Home -> Europe -> Poland -> Travelogue Poland -> 18 June 2003

Wednesday 18 June, Groningen - Wroclaw, a long journey and we see too many accidents

We have been surprised sometimes that, with all the kilometers we make in holidays, we have seen relatively few accidents. Well, probably it was all saved for today. It starts with a totally distorted car being dragged away from the Autobahn. Next a car lying upside down in a ditch. Some cars have stopped but there is still no police or ambulance.

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Before Potsdam (near Berlin) we enter a traffic jam and a whole piece of the highway has been closed because of an accident. Then we suddenly see ambulances, fire squads, police cars and helicopters coming through the traffic jam. They come from all directions and they are going everywhere, a real chaos. Then we see why: on the other side of the road a truck has driven into a bus. It is awful and we can only think of the passengers of that bus. We try, but cannot, imagine how terrible this accident must have been. We read about accidents like this in the paper but it is a shock to see such an image just after it happened. For more than an hour we hear sirenes from all directions. This looks bad.

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On the radio we hear that a truck driver has driven into the traffic jam, hit the bus which then hit another truck. The truck driver is dead, 35 are injured, of whom 10 very seriously. We realise again how relative life is.

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This image of the truck drilled into the bus will remain with us for some time, but it also makes us realise that we don't always control our own lives, however carefully one can be, and that it is important to treasure every minute of it. At the Polish border we are not caught for smuggling (we have too many cigarettes, tobacco and liquor), but then it starts to rain, sometimes very heavy and the roads are really bad. A quarter past 5 we are at the border and 2.5 hours later we finally arrive in Wroclaw, a distance of only 140 kilometers. We have driven (and waited in traffic jams) for almost 12 hours.

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But Wroclaw is a big city and after more than an hour searching we find out that we are looking for the wrong hotel! We had booked through the internet but there are two hotels with the same name! It is almost dark (21h15) when we finally find it and can start to relax. To be honest, we really need it after today, we feel exhausted. But the good side is that we are a long way from Holland and from tomorrow on we don't have a schedule, so we can do whatever we want, see what we want and rest when we want.