Germany, Czech, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece

Slowly winding our way down through Europe, we would dearly love to spend longer still but also want to get on to Africa!
Germany - Kassel stayed with a good freind of Elena's and enjoyed some wonderful hospitality. There is a great massive waterfall thing there to in a country park called burgpark from the time of willhem the 4/5th or something. Excellent worth checking out if your ever there. On to Colditz.

Czech - Stayed in the mountains to the east. Wondeful scenery good cheap beer and a good BBQ at a lovely house by the lake. All topped off with some proper moonshine 50% proof stuff. Will have to come back here!

Poland - Only really stopped in at Auschwitz to take a look. In some ways it feels wrong that its a tourist attraction and I felt uneasy taking many photographs. Aware that its not exactly a "fun" place to visit it still suprises you exactly how much of an effect it has on you to see rooms filles with shoes, hair, glasses & other effects of the victims. We went for a guided tour and spent 3 hours listening to the horrors of the goings on there. There is a qoute in one of the buildings "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
Anyway feeling a little somber we headed into the mountains of Poland towards Slovakia. Stopping for dinner overlooking sunset on a glorious lake.

Slovakia & Hungary we crossed the next day and on into Serbia where we stopped in Novi Sad which looks kind of Sad on the way in with many unfinised buildings abandoned. Serbia still has a old eastern european feel to it and whilst many of the other coutntries further up are now awash with Tesco extras, Drive through KFC's, Carrefour and the rest. Serbia is not with out these but still feels a little diffrent to the rest of "Europe". Anyway we enjoyed a nice local meal and some cheap accomodation with a quick tour of an old fort offering good views across the city and the Danube.

Macedonia - I feel bad we were just going to blast across, it has some fantastic scenery along the main road which winds around and through the mountains. With unspoilt rivers and lakes aplenty. We had to stop for a night! The warm weather also helped in this decision. If your ever thinking of coming here do, it looks wonderfull. Noted that the standard of driving was slowy deteriorating as we watched a trucker slowy overtake other trucks using the oncoming lane of of a contraflow system. It was 1 coned lane in either direction and he had to get out between cones then so narrowly get back in between trucks we seriously though there was going be a head on. This with a full size artic tanker. Im probably just a bit out of practice driving in some countires but this did seem particulary mental.

Onwards to greece.

Amsterdam

Finally into Europe. I love the feeling of getting off a ferry, its a kind of relief that your underway all the rushing about and trying to remeber bits is over now. You can just relax into travelling and life on the road because whatever you havent done or have forgotten its to late now.

Got a across on a DFDS ferry (Dunkerque), it was nice to catch up with a few guys from my previous workplace. And thanks for the tea and biscuits!

  

 If only all days on the channel were this nice!

First stop is my brothers just outside Amsterdam.

Stocking up on cheese!

We are off!

Finally the carnet has arrived this morning so we  packed up and got on the road. We bumped into the Queen in Rame as we left and joined her motorcade for a bit.  Nice of liz to stop by