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Binning In the morning we arose and had just put the eggs on to fry, when the first kids arrived. They did a double, and then a triple take, when they saw us in their bus shelter. I was sure the first kid thought he was still dreaming; he kept coming back to look in. We hadn't thought maybe this was the school bus stop too. Soon, about thirty kids milled about the entrance smiling and snickering, but the closest any came was one girl who set her school bag inside the door. Sharon said, "It's always refreshing to bring a little joy into someone's life." We left town to the west, as the south route denoted Road Closed and we figured there would invariably be a bridge out. We followed a one-lane road with a strip of pavement for each car tire, but nothing but grass in the middle. In Gustrow we found a large grocery store, Komm (for calm shoppers?, unlike the Scandinavian stores named Konsum), with American songs playing in the background. Why did they do that? We didn't have German songs playing in the background back home. Americanism spread far and wide. Loads of shoppers, who had never been to America, walked around with American sayings on tee shirts. We didn't see Americans walking around wearing "Proud to be German" tee shirts outside Price Club in America. Bought a cart of food. We sat on the curb at the back of the parking lot and munched a snack to tide us over until our lunch stop. Chucking our garbage away, I walked to the store rubbish bin at the back of the store. When I opened the lid, I found heaps of yogurt and chocolate puddings thrown out because yesterday's 'consume by' date was stamped on them. I grabbed a package of a dozen yogurt and another of half-a-dozen chocolate puddings. All four of us ate them with big smiles on our faces. "Living off the fat of the land," Sharon joked. Arran blathered, "And the Lord said, 'Let there be binning.' And the people binned. And there was much happiness and rejoicing throughout the land!" Sharon spoofed, "Sleep in a bus shelter one night and look what happens." Eating out of rubbish bins. I hoped the next step wouldn't be wetting my pants in public and smelling like pee. The agricultural land around Krakow was mainly flat with round bales in the fields surrounded by pine forest. The roads were sometimes brand new and smooth; some were bumpy that looked smooth; some were totally terrible, consisting of short two-foot concrete strips, laid with a space that made riding railroad ties seem pleasant by comparison. Cobble streets greeted us in many towns. Aesthetically pleasing and a natural traffic calming scheme. Large, irregular rocks made one road particularly jarring. It would have been almost as fast to push our bikes, but a lot less challenging. The cobbles have taken a toll on my bladder. I stopped frequently for pee breaks to relieve my "Woolworth bladder" as Arran had termed it. Past the lake near Jobel, the road to the forest where we set up camp for the night was loose sand. Arran asked at a farmhouse if we could camp in her yard, but the matriarch turned us away, saying there was no free camping in the area. |
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