How time mosquitos by...

Nice little biters!  Both of us suffered from our stays by the riverside, and it seems that we are now in much more prolific mossie climes.  I guess the hot weather combined with some very wet spells has brought the little blighters out.  We've been to Scotland - we can cope...  at least you can see the mossies over the midges.

Since last blogging we had a couple more days in Berlin, highlights being a day at the zoo and some sightseeing by bus and S-Bahn train.

We also took Chris and Sarah on a drive to Potsdam, about 25km out of Berlin to see the pretty palaces and architecture.  Dropped the kids at the airport and stayed the night directly under the approach flightpath round the corner.

Then went to the Spandau Citidel the next day - anyone who knows the film "Gotcha" should remember the bit with the Strudel, when the woman gets shot standing on the top of the tower.

While we were inside the citidel, we were involved in a road traffic accident, or rather one happened to us.  An old boy struggling to park his son's Berlin Tractor (4X4) scrumphed along the side or Rufus and left what looked like a nasty scrape.  On closer inspection, and police report later [You have a legal obligation to report any damage accident, and the old guy had called them before we got back] my view is that it's a tiny scratch that t-cut should sort out and if that the worse that happens on the trip...

Now we've trekked to Poland, having skirted down the German / Polish border and then a breif excursion into the Czech Republic.  There is some beautiful countryside around these parts.  If we hadn't made the effort we could easily have driven around the whole country, given the route we were planning.  We thought about a drive by Prague, but the weather yesterday was shocking, so we just drove on into Poland.

The polish roads are everything they are cracked up to be, literally.  Although we have experienced some brand spanking new, flat ones, and an empty stretch of motorway (leaving Gliwice) that I had to check we were allowed on because it was so quiet!

Tonight we're camped south of Krakow, in sight of the Salt Mines. There is virtually noone else around - the campsite guy says that the tourists haven't come because of the flooding a few weeks ago - he says the salt mines are empty and normally at this time the campsite is full...  There's one other caravan here today!

The next few days will be spent in the city, down the mines, and visiting Auschwitz.