The journey: continued

( Part 8 )

As you can guess, the night wasn’t too long, as far as I’m concerned. After such a stressful last one, I needed about 24 hours to sleep, but time was running out, the schedule was tight. You had to get up, get yourself together, and keep going. There was a 13-hour drive ahead, according to Google Maps, not counting stops with the kids, of course. We gathered our clutter, packed into our magnificent Zafira 🚙; I’ll admit it was reliable for our journey; and hopped up for a quick breakfast at MAC 🍔 🍟 (read: McDonald’s). After filling our bellies, we went on tour. We needed to get some momentum because the prospect of getting to our destination after midnight wasn’t funny. Driving in a car all day, with two young children and the baby, with luggages packed under the ceiling that we could barely breathe 😉, and me with my belly like a balloon in front of me, as I was eight months pregnant🤰, was nauseating. I’m lucky I didn’t have them, because it would have not been interesting. All the more so because as I mentioned to you in the previous post “Ferry”, the car is ALWAYS driven by me. Especially pregnant!!! I’m telling you if not, only the first mile and I’d have a contraction by now. It’s not the kind of attraction for me, I’d rather fund it myself if anything .

The road went quite smoothly. No major disruption. The kids were also cooperating well, so we saved some time. It was good that most of our journey was through Germany because that’s where I could speed up a little. Even though we were driving checking the capabilities of the car 😉, it still felt like we were driving a tractor 🚜 and sometimes even a bicycle 🚲, such agents drive there. One might wonder if we had accidentally hit the Formula One track 🏎. Really. We were driving the slowest lane, averaging 93mph, and the left side of the road now and then a rocket 🚀 was flitting at such a pace that we couldn’t even see what the car was. I’m telling you, crazy people 😵. For entertainment, we started counting down how long it would be out of sight. You don’t want to know how many we’ve counted 😱.

Our first stop was Vienna. We got there when it was dark. Thankfully, it passed without any attractions along the way. At home, my sister Martusia and her daughters were waiting for us, later joined by her husband, who came back from work. We spent two days at my sister’s. We got some rest, I finally got some sleep, not rushing up because we have to keep going. We went with our children to the famous funfair in Vienna, which is called Prater 🎡 🎢 🎠. They had a lot of fun after such a long journey and it was nice to see how happy they were 😍.

After two days of comfortable sitting in an armchair, I had to pack my … along with my balloon into a not-so-big car seat and move on. The destination was Poland, specifically Warsaw, and even more accurately the wedding of our sister Karolcia 👰 🤵, my saviour, whom I mentioned earlier. As you can see, from the deadline it’s impossible to reschedule 😉.

This time we drove in two cars. We set off around midnight, so we could get a better road and get there in the morning. But as you know, it can’t be peaceful with us, because it would be too boring, right?! It wasn’t even that bad at first. It was going pretty well. We crossed Austria 🇦🇹, we crossed the Czech Republic 🇨🇿, and we entered our country, which means….? That it won’t be easy, My Dears. It would be too good for our journey to pass so smoothly. It’s not “our style” 😉.

It’s true. We were hoping that this stretch of road would be easy because we have a beautiful A1 🛣 highway, so why should it be any different?! Great, we’re driving through Poland, we’re pulling up at the gate to buy a ticket 🧾 because the highway is tolled. New, beautiful, so with a toll. Well, they have to pay it back somehow, I get it. We have convenience, they have reimbursement. Let it be. We bought those tickets and we’re moving on. Hurray!!! Now it’s downhill! Less than five hours, and we’ll be there, of course, according to Google Maps 😉. Suddenly, after a few miles, a sign with a narrowing of the road appeared in front of us. Oops. It’s getting pretty bad. We kept going, and in the next few miles, we got a bit of a shock 😵. We suddenly felt like we were in that fairy tale, “Alice on the other side of the mirror”. Literally. From a beautiful new highway, we moved to a construction site. Imagine. You go on the road, packed to the ceiling, passing through other countries, suddenly you enter your country with the hope of a quick journey, with a newly opened highway, I will add with toll and not a cheap one, you buy a ticket and you move on, a fairly empty road, because it is very early, around 4:00 in the morning, and suddenly you have a heart attack 💔. The speed on the meter is starting to slow down because traffic restrictions have already started, but that is OK. It’s not that bad. We’re moving forward and that’s a good sign 😉. For the next few miles, more restrictions. Now they’ve gone too far. Not only have they built a highway for which they charge a lot of money to drive through it, but in addition, you will not have enough time to accelerate, and you are already in a traffic jam. All of a sudden, out of the fast lane, you’re moving in one lane, at 18mph, sometimes with a stop, they’re so generous, they keep the drivers at rest, so they don’t accidentally fall asleep at the wheel. This is free in the price of the ticket 😜. If I had known they had that offer, we would have taken a different road. We didn’t care about offers at the time 😉. Also, included in the price was a tour of the surrounding villages. I don’t even know how we ended up, My Dears, in Sosnowiec (a Polish small city). On top of that, my sister and I got lost, and we had to look for ourselves in this mess by phone. Good that although the signal was good and somehow after an unannounced country trip, we were able to get together again and continue the journey together. Fortunately, until we got to Warsaw, where instead of getting in the morning around 8.00-9.00 a.m, we got at noon. Alive, in all pieces, and without delivering a baby on the way .

The wedding took place without any delay, unlike our arrival, but we still managed to arrange everything on time. At the wedding, I danced, Oh sorry, we danced, because we were still a 2-in-1 duo 🤭.

On the way back, we stopped at Zurich, where the parade was taking place, Lucerne and also Belgium. I was able to recover some of the photos that you can see in the Gallery.