Well, somewhere near Bialystok, anyway - Bialystok, Poland
1 Stars This place was Awful visited Aug 17, 2005
The petrol station turned out to be a bad spot. It was on a sort of ring road, and everyone was going the wrong way for us. We were there 2 hours or so before a polish truck driver liked our "PL" sign and stopped, but said he could only take us to the border for some reason. We couldn't communicate so well with this one - my polish is pretty minimal, and the phrase book very inconsiderately doesn't have phrases like "Where do you plan to stop for the night?" and "Can we go with you all the way to Warsaw?". Still, the border was several hours closer to Warsaw, so we thought ourselves lucky and settled in. Just after the border, we were unceremoniously dumped next to 3 other hitch hikers. We should have realised something was wrong, but continued to wave a thumb at passing trucks. One of them even stopped, but then wouldn't let two of us go with him. It seems there is a pretty strict rule about trucks only having one passenger in Poland, which makes it very difficult to hitch hike with 2 people. 2 hours later, we were still on the side of the road. We had walked a kilometre or two away from the border, and were again assessing the local area for possibly tent sites, when a truck finally pulled up next to us. It was our friend of the morning - very smug about having caught up to us, despite spending 3 hours in Kaunas. He again offered to take us to Warsaw in the morning, providing we didn't mind stopping for the night. At this point, any lift away from the border was a good thing! 4 or so hours later, we stopped in a large truck pen - a fenced off area that was little more than a car park and toilet block. We declined to share the second bunk inside the truck - or as he suggested, he and Kate share one bunk and I have the other one - and took our bags and tent and found a discreet spot behind some trees in the vacant field next to the truck park. Glad we have a green tent! We had to be back at the truck by 7am, which is obscenely early, but did mean we were treated to a lovely dewy almost-sunrise over the dandelion field!