Caravan to Poland Epilogue

Home again, happy but feeling really knackered.'

One last job, stow the caravan at Barrow

Only one thing I forgot was, to remove the extended mirrors.

Caravan to England Monday

Stowed scooter and hitched caravan, in torrential rain, the sight of Lisa holding an umbrella, sheltering herself and Angie, whilst Angie wound the caravan legs up, with the pair of them giggling stays with me, wished I had of had the presence of mind to get a photo.

Set off for Hoek van Holland to sail on the Stena line ferry to Harwich. I am now typing this live whilst sailing on the north sea. The ship has satellite technology which enables blogging afloat!

The beautiful ship that bought us back to England

Caravan to Holland Sunday

 Stowed the scooter, hitched up.  Paid the bill and hit the autobahn south west with the plan being, to stay at the very nice site I had stayed at in Arnhem, as things turned out we ended up at another camp site, more about that later.

Berlin has the equivalent of London's M25 called the Berlina Ring after a good while on that, we were directed onto the E30, by the faithful Tomtom, christened by Angie, Jeremy.

Caravan in Berlin Saturday

Went with Angie and Lisa to explore Berlin and especially to see what is left of the Berlin wall.

One of the things that becomes apparent from dividing a city by a vast and terrible wall, is how silly things get, you are not even allowed to photograph the souvenirs.

Quite amazing really, now the wall has become a metaphor for the past, and is used to display metaphors.

It's 50 years ago that the wall was built, Spiegel the German newspaper have done a feature on it. A tunnel builders story.

Caravan in Berlin Friday

 Woke up about half six and of course no internet, which meant no BBC radio 4 :( So at seven I went to reception to buy more Internets and was told I would have to wait 'till eight when the boss came in, back to the caravan for another cup of tea, then tried again this time I met the boss and he sold me two hours of 'Net time but this time, this meant separate slips of paper for two separate hours, ah the penny has dropped.

At last I could listen to radio 4 and catch up with the news, and what news! America's credit rating has dropped!!!! The world has had the same economic system since Breton Woods in 1971 when America ditched the gold standard and instead made the dollar the reserve currency for the world, another name for this is 'the fiat currency', this function used to be performed by the Pound Sterling, but since WWII meant that, the UK was no longer the world economic power it once was, it no longer operated as reserve currency. Muddling along using gold as fiat currency, is a bit cumbersome because gold is rather heavy. So countries started to use the Dollar as a trading currency instead, this worked fine whilst America had a healthy trade balance. The world's commodities are bought and sold in dollars, wheat, oil, etc, etc. If the dollar was devalued, the world's drillers and farmers would be paid less. Which is why America and the rest of world, need a new fiat currency.

Once China became the world's manufacturing giant, and America was in the situation of importing much more than it was exporting, the pressure to devalue the Dollar grew and grows still.

Many people are suggesting a basket of world currencies, could be the reserve currency, this would work fine, except when it comes to people who use the Euro. It was very noticeable how cheap things were in Poland, except when it came to road fuel, road fuel in Germany is cheaper than road fuel in Poland or the UK, this is easily achievable if a currency can be revalued up or down to balance it's economy in terms of exports and imports.

 This is the problem with countries within the Euro zone, they cannot revalue their currencies because they all use the same currency.

Using gold as a fiat currency is a guard against inflation, because if you only print the number of bank notes in circulation in relation to the amount of gold a nation holds, you don't risk, adding 0's to denominations, or printing lots more notes to cure economic problems, gold keeps things financially disciplined.

Economic behaviour that causes inflation, such as can be seen in Germany before WW11 causes massive social damage.

Reading about the Weimar Republic and the massive social damage that the hyper inflation caused, explains why the German people elected someone like Hitler.

(end of international economics rant and back to travel blog)


So anyway once the two hours had been used up with my usage, Lisa and Angie's use, I went back to reception to buy more 'Net time, this time I explained to the manager how I had mistakenly bought a ten hour block, not knowing it could not be split and he kindly gave me 4 separate hours to compensate me, and just to make the point - I have created most of this content using them!

