“No parking here”
“Yes, sorry, I realise that now”
But why? I’ve parked on the pavement everywhere in Europe, even in front of the Colosseum of Rome for God’s sake and nobody batted an eyelid!
Still, they did show up within 15 minutes of me calling them to unlock it and it was fairly reasonable at 40 quid or so…
However, when I came to unlock the bike and pack it up to move it…
*CRACK*
(I seem to be using that particular bit of onomatopaeia a lot in this blog)
And my bike falls flat…
“Shit… the side stand’s snapped”
Being six o’clock, everywhere that could conceivably repair it was shut, and as I was supposed to be driving to Kiev the next morning I was in something of a pickle.
I decided the best course of action was to put off my Chernobyl trip yet again and get the side stand fixed, as the idea of refuelling my overloaded monstrosity without a side stand didn’t bear thinking about.
The next morning I spoke to the guys behind the hostel bar, who busted their arses and found me a guy that would not only fix it, but would come to the hostel so that the bar guy could translate for me, but also escort me back to their garage and fix it then and there!
Damage? Twenty quid including tip!
Still, I had a while to kill as I’d put my tour off until next weekend, so I decided to stay in Kiev and got to keep my appointment to meet Ashley Chivers after all!
Me, him and a group of German lads went out to a club they knew of from their previous trip.
Waiting for the metro…
The club itself
Modern equivalent of a disco ball…
The DJ was very impressive, mixing three tracks at once of Reggae, Pop and Trance..
The German lads!
Prolst!
Leaving the club the gang was a little drunk…
According to Ash the chap sitting down is a little old lady… I can see the resemblance actually!
“We’re not lost, my friend has great intuition” “… Yeah.. And a map…”
We did get back in the end, and what wonders we saw on the way!
We even saw a man who lived in a cupboard with a coat hanger and lots of cigarette smoke.
He tried to get us to join him, but we decided to run away instead…
It was a good night!
As I had a few days to spare my dad’s coming over to visit! Woo!
He couldn’t get a flight to Prague though so I said…
“Hey, try Warsaw, it’s on the way to Kiev for me!”
So he booked a flight to Warsaw!
I had to drive straight to Warsaw the next day to get there on time, but when I looked at my map..
“Oh fuck, I meant Krakow, not Warsaw!”
Little difference of an extra 250 miles to do that day.
Ten hours on the bike was fun…
Still, I’m here now and my dad lands in about 3 hours and I still don’t know where his hotel is.
So… Goodbye in Polish!