Luxembourg to Tallinn in July

July 28, 2007

Another drive on the same route as last days. Just some short remarks here and the usual log.

July 23, Luxembourg, 7:00, 0 km

Nothing interesting at all.

Refueling and lunch, 12:20-12:57, 467 km

Marienborn visit, 13:54-14:37, 577 km

An interesting Cold War memorial, coming up in a separate post.

Entering Poland, 16:31-16:36, 828 km

I made it to Poland an hour later than the last time, despite having started at the same time in the morning. Due to a business day, the traffic was heavy and also a lot of road repairs, plus I visited the museum.

Refueling and snack in Poland, 18:18-18:36, 968 km

Now it was getting dark and I made one bad mistake – which, due to the sanity of some Polish guys, didn’t fortunately cost us an accident. This is another point to illustrate that long periods of driving, especially when it gets dark, can be extremely dangerous and you should really exercise caution and do breaks and go to sleep after a long day.

So what happened: at some town, I was driving behind some truck who turned right, but I just went straight on. And when I was already half way across the intersection, I realized that I had just run a damn red light. And traffic was actually pretty heavy and some Polish guys in some older car could have hit me from the right side and I would have been guilty of causing the accident. But fortunately, at least one of us two (i.e them in that car) had some sanity left and so they stopped short of me and we both drove on. And then later they overtook me and of course gave me the “idiot” sign. Can’t really blame them for it. Sorry, Polish guys, and thanks for sparing us of the accident.

Hotel in Poland, 23:13, 1367 km

Phew… it was a long day. Too long. But at least I made it through Warszawa and didn’t have to wrestle with traffic the following morning. I stayed at Hotel 500 Zegrze. A really nice hotel – not the usual small roadside one, but actually fairly large and decent. And cost 150 zl. It’s on road 61 that’s the main road for passenger car traffic from Lithuanian border to Warszawa (or the other way).

Kick off in the morning, 8:30

Refueling in Poland, 9:21-9:32, 1420 km

Northern Poland was pretty bad this time because of extensive roadworks going on. This means that often there were road closures where you could only go in one direction at a time and had to wait for several minutes to get across. So it took me too long to get to Lithuania.

Spotted World Harmony Run runners in Poland close to Lithuania.

Lithuanian border, 13:03-13:07 (14:07), 1652 km

There was a long detour before Kaunas, as the main road between Kaunas and Poland is under repair and so you have to go through some secondary roads, which also made the total distance to be longer than last time.

Refueling and snack, 16:52-17:07, 1892 km

There was a lot of police visible in Lithuania and Latvia, catching speeders. And when I saw several guys taken off the road right in front of me, I eased on the accelerator a bit, which also caused a loss of tempo. In an ideal world, there would be high-speed international roads (a la autobahns) that would be separate from the low-speed domestic network, a la Poland is building. I wouldn’t mind if they were paid roads – whatever gets me across faster. But since we don’t have them, I had to slow down with the rest of the traffic.