Polish flying rally to the Czech republic

At Kikity Syzgi told us that he was leading a weekend rally from Katowice to the Czech republic, so after a few moments' consideration we decided to miss the Elblag canal and our other plans for western Poland and go with them.

Katowice town

oops we forgot it was a landing competition until we saw the yellow markings

The rally started from Katowice a big industrial town, where we met to have some Polish specialties for lunch. After we'd eaten Jakob kindly explained what was in it :-(  Nah I don't mind some blood sausage or fermented soup.

An action packed pre rally briefing.

First stop, beautiful Frydlant in the Czech hills

Kikity airfield

Beautiful Kikity, also on the Masurian lake system

Even at the beginning of July you have to have bad weather sometimes.  We sat in the briefing office at Ketrzyn until 4pm, waiting for a weather window to go the 30km to Kikity airfield, recommended to us by Heiko Mueller of Aerokurier. When we called to check landing fees etc. they sounded a bit bemused to hear from us, but we figured it was a language problem.

It was so damp there were dozens of these little frogs on the airfield!

When we finally arrived at Kikity, we understood the confusion: the airfield wasn't really open yet, the hotel was 99% finished and we were their first guests in their 5 star facility.  And first guests naturally have to be toasted in vodka, beer, and local beer and lemon vodka, and the other vodka, and why not whisky, oh and what about the Johnnie Walker black.....

A really talented painter was hired to decorate the walls, the planes painted here on the wall to the kitchen are the airfield's founders' planes, with Syzgi's at the top and Slavek's in the middle (we didn't meet the third founder)

The next day we couldn't understand how everyone else was so perky...  Again the weather was not the best, so everyone else stayed until they could get out safely mid-afternoon, they were kind enough to let us stay another night on our own and nurse our heads.

Storks are the club's emblem and just down the road there was a big stork nest

The airfield and hotel were built by 3 guys from Warsaw, one of whom's most easily explicable business is hotels, which is what inspired them to build a luxury hotel.  It is not yet decided exactly what they're going to do with the property: keep it as a hotel for friends and aeroclub members, open it to the public, or make it into an airpark

the view out our window (not flying weather)

Syzgi is one of the three founders of the airfield and all round good guy.

Goodbye Josip and Ida

Icarus

No worries, we bolted our wings on too...

Ketrzyn Wilamovo for Hitler's bunker, Wolfsschanze or Wolf's Lair (photos from above)

The airfield with some nice Wilgas (l) and some maybe migs (r)

Julian having a beer with some nice gents at the amazing palace belonging to the owner of Ketrzyn airfield, we stayed in a lovely room for  €35 per night including the biggest hot and cold breakfast you've ever seen.  Mmmm the apple blinis....

where we stayed from above, with cow sheds out the back and those nice sculptures all over the park, you can tell them by their red colour - unfortunately the fisherman by the pond isn't easily recognisable from the air

Ketrzyn is a pretty little East Prussian town with the solid classic / jugendstil buildings to match.

Hmm should have taken a photo of the main street, but this is part of the church buildings on top of the hill.

Part of the bunker complex, note railway line leading here from Ketrzyn airfield approx 6km away.

Hitler spent 800 days of his last 3.5 years staying at this bunker complex in what is now Eastern Poland, which was the military headquarters for the eastern front.  It is a very large complex that is quite difficult to photograph as at the end of the war the Nazis tried to destroy the complex, with the limited success to be expected in attempting to destroy massive concrete buildings.  Now many remains are covered in plants and are as well disguised as they were in the war with that nifty camoflage netting.

spot the bunker

Mazury Residence Airpark in Gizycko, Poland

We love airparks.  We go to look at them all, as we love the idea of living on an airfield.  This airpark is particularly Polish / Eastern in design: the airstrip isn't in the centre of the airpark, it's actually on the side.  This is because the customers of airparks in the east tend to be people who like to watch planes taking off, rather than people who fly themselves, which seems very strange to us. We were a bit concerned when we landed that we wouldn't be able to take off again because of the large amount of water on the runway and the long grass, but it was all fine, I think the wet runway is a planning issue, as you can see from the maquette of the park it's down a hill, I'm sure some ditch digging will fix this.

