JUNE 7 - Homework and logistics day in the morning, then off to the bus station for our ride out of the Baltic States. I’ve called this next section ‘Eastern Europe’, for want of a more specific geographic term. The countries were are going to now fit what many people normally think of when they hear the term.
The routes between Lithuania and Poland are surprisingly inconvenient, with few day buses that stop at cities closer to the border on either side. Rather than take a late night bus, I opt for one that at least gets into Warsaw before midnight.
The route between Lithuania and Poland is composed of extensive fields mixed with patches of tall pine forests. Wide rivers are everywhere. We enter a backup of trucks well before the border, at first I assume this has to do with some customs procedure and wonder if were are going to be stuck here for hours. However, it turns out that the long lines are for a couple of petrol stations. It seems counterintuitive, but it would appear that there is some marginal price difference in fuel costs between the two countries, such that trucks fill up before leaving Lithuania. I checked this against a table of EU fuel prices for May 2022 and actually Poland is a bit cheaper. So maybe it has to do with wanting to use Euros rather than the Polish złoty?
So that leads me to mention that despite being in the EU, Poland uses its own currency, the złoty, which currently trades at about 0.22 złoty to one Euro. While the Euro is often accepted in Poland, the particular exchange rate used can put the buyer at a disadvantage.
There is almost no topography to speak of on this route. Like virtually everything we’ve seen since Tallinn, even modest hills are a rarity. Softly undulating terrain and slow, wide rivers are the overall theme. I do get a sense that the scale of human activity has increased, however. Buildings are larger and fields are more extensive, and it seems more industrial.
Since not much is going on today, its a good moment to give a brief synopsis of the relationship between Lithuania and Poland:
The two areas began to interact in the 13th Century, when the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, by acquisition of territory, formed a common border with the then-fragmented Kingdom of Poland. The two states got along well enough that a longstanding alliance was formed and territories merged, resulting in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that lasted from the 16th to late 18th Centuries. The happiness ended when they were forcibly split up by Austria and Russia, and things got more off track after WWI, when the two countries declared independence and began arguing about ownership of particular pieces of land. One result of this was mentioned above, when Poland seized Vilnius in the 1920-39 period. The advent of WWII and the occupation by first Germany, then Russia, ended all of these nationalist aspirations. Post WWII, Lithuania was officially absorbed as an SSR to the Soviet Union, while Poland ‘escaped’ as merely a satellite state in the Eastern Bloc.
Into Warsaw at 21:30, having gained an hour from Kaunas. This city is a big deal, we certainly feel the enormity of the place, with high rise buildings, flashy advertising, and mobs of people on the streets at this late hour. It is the largest city we’ve been to since London.
Go through an especially involved procedure to get into our room, using door codes at four difference entrances. Grab some quick eats at a convenience store.
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