Fourth week
Weekend:
During the weekend I visited few friends and rode to Tampere. Finns are a bit crazy regarding sauna :) Teuva had annual sauna meeting ongoing. Totally 35 different kind of saunas had taken part to this meeting. Common for all of them was that they were built on top of the wheels.
Monday:
Route: Tampere - Tampere
Weather: Cloudy
Distance: Around 40km (7545km)
Rear tyre started to look so worn that I could not make back home, most propably not even through Baltic-countries, so it was time for a change. Unfortunately dealer did not had same what I had used earlier, but in any case new was rounded and black :)
Nothing special today. Visited Vehoniemi car museum.
Tuesday:
Route: Tampere - Szczebra
Weather: Overcast - rain - rainshowers - really strong wind the whole day
Distance: 886km (8431km)
Day started around 4:45 from Kangasala. Sky was colored blood red by the rising sun, nice. On a first try to get some fuel, I noticed that ABC-gas station does not accept foreign cards (not maestro, not visa), so I had to find another place to fill the tank.
Rain started when I reached Helsinki. Had to queue for about 40mins for the ferry ticket. Ferry was totally full, but I found a nice quiet corner to take couple of hours sleep. Rest of the time I studied Baltic map. Baltic countries seem to offer many interesting looking places, also Belarus is there to explore. Hmmmm, maybe this could be my next target?
Nothing special happened in Estonia, heavy truck traffic. Roads are in good shape.
Before reaching border of Latvia I was wondering if difference between Estonia and Latvia is as big as (for example) Germany and Poland. Well, it wasn´t. Roads were a bit more grooved for the first 10-20kms, but after this they were in a really good shape.
Nothing special happened in Latvia, just couple rainshowers while I rode through this country.
Same thing continued in Lithuania, lot of traffic on a good road. E67-road doesn´t offer anything special to see, but is a good road to ride towards south.
You need to adjust your driving style when riding in Baltic countries. Flexibility is the keyword. Cars and trucks will overtake other cars even they see you approaching from the opposite direction. Just move towards sholder and give some room. This seems to be normal driving style everywhere in these countries.
At some point I was thinking to ride all the way to home, but got too tired to do this due to extremely strong sidewind.
Nice and cheap motel (26€) I find from NE-corner of Poland, village called Szczebra. One friend recommended this motel and have to give thumbs up for this motel. Nice, clean rooms and good food.
Wednesday:
Route: Szczebra - Ulm
Weather: Sunny - rainshowers - sunny
Distance: 1366km (9797km)
Only thought in the morning was to ride home today. GPS estimated arrival time to be around 20:00, with needed stops I estimated it to be around 21-22:00.
Roads in Poland are clearly in worst shape in all Baltic countries. Grooves in the roads are really deep, you need to be really carefull there with the motorcycle. Luckily only few rainshowers came down, in heavy rain these roads would be extremely dangerous.
Same driving style continued in Poland as in other Baltic countries.
Be carefull in villages! Speedlimit is 50km/h, but seems like trucks are storming through the villages around 80km/h!
Road from Bialystoc to Warsaw is really, really straight. Only few bends on this road. It was not boring road because constant consentration was needed due to deep grooves and passing cars.
Real hell started after I passed Warsaw, 130km long road construction. Massive queues and slow speed. Due to this, my estimated arrival time was pushed to 01:00.
Poland still offered some surprices. I have newest map in my GPS, everything worked quite nicely, except that not all roads are ready which are shown in the map... In Wroclav I had to get inside the city (motorway was not ready, even my GPS insisted I need to ride it) and due to road contstructions there I got a bit lost. Well, I knew where I was but did not know how to get out of there. Spend quite much time trying to find my way out, finally I took some shortcuts and got the hell out of there.
After crossing German border I started to feel like I arrived home. Everything looked familiar and now I had correct currency to buy coffee from the gas station (nope, I did not change currency to Latvia, Lithuania and Poland).
Arrived home at 01:55 at Thursday morning.