Landing

The maquette, you can see the grass landing strip really well

The houses are really interesting construction: concrete with a special polystyrene block with plaster coverage.

A taste of Vilnius

And what better place to start a post on Vilnius than beautiful Trakai castle from the ground?

Like Denmark, most of the tourists in Lithuania are locals. In fact in order to walk around Trakai castle, which was beautifully restored post Soviet era, we had to ease our way through the background of four wedding parties' photo sessions.  Below is another wedding, I can imagine that tulle and high heels must be a bit uncomfortable for sailing, but hey!

Since we were lucky enough to have the loan of a car we decided to do the 80km driving tour around Vilnius, with an audio guide we'd downloaded on the internet. We figured this should take us 3 hours.

Wrong.

In fact it took 3 days and we didn't even see everything, as each stop was something really interesting: walking paths around the stations of the cross; incredible sundials; botanic gardens; old mills with their own breweries; and of course the television tower, the tragic scene of the uprising against the Soviets in 1991.

Great Lithuanian brew, probably my favourite non-German beer brewing country

Julian in the gardens of the brewery / former mill

The most amazing sundial, I have to make one of these for my garden! The boulders on the ground mark the hours.

Close up of the carvings

Beautiful view out over town centre in the evening just before a storm hit

Julian at the opera, fabulous 

In Talinn we learn a lot about recent history from the Kumu art museum, in Vilnius we learnt it from the KGB/Genocide Museum: we think of the KGB activities as being from another era, Stalin and WWII, in fact it is all very recent. Lithuania only managed to expel the KGB in 1991, up until which point they were still very active in surveillance, wire tapping and the odd torture and execution.  When I think of the German Nazi past I think of it as being a terrible past that is disconnected from our current day, as everyone who was alive and old enough to have been involved in the atrocities is now either dead or celebrating some significant birthdays.  It is quite disconcerting to think that people who committed these crimes against the population are still part of the workforce (case in point, the esteemed Vladimir Putin).

Isn't this a fantastic piece of Soviet architecture???

Anyway I don't like to dwell on the unpleasantness, as Vilnius is a fantastic and very pretty city.

Wherever we go we try to cook local style, so I leave you with a picture of one of our dinners of chanterelle mushrooms, potato dumplings with cream cheese centre and some dill from Justinus' garden.

Lithuania flying photos from Kaunas to Vilnius

Our desire to camp on the airfield caused some consternation in Kaunas.  It's not that it's never done, it just isn't done often.  Luckily this meant a flurry of communication between that the tower and the aeroclub ending with us comfortably ensconced in the aeroclub's bunkroom, too kind.

Kaunas is a nice airfield and a comfortable bike ride into a pretty little town, well worth a stop.  The next day the weather was a bit damp and we were feeling a bit deflated after a somewhat stressful and noisy month in budget hotels across the Baltic and had been contemplating packing up and going West where things are simple. Luckily at that point Justinus, a TV producer arrived to fly back to Vilnius and said that it was impossible for us to visit his country without seeing Vilnius. He most kindly lent us his car and house as he was off on holidays to Egypt.

Justinus' very nice Dynamic a fast going places carbon fibre plane

The picturesque Trakai castle fortuitously lay directly en route

From this bigger scale pic you can see how Trakai's in the middle of a lake system

Justinus with his plane, I like this photo as it gives a slight impression of how active Justinus is: he's constantly performing a multitude of tasks each of which takes his full attention.

Ida at Kikity airfield in Poland

Ida is a beautiful little dog. Most airfields we visited in the ex-East seem to have one of these airfield dogs, strays that have appeared one day and stayed to have their wounds tended, be fed and given somewhere warm to sleep, in Kaunas (Lithuania) a flight instructor even built the dog a dog house that stylistically matched his hangar.....

So my question for you is: do you get stray animals at your airfield? If so what do you do with them?

What we pack for a long trip: Part 1 clothes and consumables

Packing is one of the most difficult parts of our travelling.  Our bikes can be hard to get through the door if we've packed badly and they do take up a lot of space if not weight.  So we do our best to pack light to make life easy for ourselves.

