A moonshine hangover, too much vodka and some abandoned Soviet stuff

We were so hungover after the moonshine from the night before that we didn't get moving until around lunch time. We had a look around Vilnius and saw some old Soviet buildings, the KGB Museum, and 'The Republic'. Vilnius is a very cool city, it feels much smaller than it actually is, and hasn't been ravaged by the tourist plague like the other Baltic capital cities. For some reason Vilnius has a bust of Frank Zappa on top of a giant pole in the middle of an inconspicuous car park. I never quite figured that one out.

Another unused Soviet era concert hall

Zappa on a stick. Zappapop

Eventually, after an extra night resting our throbbing heads, we started driving towards Poland. Just south of Vilnius we stopped at a Soviet statue park. There are hundreds of statues of Lennin, Stalin and other famous Soviets, placed randomly around a forest. It was really cool, but I think it could have had more impact if all the statues were visible together. Next to the statue park was a small zoo. The bears here had such small pens to live in and looked so depressed. It wasn't very nice. So we carried on towards Poland.

It was a pretty interesting drive once we hit the Polish border. So many trucks and no motorways. It took a while to realise that driving normally would only get us in trouble here. You have to drive fast and be looking in your mirror every second, or you are a danger to yourself and everyone else. It's likely that someone is trying to pass you without a gap in on-coming traffic, in which case the non existent shoulder is your (and everyone else's) only hope. Trucks passed trucks with trucks coming the other way on two lane, pot holed, un-shouldered country roads. Most of the time someone within eyesight was driving in the shoulder or on the grass beside it. And when visibility dropped to about three meters because of this dense apocalyptic fog, no one slowed down. People were still pulling outrageous passing manoeuvres. It was a stressful night. Eventually we found a nice forest to camp in, and fell asleep to the sound of wolves howling somewhere in the distance.

Watch out for cows

I was pretty excited when we found these in Lidl, 
There was another dreamy flavour of chips in Poland
OSTRE CHILLI - no sign of them in the UK though

We spent a couple of days driving through the mildly interesting Polish countryside, where the only real stand-out was visiting the Treblinka extermination camp. It was a very cold evening when we visited the camp, and it wasn't even winter yet. I can't imagine the cold in those un-heated wooden huts. When we arrived in Warsaw traffic was still pretty mad but slightly more controlled than in the countryside. We hadn't heard form any of our couchsurfing requests so we spent our first night camping next to a creepy holiday park/zoo in the outer suburbs. The next day we got in touch with a couch surfer called Krzysztof who was keen to host, so after getting our bearings walking about central city we went to meet him. He lived right in the centre of town in a very wealthy area. Krys said that his apartment was once used as accommodation for high ranking Soviet officials, and that we may encounter some grumpy old ex-communists who still live there (grumpy because since the fall of the soviet union they no longer have the privileges of rank in communist society). There was one exceedingly agitated old woman. Annoyed, I think, because we were speaking English, the universal language of capitalism. Anyway, Krys lived in the USA most of his life but his parents are from Warsaw originally. He showed us a pretty amazing time. We drank a vast number of vodka shots and chased each one down with a bite of gherkin (traditional polish style apparently) and then headed to a get-together of young American-Poles living in Warsaw. It was a crazy night! After the four or so vodka shots at Krys' place and drinking only iced vodka at the party, all the booze got the better of us so we had to call it in early to avoid embarrassing ourselves.

Vodka shots with gherkin chaser

Amanda cooked a mean breakfast to ease the pain of waking up and we spent the next few days looking in museums, checking out the Warsaw ghetto and some interesting cemeteries. The Warsaw Uprising Museum was terrific, but also packed with really noisy school groups. I also really enjoyed the Jewish cemetery, which is just massive. There are trees growing all through the graveyard, in between plots, in plots and over plots. It made me think that a cool idea for modern cemeteries would be for people to bury their ashes with a native sapling. I like the thought of a majestic living thing growing out my ashes. The Jewish cemetery also had some mass burial sites from the 1940's. Seeing these giant mounds of earth, now covered in all manner of foliage, made a big impression. Warsaw has been the centre of so much conflict and death, it feels like every corner you turn there is some evidence of this. We watched the Pianist while staying with Krys. It had a new level of relevance, watching it there, after all the things we'd seen in Warsaw.

Some awesome art on a building in central Warsaw

Somewhere in the suburb of Praga

They still have some awesome old trams in Warsaw

The Jewish cemetery in Warsaw - loads of trees

Poznan was our next destination and we couch surfed again with a guy called Artur. Artur was awesome and showed us around a bit and took us to get some traditional baked potatoes. There wasn't a whole lot to do here but we found out about an abandoned psychiatric hospital north of the city which we went and checked out. Abandoned buildings are awesome. It was a pretty spooky place. And it was COLD!! We got some cool snaps, and didn't get caught so it was a win win.

Spooky abandoned psychiatric hospital

Inside looks like it must be used as a venue for paintball games. Sweet

Maybe an old hot tub? 

Jumping the fence - naughty

As we roamed onwards towards Berlin we spent one whole day looking for an abandoned soviet nuclear missile silo. It was hard going as there wasn't a lot of concrete info, but after about six hours searching we found it hidden (good call Stalin) in hundreds of hectares of forest.  The only reason we did find it was that the road leading there was the only one in the whole area that was made of concrete slabs, not just a dirt track. It was obvious as soon as we arrived that they had recently demolished two of the old bunkers (or possibly launch pads) as there were two pieces of bare flat land. But luckily for us there was still one building remaining. From the outside it looked like a mound of dirt with a concrete door and trees growing on top.  But inside it was a large concrete complex with many rooms and some interesting bits of machinery. It was bloody dark in there. Luckily we had a headlamp to find our way around. 

Pretty well hidden in the woods

This is just awesome - you can get a reference on the picture above

Climbing down into the bunker - it was so bloody dark in there

We carried on towards Germany the next day and just after crossing the border found a completely abandoned ghost town. It was surreal. You could clearly see the side walks and streets but everything was overgrown and covered in leaves. The whole place was pretty intact; fire hydrants, lamp posts, drain covers etc. We guessed that it must have been a military base as there were office blocks, barracks and large areas outside for doing drills or reviews. While inside one building we heard some weird noises. A little spooked, as we were technically trespassing, we went outside to see what the hell was going on. Looking up we saw a never ending flock of migrating geese. For about thirty or forty minutes the sky was covered in giant V's of birds heading south for the winter. Some V's were so big that you couldn't see the whole thing. The noise was incredible. Like a Gibson Flying V, kinda...  but not really. On our way out of the abandoned village we heard some shuffling up ahead and thought we may have some security guard issues. But whoever was shuffling in the dark thought the exact same thing and bolted. We heard hasty steps tear off into the black, while I shouted 'It's okay, we're not security' (which, you may have noticed, isn't German). Apparently this didn't compute and the 'thing' crashed into what sounded like an empty steel drum and leaped over a wire fence. I hope he/she/it is okay.

"BETRETEN VERBOTTEN"

I wonder who walked these halls?

Awesome ceiling art

Goosey goosey gander

The next destination was something we had seen on in the internet and were really very excited about. It was a military base during the Soviet era and had been home to over 15,000 people. It's a massive yarn and there's tonnes of photos to sift through so I'll probably dedicate the whole next post to it.