Tuesday 6 January 2009

Christmas in Poland

We greeted 2008 in New Zealand and ended it in Poland. Hard to believe that another year is gone, but everyone knows that time passes quickly.

This year we decided to drive 1000 miles do Poland, taking the eurotunnel then driving through France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. As expected there was lots of people travelling so we were not surprised to find out that the tunnel had delays and there was heavy traffic on the motorway. Overall the journey took us 31hrs door to door (yes I know, it takes only 24hrs to fly to Australia).

A few people asked us about eurotunnel – the process is quite smooth, on arrival insert your credit card in the slot and barrier lifts and lets you in. There is complex with the restaurants and shops where you can stop. To board the train, you need to drive to the train platform and from there into the train. Each carriage can hold 4 to 5 cars. The journey time is 35min. You stay the entire time with the car, it is possible to open the door and walk around but there is limited space and no sittings.








In Poland our time was spend visiting family and friends. It was especially nice to see the newest addition to our family - as the only baby in the family she will be so spoiled. At the moment she is very cheerfull, smily and trusty.


It was cold with the temperature around -3 but no snow for most of the time so it was convenient to travel around. It started snowing quite heavily on our last day, the driving condition very horrible with poor visibility, icy roads and the fact that we had a summer tires didn’t help – in places we couldn’t drive faster than 10m/hr.


The situation improved slightly in Germany once we got on the motorway but again, the snow was fallowing us and in places only 1 line was driveable while other 2 were covered in snow. We found the driving condition quite tiring and were forced to stop in the hotel near Berlin to recapture the energy.

In Netherland the condition improved significantly and we managed to travel at decent speed. We arrived in London on Sunday midnight. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we woke up on Mon morning and there is snow outside the house. Bad weather was following us all the way.


It was lovely to see the family and friends. We got really warm welcome and returned with lots of delicious food. The Xmas in Poland is more Xmasy than here so we are glad we went.

No comments: