Hotel Helena Rokytnice nad Jizerou

The day before we landed in Poland, there was a massive storm. So big, it washed out a good chuck of it's national railway. This lead to a bit of a dilemma. How to get to Kamienna Góra. After a hour of frantic phone calls, Anita's relatives decided that it was best to catch the train, then it'd bypass the damaged parts by bus, then we'd be back on our journey. Ahhh, all sweet.

Once again, we were late to rise, and it made for a hectic hour ...

Jelenia Góra ('deer mountain') is about couple of hours south from Wroclaw (trains or buses). It is close to the Karkonosze mountain range running along the Polish-Czech border. Only 10-15 km of the town there are few ski resorts such as Karpacz, Szklarska Poreba.
Nice, colorful Market Square, Cyprian Kamil Norwid Theatre, Saint Cross Church, the Old Town are just few places worth of seeing.
Jelenia Gora, Western Poland, Poland ulka

... it was surprising to still see the economic differences between east and west Germany, but they are defiantly catching up.

As we headed east we eventually ran out of Germany and spent our last night in Zittau, it was a surreal town that borders Poland, Germany and Czech, driving round looking for a spot to camp we kept crossing the border by mistake, the borders are no longer controlled in the area. The last time we drove to Poland we waited ages to ...

al the former eastern bloc countries make for good travel,, but the one that i return to is the czech republic,, mainly to the north [north bohemia],liberec,harrochov,cesky raj, but a trip or two to moravia is also worth taking,,. during the communist times it was an eye opener, now also as the people wish for the return of those times,they knew where their bread was coming from, and the upgrades fron old skoda to super fast motorcars,, ah they stilll are crazy on the roads

Tento vikend sme s kamosmi v Liberci na severe Ciech. Prisli sme sem rovno zo San Diega, tak je to trochu teplotny sok. Ked sme s Dzozim odchadzali zo San Diega bolo krasnych 26 stupnov, ale ked sme prisli do Liberca bolo len okolo desat stupnov a poriadny vietor. Ale ako sa hovori, poriadne planovanie robi ...

In a remote corner of northeastern Czech Republic lies an incredible collection of sandstone spires. So we changed gears and spent the day exploring the nooks of crannies of Teplice and Ardspach Skaly. I'm not sure if several hours of hiking counts as a "rest day", but it was absolutely worthwhile and we are so glad that we made the effort to come check this area out. Now, we DID have an actual rest day a couple days ago with our ...

... of the journey we did by a payable way of transportation. Ahh, again, we made thousands of km, mostly via hitchhiking! We did something impossible (hitchhiking in Greece), met individuals that showed us how to not judge people from their look (the Greek monk, the Bosnian family), we saw gorgeous places, but also the places making us concerned; we travelled through 10 countries and like 6 capitals. We spent so much ...

After my longest stretch of work without a break, I was glad when the May day holiday finally came around. It was a year earlier that I took advantage of the sunny skies to do some hiking in the Tatra mountains, although it was to be a different mountain range this time around. For the first time, I was to head south west into the heart of the Karkonosz mountains, a range made up of predominantly spruce forest, with dwarf mountain pines and alpine vegetation fading away above 1250m to ...

... or not, desperately trying to work out what we think fuel will cost and what its advertised. Only when we get back we find its 40z to the pound, so shopping was incredibly cheap, to the extent Rob wishes to go back!! I make coleslaw (P.I.T.A) and a potatoes salad and its 12 degrees but without a breeze so Robs outside doing a BBQ. The campsite was difficult to find but is a nice site, large, no one around except one other large caravan with no ...

One other person in the Czech Republic who takes good care of me is Andreka. She's one of the best friends of my best Czech friend, Klara Sigmundova, and Andreka has assumed responsibility for the take-care-of-Justin business in Klara's absence. She's young but partially owns her own snowboarding-and-ski-rental shop in the Czech mountains. The mountains, though modest, constantly receive fresh tonnages of snow. The forests muffle wind and sound ...