another weekend of driving, this time just over 1800 km. fortunately it's the easter looong weekend so it hasn't been so manic getting from one place to another. thursday night and friday morning i headed to bialowieza national park in the north east of poland just a few kilometres from the border with belarus. it is rare in that it is both a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. in the national park are found elk, wild boars, wolves and the only wild european bison left. they were previously extinct in the wild but have been reintroduced and now number about 800. access to much of the park is prohibited but a small part can be accessed only with a licensed guide (at a rather hefty price of course). still, i'd come all that way so i wasn't gonna let the price of (quite a) few zloty put me off. the guide took me on a 3 hour, 8 km walk through forest that has minimal human intervention. it was pretty awesome and i'm glad i did it although i didn't see any of the animals that live there. apparently they tend to hide deep in the parts of the forest that are only visited on odd occasions by scientists with special governmental permission. i did visit a small zoo, however, that had the bison, a rare polish breed of horse, wolves and some other animals. not quite the same as seeing them in the wild be still better than nothing.
on sunday morning i headed north and crossed the border into lithuania. to be honest, i wasn't all that impressed as the land was mostly flat and non-descript. still, i'd heard that vilnius was a city to behold and i continued on my way until i found it. how would i describe vilnius? well, as homer said when tasting the 'flaming homer' for the first time - it's not without its charm. perhaps it had been built up a bit much for me as it wasn't nearly as awe inspiring as i'd been led to believe. yep, there were plenty of huge, grand churches (how many churches can one small city need???) in the old town and a castle on the hill but certainly nothing that made it stand out from many of the other places i've been. the things i found most interesting were the more unusual such as the frank zappa memorial and the arty district of uzipis. also interesting was the former KGB building which has the names of those killed inside by the communists carved into the outside wall. amazingly the vast majority of those killed were in their early 20's!
as i headed out of vilnius the snow that had fallen lightly on and off through the afternoon really started to come down which thrilled me somewhat. i crossed the border back into poland and found a motel in which to spend the night. when i awoke this morning it was to find a blanket of snow covering everything. there's something really special about opening the blinds to find that it's been snowing; everything seems so clean and bright and fresh... and cold. my drive home was pretty uneventful except that it was nigh on impossible to find any bars, grills, restaurants etc open as it's easter sunday. as a last resort i ended up stopping at macdonald's which was as horrid as i'd feared. still, it stopped the hunger pangs. my usual taxi driver met me at the airport where i dropped off the car and his driving was as terrifying as ever.. he loves to point at the speed sign that says 40 and then laugh as he points at his speedo which is hovering around the 100 mark. the speed combined with overtaking on blind corners makes for a rather exciting/ hair-raising ride. still, it gets me home quickly.after having driven several thousand kilometres in the past three weekends i'm feeling a bit travelled out so i'm planning on staying in kraków next weekend with perhaps a visit to auschwitz or the salt mines.
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