Hi.

20^th April

Now in Czechoslovakia we just about drove straight through as it was mostly flat and rural with all fields looking the same and all the small villages looking very run down.

We stayed one night in a very nice lay bye opposite a very nice lake, we both felt very safe, we then carried on into Poland to Auschwitz, we arrived just outside the camp and parked up for the night alongside some iffy flats and this didn't feel very safe so I tied up the doors so they could not be opened from the outside.

22^nd April.

We visited Auschwitz camp along with bus loads of other visitors, it was a very moving experience to walk round the camp and see all the exhibits and information, but the strange thing I felt was, even though it all happened there I felt very removed from it all as though you were visiting a museum and seeing the exhibits but it was as if that was what they were exhibits, not the remains of a terrible part of human history.

We stayed a further night but this time in t the official car park, we asked the car park guy how much and he said 7 Euros for 24 hrs, so we paid the guy got our ticket and settled in for a more secure night.

Next morning we arrived at the gate gave the ticket to the guy in his security box, he examined it and said 7 Euros, No we paid seven Euros but he kept on saying seven Euros and I kept saying no it's on the ticket paid!.

He wandered off into another building and came back with a young girl who could speak English, she said it is seven Euros for 12 hours, to which we came back it does not say that on your price list stuck on the glass, and the guy the day before said it was 24 hours, so if it is the case that it is 12 hours why does it not say so on you price list, but it does say 24 hour parking on all the signs around the car park, She said yes it should say on the price list so next thing the manager came out and to cut a long storey short we were waived through without paying extra.

I wonder how many visitors have fallen for that scam?.

We decided to move further into Poland and look round, it was flat and agricultural so we binned it and set off for Hungary which was quite mountainous for about 100 miles where it then became quite flat and agricultural again, we had a camp site in mind so we went straight to it as it was on the Polish side of Hungary, and what a treasure the site turned out to be, the lat and long we had was wrong but we found it anyway, so we will update it on Motor home Facts later.

We stayed a couple of nights, it was so warm we decided to get the scooter out. The only thing wrong with these countries is the roads are absolutely atrocious with potholes every where, some deep enough to through you off the scooter if you went down one, so you spend all your time weaving around as though you were drunk in charge of the scooter.

I had this brilliant idea of fastening the Tom Tom on the bike so we could get back to the camp site, it worked great until we hit a pothole, the Tom Tom jumped off its mount, I caught it between my knees and I slammed on the brakes. We came to a stop and I grabbed the Tom Tom but before I could put my feet down Sandra looked round to see what I was doing which altered the centre of gravity and we toppled over and we both rolled down the grass embankment ending up in a pile of nettles, we just laid there howling with laughter, nothing broken damaged or hurt so we picked ourselves up dusted ourself down and was bombing down the road back to the village looking for a cash machine so we could pay for the camp site in Hungarian money, Sandra won again and came out with a load of their cash, she always wins on these machines!.

I looked at it and said how much did you get out to which she just looked blank. It turned out to be 200,000 Doh!. The camp site was 550 a night, so we filled up with diesel had an ice cream each, bought a load of grocery's and she still had a mound of money.

Next stop Croatia.

29^th April.

Arrived in Croatia and it is nothing like I thought it would be, the roads even through the backwoods over the mountains are as good as any I have travelled on and puts the UK roads to shame,the scenery is out of this world especially down the coastal strip at the side of the Adriatic Sea, we stopped one night in an off road parking spot alongside an Hungarian couple who turned out to be German, they had been following us for miles and we end up next to one another, they plied me with their own wine from their own vineyard, a good night.

Next day we worked our way down the coast towards Split where we came across a nice camp site and this is where we are now near a place called Trogir, we have been out on the bike to visit the old town and what a nice place it is, we will be on our way tomorrow to Bosnia about 180 K down the road.

Lets see what that brings.