Poland 1985 #4of4

(Except Gdansk, Kraków, Oswiecim, Poznan, Szczecin, Warsaw, Wieliczka, Wroclaw.)

The road west from Warsaw is the best we have seen, we’ve been driving 55 mph. This road goes from Moscow, through Warsaw, and on to Berlin. Maybe that’s why it’s so nice, when compared to others we have driven in the past week.

We see a lot of nice, busy, large churches. Many places people were lined up, waiting for the next service. There were farm families going to church, dressed in their Sunday best, some riding on a tractor, some being pulled in a wagon. One family rode in a horse drawn wagon. Also, we have seen bicyclists wearing a suit and tie, on their way to church.

Here and there we see huge farm headquarters, each with a group of buildings, and some with apartment buildings where apparently the workers live. We do see individual farms along this road, but not as many as in the Kraków area. We have seen some storks, we think. Weather was nice when we got up this morning, but it's going to rain soon.

After visiting friends in Poznan, the road continued smooth as we drove at 55 mph, and we arrived at the border with East Germany (DDR) at noon. A couple of miles from the border we saw signs we knew were trying to tell us something, but we couldn’t figure it out. After driving a little further, we discovered the main border crossing was closed for repairs, and we were supposed to wait at the parking lot a few miles from the Oder River bridge.

We waited for an hour then followed the leader to the bridge, and waited some more. They took our Polish visa and stamped our passports with the East German visa. I asked to exchange our excess Polish money into DMarks, but the two grumpy border control women refused to exchange the money, but gave us a receipt. I was not going to solve anything with these people. A tourist who spoke both Polish and English overheard what the ladies were saying, and told me we should just forget the money and go, before they made trouble.

We had been assured by officials in Poznan there would be no problem. After letters for nearly a year, we had the document stamped by a Polish official in Chicago, then our Polish friend sent it to her mother. The inflation diminished Zloties, now worth very few dollars, were earlier worth $150.