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The story of maps, getting lost and the fuxored bridge

July 21, 2006

Sometimes, when a sign tells you to turn left, you need to go right to make it there. At least this is how it worked for me when I was looking for the Treblinka site.

It worked fine until I made it to Małkinia Górna, the last spot before Treblinka according to the map. And then there was a left-right crossroads where there was a sign pointing left clearly to the Treblinka site. So I happily turned left and was assured I was already pretty close, as Treblinka was supposed to come “next”.

As I drove on and out of Małkinia Górna and on to other villages, however, I became worried since I was supposed to arrive at Treblinka, but didn’t. Instead, I was at Zuzela which was totally the wrong way. And to make matters worse, it was already getting late, it was something like 7pm so I had only a few hours of sunlight remaining. So, back to Małkinia Górna it was. I kept the next half-hour or so looking for the right road and was sure it couldn’t have been the one that went right on the above crossroads, since it said that it had a fuxored bridge ahead (meaning a bridge with serious vehicle size and weight limits). So I drove back and forth the various village streets like three and four times and was finally pretty close to giving up, when I decided to give the fux0red bridge its last shot, even though it didn’t look right at all.

Well, turns out it still was right. The Treblinka site was just a few kilometres down the road over the fuxored bridge, and the reason why the sign was pointing in the other direction was probably that they wanted people with buses and things to drive to Treblinka along proper roads, since the fuxored bridge was only usable for passenger cars. (And the river it went over was called “Bug”. How’s that for irony.) So if I had driven further in the “wrong” direction and followed signs, I would probably also have made it.

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So, despite the mistakes I made, I still made it to the final destination, even though it was a bit later than I anticipated. I guess the moral here is to always work out what’s the right combination between your gut feeling, maps and traffic/direction signs, and to go through all the options since one of them must be right.