So after tea and breakfast we set off for the centre of Berlin to explore, we have taken many photos of Berlin which will be uploaded to this blog later on, then this blog will be given a polish.

Caravan to Berlin Thursday

Set off for the long stretch north west to Berlin arrived 6ish, dropped the legs - home again!

The site is on an island under the flight path of Berlin airport. It also has a hotel so Lisa and Angie can have some comfort and I do not have sleep in the car.

The internet arrangements of this site seem a bit convoluted, not like the campsite in Dresden which had really fat pipes and a log in system that threw me.

Basically when we arrived, the site attendant told me to get the caravan parked up then come back and he would sort out the WiFi for me. When I returned he told me that the 'Net is one Euro per hour, so thinking about ten hours would be enough connection time we would need for the whole of the two nights we would be staying at the campsite, he gave a bit of a funny look, took my ten Euros then returned bearing a slip of paper, with the login letters and password, then he hit me with it, the time was to be used up all in one go!! As by then it was around seven in the evening and I was dog tired from the long drive up from Krakow when it got to around 11 I was ready for bed and had wasted five Euros.

Sitting there getting the 'Net sorted, I heard a strange sound that made me jump. Opened the door looked around nothing, trapped my thumb in the hinge, ouch. Later on the same odd sound happened again, this time I had a look around, noticed a young lad on a bike were they throwing things at me I thought? Then I looked down and saw loads of acorns on the ground, ah mystery solved, the caravan was parked under an oak tree and the sound was caused by acorns hitting the roof of the caravan.

Caravan in Krakow Wednesday and Thursday

Up nice and early and off to the centre to indulge in some serious touristing. Fantastic to have my electric scooter, I would make a pretty poor tourist without it.

Had ride around the campsite and got a couple of scenic shots of the river that ran next to it.


One of my wishes was to visit the ghetto portrayed in the film Schindlers list.

Ok we visited the Jewish Quarter of Krakow, but apparently the ghetto was not in that part of Krakow, so instead we paid a visit to the Wawel castle, then we made our way to the very picturesque squares in the centre, that act like a magnet to the world's tourists.

Australian couple who were camped next the caravan in the process of breaking camp.

Lisa and Angie

 One of the beautiful church's in Krakow.

Angie and me on my wheels

Angie

Lisa

A model of Wawel castle

River  Vistula

Lisa

Angie and me

Lisa and me

Angie and Lisa

If  any picture has a story this one does, tiny newborn baby and at a guess its grandparents in national costume , so if a Polish person can comment below, I have a question, is this a cultural celebration?

If the baby is not the couples grandchild, then a human baby is being used as a prop, in a bit of street theatre, to help sell trinkets to the tourists. Or perhaps this is what couple in their national costume normally do, and they have been press ganged into doing a bit of babysitting! 

Cheers!

End of the day a happy party.

Caravan to Krakow Tuesday

We awoke around 7 and set about breaking camp. As we went about getting wheels rolling, we  noticed some cats, two of them. I'm unclear as to whether they were from the same caravan or two different caravans, but the whole idea of taking a cat on holiday seems somewhat incongruous. Many people take their dogs on holiday, but cats? The big shame of this is, not one of us had the presence of mind, to take a photo of this somewhat odd phenomena.   

After a fairly long drive from Wroclaw here we are in Krakow, legs down, all set.

Nice campsite WiFi works !!!!

 Angie helping me load the scooter into the car.

'

After loading the scooter back into the car, we set off to explore the centre of Krakow which we had heard is worth visiting, it certainly lives up to its reputation. Very vibrant, lots of street theatre, a team of break dancers, stilt walkers.

The centre of Krakow has several very nice squares and not a car in sight.
Then we went for a nice meal, for a very reasonable price, meal finished, we went for a wander and bumped into another person who was staying at Camp Clepardia also, named Mike who is touring Europe on his Motorbike with a tent.

Caravan to Poland Monday

I actually saw the sun today for the first time in three days!

I've found a hole in the wall, so have access to local currency.

Basically all seems to be going ok.

Lisa and Angie arrived safe and sound Wroclaw airport, now having eaten, playing cards.