ago, overtaking a truck at 99 kph just after a junction, but still in the 70 kph section, cost 100 Zloty (about 25 quid), it may well have gone up by now.  If you don't have any Zloty, they will take you to a Bureaux de change in a filling station that probably gives the worst exchange rate on the planet.  However, they don't seem to take any notice of the 44 tonne trucks being driven by a man with a can of Lech in one hand and his mobile in the other.  While I never saw it published anywhere, it appears that headlights are compulsory during the day.  It pissed with rain on 5 of my 6 trips so I had the lights on anyway but on the 6th, I didn't switch them on after stopping for a bite to eat and all the oncoming vehicles were flashing their lights at me until I switched them on.

So, it appears that everything you have been told is true.  The daylight use of headlights law may be another one of these badly worded continental laws that says that headlights must be used during the day but doesn't actually say you have to use them at night as well, so some of them don't bother (a bit like the French law that says a motorcyclist must wear a crash helmet but doesn't specify where so you see bikers with their helmet on their elbow).

[dazza]

Still wanna go ? I hear Syria's quite nice this time of year. :b

[pitternator]

you can see why so many of them come over here !

[fireblake]

I went on a visit to Auschwitz a few years back. Walking through that famous archway and along the railway track, a few hundred meters along and then look back will bring a lump  to your throat thinking of the poor so and so's going off to the shower blocks. Most of the wooden shacks that housed them are gone but the brick built chimneys are still upright and are as far as you can see?


Well worth a visit.


Mickey

[JZS 600]

I went on a visit to Dachau once when I was at the Oktoberfest. Tell you what it shit me up a bit.

Anyway, a mate of mine went to Poland about 15 years ago, said it was great, the food was dirt cheap but watch out for the broken down and abandoned vehicles in the middle of the motorway, apparently they just leave them there when they conk out.

[caretaker]

when youre riding along and someone cuts you up, shout "kurva". its the law apparently.

[UG]

or kurwa jego mac
means son of a bitch

[b3tarev3]

  Getting better innit! :'(  Good job i'm going for the culture and not the roads! @ fireblake - i think that's the way it's gonna hit me too. @ rustyrider -we are going via Dortmund, leipzig (Colditz - Steve Mc Queen n all that) through Dresden and into Poland and then the A4 to Birkenau.


Edit : Just watched the Olympic opening ceremony and the Poles were there so the roads can't be that bad?

[Farjo]

I rode from Lithuania to Prague back in Sept '06. My memory is poor but luckily I kept a journal in which I wrote the roads were "better quality" than in Lithuania, but apparently that's compared to "a combination of stones, gravel, sand and mud" :lol "The scenery was very green. There are many roadside shrines to Mary, all well maintained. Farming is done by old tractor with a bit of manual labour and the odd horse".

Getting into Poland there was a long queue at border control, but a guard walked over to me, checked my passport and waved me past

The speed limits sign that you get just inside each country was "so complicated I couldn't even suss out the columns, let alone read or remember the numbers." I recall that they don't have speed limit signs with numbers but with pictures - presumably each picture corresponds with a speed. A few days into the trip I got pulled for doing 89 kph in a 50 (I had no idea what the limit was). They were going to fine me 300z but I only had 4 so they let me off. "I said I would slow down and was on my way." I recall there were many mobile speed cameras.

Try the pancakes with cream cheese and ice cream - a national dish.

It was a cheap country back then - a hotel room for £25, haircut under £2 (I haven't much hair but still).

There's nothing mentioning bad roads or drivers, but I got lost a lot so perhaps road signs are not so good?

A lot will have changed - they're in the Euro for one thing. Good luck on the trip and let us know how it went :thumbup

[rustyrider]

No borders any more, just overgrown border posts, as Poland is now in the EU.  Although on one return journey I did get stopped by a German Customs (Zol) van after I entered Germany from Poland.  They wanted to know how much alcohol, wine, beer, cigarettes and petrol in cans I was carrying.  When I told them none, I got the impression that they couldn't understand why I'd been and decided to search my car.  They'll probably leave bikers alone though as you can't carry much of the above on a bike.

The A4 is one of the better Polish roads, almost motorway standard but the advice regarding dead cars just abandoned and drunk drivers with no lights, still applies

[UG]

Dont run out of petrol on the German autobahns, it's an offence.
Not all autobahns are unrestricted and the cameras are painted dark green.
There are lot of cameras on the main route through Dortmund so watch out there.
I went over there this year in June and they are still there.