DIY - Leaving Lublin, Poland

It was around 6.30 am when we arrived in Krasnik and it was quite a distance from the tiny train station platform to the center. I had decided to get to a place away from the train route that was a bus replacement service so we started to head to Sandomirez

center>img taken from google maps and drawn over by myself

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We got woken up by a guy who was putting road salt on the path and it was the perfect time to get up to take the first train and I was happy and thought I had found how to bypass the railway construction taking place that was hindering my journey with the bike. It wasn't actually a train, it was much more like a pod, a one carriage train thing that stopped at all the smaller villages. The end of the line was cut short and the same construction repairs for the track were also disturbing this line and so there was no choice but to ride further. Before that though, I grabbed a coffee at this shop..

I watched as at any shop at 7am in Poland, a few local men shuffled their selves to the shop and then came out only to down a small bottle of vodka, and shuffle away again ready for the day ahead. I was quite fresh although I hadn't slept much the night before

I stopped at a gas station in the main part of Krasnik to charge the phone up - hence no more posts since a few days, and also the spare powerbank I have to charge the phone.

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The way to Sandomierz..

It was quite nice weather in the morning but as the day went on it was clear that it wouldn't be such nice weather. It was certainly great to be riding a bike again and having the wind on my face with all I needed to live with on the back of the bike, just like true freedom. You have a dry tent to sleep in, warm clothes and a guitar which is your income, what more I really needed in life?!

just before my brown dog went running across the field to the right, after sniffing out a group of deer's and gave chase.

There was a lot of cycle paths going across farmland, the area was flat with no hills which was great, the bike I was using was a city bike and not designed to be going cross-country!

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The Gps said that I would be turning off at a shop to cross the small river, and I had to keep using landmarks like this as the Gps would drain the phone battery so quickly I could keep using it so often.

I asked in the shop if I could charge the phone and the woman sat next to the gas heater in the tiny shop pointed to the fridge full of beer, and said that she has the register running on a battery and there's is no electric in the shop. The fridge wasn't on and the door of it was open. It was very local I guess!

Then came more snow and high winds, so we stayed and took shelter on a small bench at the side of the shop until it past and then we continued on our way.

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Not long after that break in the weather, there was more snow and wind again, I didn't even have gloves and my hands were frozen hahaha..

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Forest Land!

The first forest I had seen in Poland since being here, and just like the farmlands we had been riding through, it was the same landscape as in Eastern Germany. By now it was around midday and we were going through many small villages with nearly all the houses being deserted and the wilderness had since long taken them over.
It seemed that every house had dogs, and the dogs were free to roam in the roads as I guess usually its so quite with cars slowly passing in long intervals through out the days that it was safe enough for them to do so.

We saw many foxes and deer's crossing the roads but sadly I didn't have enough battery to keep the camera on ready to take spontaneous snapshots

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Here's where we crossed some kind of river that was quite out of control and the locals had just adjusted to it by building a bridge for people to cross over and it was visible that vehicles such as tractors drove through the shallow water on a daily basis.

I was now out of the county of Lublin and around 3pm the next stop was in Chwalowice. The dogs were tired, the black one especially as she doesn't really sleep in the nighttime as she is constantly on guard and so at the main bus stop which was a good shelter and windproof, I set up a bed for them to sleep and decided that it would be great to get an early night and head off early in the morning.

There was a library next to a school and as library are nice places to go to for warmth, internet and electric, I went it and discovered there was a lot of action an it wasn't exactly just a library. It was also the village hall and there were around 30 children making a lot of noise on a stage that I saw whilst looking for the toilets. I sat down in the main corridor by the entrance and plugged in the phone to get some charge for a good half hour before leaving so I wouldn't get asked what I was doing there.

I went back to the bus shelter (I took pics but they aren't saved for some reason) and fed the dogs, and there was a few kids there stood looking at them. They wanted to meet them and afterwards they ran back into the village hall and they must have told everyone about them because soon after there were around 20 kids swarmed around the bus shelter with one of them translating to me a million questions.

The only picture remaining of that night

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The kids disappeared and then the teacher came to say hello, but the teacher couldn't speak a word of English and so she was with one of the children's mothers who could speak some. They asked me if I wanted to come inside for some food and tea and I happily obliged even though I would have much rather just laid down to rest.

They had a huge kitchen and some left over foods and it seemed that the noise was the children rehearsing a dance and the teacher and the mother were asking why I was in the tiny village and where I was heading to etc.

The left over food was great! I had just eaten though but managed a tiny piece of the cheese cake and took the rest with me..

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The teacher returned with the kid that could speak English, and she said that all the kids wanted me to go watch them dancing. It was a cute situation to be in, and it would have been well rude to refuse. They were doing a dance of which I presume was quite traditional with everyone in partners and simultaneous dance routines.

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Afterwards when it was finished the kids hung out again for a while at the bus shelter and before they all left they wanted to take some selfies with me. Its great that these kids will forever remember that guy and his dogs, and if in the future they start getting depressed and not feeling for-filled in the template of life set upon them from society, that they might just think and realize that they themselves can also go travel even without saving money to do so - just as I had also met people living alternatively whilst growing up which was definitely an influence to how I live today which is exactly like those people I met when I was around 14 years old.

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I fell into a deep sleep and around 2 hours later, I was woken up by a woman's voice speaking loudly in some kind of hasty manor and I heard them saying "he's asleep". I was really in a sleepy mode and wasn't even sure if I was dreaming because I couldn't here my black dog reacting as if someone was really there, but then I felt someone touching me on the back of my head and rummaging around and this was when I realized it wasn't a dream and sat up quite quickly. It was pitch black and and all I could see was the light from a mobile phone and the silhouette of what I could hear was a woman.

She was swarming me and then started to shove the phone to my ear which was adding to the crazyness of being woken up like this. After I had come around and was more awake, I realized that she wanted me to speak to the person on the phone and it turned out to be here daughter. I had a light setup so I turned it on to see that it was the teacher form the school who invited me for food earlier. The daughter said that her mum hadn't stopped talking about me and decided to bring me some hot soup in a jar, and some bread to eat, and that if I wanted to I could go with her mum to sleep at their house.

The teacher, whose name I don't even know, was just so caring that she was hypo about it I guess and that's why there was a lot of energy and madness when she arrived at the bus stop and found me sleeping. It was like -3 at the time but I was so warm and tired that I was very cosy there. I thanked the teacher and sat to eat the soup as she left, then in the morning I left her a nice note that the daughter must translate for her.

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In the morning I would head off and hopefully get a train back to Krakow, a place that Ive come to like alot after seeing other parts of poland hahahaha :)

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I'll finish this later with one more post of getting back to krakow! I want to go play with a tattoo gun :P

Big Love!

@movingman