oneandahalfsabbatical

We found a nice place to stay in Trakai , so we let the tent relax in its bag. We managed to walk 15 kilometers next day we had arrived, mostly on the bank of Lake Galve (nice pathways). The town is on a peninsula and is famous for the castle which stands on an island. You can borrow different stuff like SUP, kayak, boat, water bikes or spend an hour on a sailboat. Castle Lake Galve Boat on Lake Galve We headed to Vilnius on the other day, which is the capital of Lithuania. Only half an hour drive, except for those who wisely hit the road at the peak traffic time on a friday afternoon (no names here). Vilnius is a good place for Church fetishists - if that exists. A bunch of churches on every second corner. Other strange thing is the self-proclaimed “Republic” of Užupis. That is Vilnius' Bohemian and artistic district. Founded by artists in 1997 and has constitution, anthem and president. Gediminas Monument Bell Tower of Vilnius cathedral Gedimi...

Our last day in Poland. We walked in the lakeshore forest next to the campsite, but we got short because the mosquitoes were strong enough, we had at least 5 mosquitoes per leg all the time during the walk. Instead, we packed up and went into the city, Augustow, to collect one of the geocaching box here and then we headed for the border. Along the way, we stopped for a soup on the Polish side, in a pleasant little lakeside resort, Giby, to spend the remaining zloty. We saw a toothsome, vibrant purple soup that many of the guests ordered and what we thought would be "borscs", beetroot oup, and we ordered it from a non-English-speaking host, but ultimately we got a completely different soup. As it turned out, we got hot Ukrainian or Russian borscs, while the others got the cold Polish or Lithuanian borscs what's called Chlodnik here. Fortunately, we will have time to try this one soon. We went from Giby to our next destination, Trakai, which is also a lakeside town and ac...

On the second day of our trip, we spent most of the time in the car again. We wanted to get to the northern part of Poland so that we could start exploring the Baltic in the next day. After finding a geocaching box at Ulanow at the foot of a traditional Polish wooden church, we drove about 500 km to Augustow, where we hit our tent on a lakeside campsite. By finding the campsite we had some problems because the GPS marked a bridge across a river where it probably never had, so we started to lose our confidence because the GPS had misled us a couple of times. We also have traditional maps: we have a 10-year old map of Europe and a Baltic States map published in 1992. :) The tent-set went quickly, on the one hand, because we've been practicing in recent weeks, and secondly, because there were so many mosquitoes that we wanted to be in the tent quickly. So we managed to get a couple of stitches, but we've been eating our supper quietly, thanks to the four-person tent, with a smal...

This morning, we finally set out for the awaited adventure. We had an ideal rainy day for traveling, after the 40-degree celsius of the previous day. We were at a comfortable pace, we drove 550 kilometers this day. We stopped several times, among other things, to look for geocaching boxes. Erika decided that we would leave "traces" along the way. We leave our signature in geocaching boxes. The first was found in Poroszló, and the next one was in Slovakia, Lipniky. We are not big seekers, but if we go somewhere and hit an interesting crate, we collect it. Now we were looking for the simpler on the go. We arrived in Poland in the afternoon, and at 6 o'clock the sun just started to shine finally. We stopped at a Hungarian restaurant right away. We left our country only a couple of hours, but the homesickness has brought us here :) We ordered sausage goulash, a local specialty, Rzeszow sour soup and Gundel pancakes. There was a lot of Hungarian food on the menu and Hu...

On the way to the big road trip, we have various exercises. We have driving practice, because Erika had not driven for a while but now we definitely need two drivers, since we have to drive more than 7,000 km by car. There was a tent-building practice, in this case in our livingroom, because of the rainy weather. The most important thing, however, was the practice of camping. We will spend the nights in a tent in most of our northern circle. Living int tent is not easy and we had to figure it out, how it fits to us. We traveled to Galyatető for a couple of days in the Mátra, where we tried the new camping site of the Tourist Center, which is still not finished. The site is not separated by any fence from the woods so we learned something important right after the first night. Never leave any food at accessible places as the foxes find easily the delicious bacon in your package and scatter the rest of the foods that are uninteresting to them. However, the practice was good, we slep...

This may we decided to leave our job and from August, we go to a "one and a half sabbatical year". Leaving 9to5, we plan to do different things. Mainly travelling, our first trip is to Nordkapp by car! This is the english version of our hungarian blog: masfelevszabadsag.blogspot.com Erika & Ádám