Poland

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Poland is sometimes being regarded as a bad country for hitchhiking, but it can also be a great pleasure to hitchhike there.

Polish roads are not in a poor quality. The Polish road network has improved gigantically over the last 1.5 decade. The roads are fully up to doing what is demanded of them.

When entering Poland at the border from Lithuania (and possibly from other countries too) it is a good idea to get a long long ride if it's getting dark. Often there are miles and miles of trucks and it's better to try to get a ride straight to where you're heading then to get stuck somewhere in the middle of the night.

If you are stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere and it is already in the middle of the night, prepare yourself for a long waitingtime. But after a couple of hours somebody will eventually stop.

During hitchhiking it might be possible that drivers use CB radios to ask other drivers to take you.

Roads are often in a bad condition, though on some parts of the road from Cracow to Berlin it's possible to drive 200 km/h.

Language

Many Polish seem not to speak any other language than Polish, possibly with some knowledge of German words. Russian, or other Slavic languages might be understood a little bit, and is not a problem if your Russian accent is bad anyway.

Some guess that about 1/4th of the Poles speaks English, 1/4th of the Poles speaks German (if just enough to travel - which is your goal - not to insult people be careful with what you say), all speak Polish and half of them understand a little bit of Russian. Ten percent speak Lithuanian. Ten percent speak Czech or Slovakian. Five percent speaks French or Italian. Czy ty mowic pan po polsku?

Cities