Monday 21 April 2008

Day 1, 30/03/08: Poznań - Międzilesie

Following the good old portuguese tradition and stereotype, the departure hour suffered a significant delay. Instead of leaving on this sunny sunday around 12.30h as i wanted, i ended up leaving Poznań only at 16.05h. Nothing serious, because there were no hotel reservations made, so absolutelly no concern of being late.
For several reasons, sunday was for me the best day to start this trip. Specially because i wanted to avoid the traffic of trucks in the Polish roads, and also the city traffic when crossing the cities. For instance, on a week day, it takes at least 1hour to cross Wrocław coming from Poznań. After Wrocław, i kept going down in direction to the border. If i wanted to go to Prague, i would have directed to Kudowa-Zdrój. But, as much as Kudowa would be interesting to see, i choosed to go to some place called Międzilesie. So, after 350km in national roads of reasonable quality (for polish standards), one mistake reading the map that costed me 30km extra and around 22.15h i was 10 km away from the border.
In a sudden glimpse of rationality (and also some experience), i thought it would be better to stay this night in Poland, just in case i had some problem to solve in the car on the next morning. So, since this was a small but nice mountain village, it was not difficult to find a place to park the car. On a parking, between the main road and a church seemed a good option.
When i stopped the car, and stepped out, thanks to the public illumination i noticed that the back of my car was somewhat covered with.....engine oil. Sweet! Opened the engine compartiment, and noticed that the cover of the engine oil entrance was no longer there. So, for the last 2km, 20km, or 40km (i have no idea when i lost this since my last stop), i was driving the car without this, causing the oil to jump out and colour the back of my (now even more) dirty Fiat. It was 22.30h, i was tired, was not going away any more for the night, so this would be a problem to think of in the next morning.

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