I did a bit of research into travel clothing before we started out last year, and came to the conclusion that merino wool is the technical fibre of the future, as it not only breathes, it also stays clean (except if you eat spaghetti bolognaise!) and doesn't get smelly.

So the clothes I have packed are:
2 merino t-shirts.  I wear my favourite pink one 5 days a week, then it's often due for a wash.  I figure that I've now got the equivalent of 6 years worth of wear out of this t-shirt, when you consider than you (I) would usually wear a t-shirt at home once a week and only in the 6 months of a year that the season is right.

3 merino long sleeve t-shirts (this is probably 2 more than I need, but my favourite from last year is worn out and is now my sleeping shirt)

5 pairs of undies (3 would be fine)
5 pairs of synthetic socks (last year I only had one pair, this is again probably at least 2 too many)
2 pairs of ski socks for cold days
3 silk scarves
1 pair of cycling knicks
1 sleeveless jersey
winter gloves
summer cycling gloves
beanie
thick wool jumper
thick wool jacket (the brown one in every photo of me)
cycling trousers by swrve
cycling shorts also swrve
1 wool multi functional little black dress
wool stockings

1 pair thongs for the shower

1 pair cycling (cleat) shoes

1 pair boots

1 pair light impractical evening shoes to be dumped as I now have purchased some light purple outdoor moccasins

Hmm sounds like a lot, isn't too bad once packed.

Julian has gone more with the synthetic quick dry option, this means that he's got 5 long sleeve t-shirts, which have to be washed all the time, one of which is merino which is saved for wash days / can't be bothered washing days.  Last year I got him 3 pairs of silk boxers, which dry really quickly and like the hand washing.

We hand wash everything in a foldable bucket - finding a machine and waiting around for it is generally not an option for us.  Soap is soap.  I get bulk refill packs of body wash, which also takes care of our clothes nicely, shampoo also works well.  That said I have a separate mini bottle of  dishwashing liquid for the dishes, as the moisturising components of body soap are less desirable on plates.

So far this year we've had 7 days of camping without a shower, funny as last year we had only 3 days in the entire trip without a shower!  For such occasions we have microfibre cloths and the foldable bucket.

I have a Lifeventure micro fibre towel, in giant size which is light, dries quickly and is wide enough to cover me completely (unusual for a trekking towel).
Julian has a Kathmandu towel, which works well as it's waffle pattern, but is bigger and heavier, gets smelly quicker and now we have chopped 2 little pieces off it so we each have our own bath mat..

We have a whole heap of microfibre cloths for washing, cleaning the plane, wiping up spills, using as rags etc.

We keep our food supplies in a purple basket of the style very popular in Scandinavia, this includes clips for sealing open bags, salt and chilli sauce, packs of spaghetti and instant mash, and the ever increasing number of jars of jam.  No idea where they come from!   We try to eat a lot of fresh vegetables, but they are an overhead in terms of weight, going off and space. This year we are trying to carry less.

For remote camping we have an Ortlieb 10L water bladder, you can get a shower attachment for it, but we've survived without.

Riga: great sailing destination

Riga is in its own way a very pretty town.  Accomodation is fairly cheap, as is food.  There is a good, large central market, where we as tourists always seemed to choose the older not so good stuff....

The interesting thing we realised about the Eastern European states is that stuff is really pretty similar in price.  Your honey will be a better quality at the same price, having simply had the comb taken out of it, but otherwise the prices are kept down by qualitative differences.  Just as Japan gets Australia's best and most expensive beef, Europe seems to get the better cuts and what we saw at the markets was all pieces of meat that cost less per kilo but were very poorly butchered.  Imports cost the same as they would elsewhere in Europe, so are less affordable for the local population.

The view from the cathedral tower

Shaslik bbq at the midsummer festivities. The lonely planet kept going on and on about this chain of restaurants (Lido), turns out that they really do have the goods.

Midsummer market setting up early in the morning.  Many people wore these traditional wreaths.  Latvians love flowers, the difference is that that prefer a natural field mix to the very structured bunches of roses we see a lot of in the West.  This means lots of grasses and often wheat are incorporated into bunches.

We also went to a midsummer market on the other side of the river (new-er town) which was really nice, behind  Julian is a traditional style wooden house.