We woke up Thursday morning to the sounds of Corpus Christi mass from the church down the road. This tiny village has a really talented tenor!
We rode on into a Polish national park – beautiful forest and marshlands. Supposedly there are many moose and elk there, but we missed them
We tried to get brunch at a cute looking restaurant, but it had late hours for the holiday. While we were waiting to see if would open, we were approached by some motorcyclists to help push-start one of their bikes. We tried our best, but it wouldn’t get going
The Eurovelo route we have been following joined another bike route, the Green Velo, that seems to be very popular, especially with the long holiday weekend. We started seeing lots of other bicyclists along the way
We ended up riding with a Polish cyclist named Bogdan who didn’t speak a lick of English. Nonetheless, he continued the tradition of constantly talking to us even though it was clear we couldn’t understand him. He was definitely a character. Here’s what we know about him: He’s from Che?m; he’s a cycling madman; he tries to do a long bike ride every 6 months; he constantly made fun of our beer guts. At one point when I used a porta potty he ran up and started shaking it and yelling – he found this hilarious.
Bogdan helped us navigate a particularly rough, washboarded section of the route through a pretty nasty headwind
We eventually made it to the cool resort town of Augustow, where we offered to treat Bogdan to dinner. He found a pizza place called the “Chillout Bar.” We agreed to get a large Greek pizza to share. I went up to order with him, and he started having a much longer and more animated conversation with the cashier than ordering a pizza would normally warrant. He seemed to keep confirming if I really wanted a large pizza… Of course I did! Then there was some confusion about what kind of dressing I wanted, so I assumed he also ordered some salads. Long story short, three pizzas – a small and two larges, and all three the same kind – showed up at our table, along with some sort of pizza aioli/dipping sauce. We managed t polish off two of them, and carried the third back to the campsite for breakfast
The next we continued to follow Bogdan over hill and dell, as he would repeatedly stop and grumble a bunch of Polish at his GPS (and sometimes at us) before continuing. He convinced us to deviate off our original route a bit and continue along with him, but eventually our paths parted and we bid “do widzenia” to our newfound friend.
Shortly after leaving Bogdan, we found a bridge over a lovely stream and decided to have lunch there. Soon, a group of five cyclists showed up and began asking us questions about our trip, where we were from, etc. About 45 seconds into the conversation, one of them asked us if we wanted some liquor, and produced a 2 liter water bottle filled with an unknown brown liquid, as well as a small snifter glass. Far be it from us to refuse roadside shots, we joined in downing what proved to be a delicious and incredibly smooth booze. All they could tell us about it was 1) you can’t buy it in stores 2) it is not made from a grain 3) it is “from the forest”
We later rejoined that same group farther down the road, and they took us to a small food truck with a small Polish grandma dishing out some amazing fruit-filled, deep-fried pirogi – so good I went back for thirds.
We stopped at a small restaurant for one last Polish meal – delicious stuffed potato dumplings for me, before heading off into the woods, where we crossed over into Lithuania on a non-distinct forest road. We made camp in the woods amongst the songbirds and mosquitoes.
