VW Hannover and Wolfsburg tour and Poland visit.

[Hotel California]

The comming Factory visit at Hannover is our first time out in the Cali this year (yes i know , we need to go out more!).
I packed sathurday and took of on Eastersunday arround 12.30pm hoping for litlle traffic heading thru Germany as the last time in november on a weekday it was heavy traffic and "stau"
All in all a 4,5h drive for the 463km coverd was ok , a smal hold up on roadworks about 20min. delay included.
The campsite Birkensee at Laatzen to me was a questionmark also as we did not went to check it out before only contact by mail.
http://www.camping-birkensee.de/index.php
Turned out all good : nice people , nice green surroundings , lake in the middle , good sanitairy block. Only thing i did not new up front ....the place is closed between 13-15pm ....and they do mean closed! Unable getting in or out ...gate closed , seems common in Germany . We thought siesta was only in Spain!

Seems we where not allone on sundayevening , some have arrived even on sathurday , we spent the night with eigth Cali's afther saying hi to everyone time to relax



Monday we stayed on site the whole day seeing the others arrive , pitching up , saying hi ...
Meeting @Rich20 and @Swissian both also in to organising the meet (shame @sapto could not make it as he also was a big support !)
Me and Richard tryed to personal got to speak to everyone making sure they where aware of the details for the next day . Those we missed out on , sorry for this we did our best to see everyone.

By evening they where about 20 when it started to get dark.

 

[Hotel California]

Next day ....thuseday the day of the first visits.
Early wake up as we asked to be in time at the factory.
Seems the German weather can be tricky even in april , hailstorm and light snow just while the most are packing up to leave and once we where ready to leave the sun came out , but everone soaked offcoarse!

The visits where great as you can read here:
https://vwcaliforniaclub.com/threads/vw-california-factory-tour-hannover-important-updates.15758/
And here
https://vwcaliforniaclub.com/threads/vw-california-factory-visit-at-hannover-2017-pictures.18151/



Did about 66km cruising arround Hannover factory's
In the evening the bar was the place to be to catch up on details about things seen today . Everybody happy even if there where a few issue's regarding using the restaurant in the visitors center. We are gonne write a letter to our contacts to say how some people where treaded please not go in to this using this topic!
If any of you have things to say regarding this please send me a PM and only PM useless starting a topic on this as it is behind us now.


Wednesday just a few needed to go on the visits and many had allready drove off on thusedayevening , others leaving the site today afther saying goodbye ...

As we did to head off to Wolfsburg to soak up even more VW experience at Autostadt !

 

[Hotel California]

Arrived wednesday at 14pm afther only a 93km drive at campsite Allersee in Wolfsburg .
http://www.camper-carlos.de/englisch/
Had to wait until 15h to get in , had late lunch in the parkinglot , Cali is just so great!
Pitched up ...

Spot the other Cali in the back!
Only 20min walk to Autostadt entrance so ideal campsite for this visit , but as you should think they are aware of it and take profit of it ...no cheap price and no ACSI member . Clean campsite overall but even now crouwded , need 50cent to shower.
And on top they only take cash ...i think they not "official" book everyone in and have a black register. Lady at the reception was not all that friendly but hey we are here for Autostadt!
And still the weather turned a bit nicer , sunshine but still wind and only 13celcius.
The nearby lake takes about 3/4h to walk arround with nice facilities and things to do for kids , sports,...

 

[Hotel California]

Thursdaymorning woke up again sunny but cold , take Mieke for a long walk as she needs to be allone in the Cali for quite a long time today when we are at Autostadt.
http://m.autostadt.de/app/
Coffee , breakfast and off we go !
15€ entrance /adult .

My god this place is huge and has a enormous peaceful and clean park .


The two towers in where they store verhicles to be picked up there's a elevator stacking the verhicles in it , realy amazing to see


All diffrent exibitions , each brand in the VW group has a building where you can enter seeing some recent models , special editions ,....better then a dealer showroom.
A time museum where all diffrent icons in car history are parked up .


Visitors center where you can pick up your new orderd VW

Restaurant and shops.



A off-road track where you can expirience beeing a passenger .

Some theme art-exibitions (not included in the ticket)

All in all there are plenty people inside Autostadt you never feel it is crowded as it is so big and very well organised.
Some pictures inside the "zeit haus" the museum that is , loads of iconic cars!

 

[Hotel California]

some more pictures inside the museum










We had a great day and in fact a shame non of you came to do this .
The site is amazing , you can spent a whole day here...




I know @Erwin did it on the days before the factory visit and also liked it a lot.
Back to the campsite , Mieke was very glad we showed up . Took here for a walk and enjoyed the cafe next to the lake ....apero spritz for Kathy and G&T for me

 

[Hotel California]

Thursday we where leaving Wolfsburg behind and the plan is to head to Poland on our futher trip.
So head even more east , drove about 366km to Bautzen where i had see in the ACSI guide very good reccomendations on a site near a lake.
http://www.camping-bautzen.de/en/campsite.html
Indeed thru , very very nice and quite site in green surroundings.
Sanitairy very clean , well heated , very nice showers , nice receptionist .

Walked to the lake

Had a cup of thee to warm up using our new nice cup we got in Wolfsburg


We got some other goodies also
Two nice kitchen towels , key ring , coockies , note book , tin box to store my cofeemaker , another mug , small tin box containing mints and a fridge magnet

not many others on site alltough in the high season i am not keen on visiting here ...to busy i think.

 

[Hotel California]

Sathurdaymorning woke up afher a good night sleep , shower , breakfast .

Cleaned out the Cali , empty PP , filled up watertank as we are 5 days on the road now.
Off to the next destination , a place highly reccomended in the (again) ACSI guide. A very small campsite in Bolkow (Poland)

As we where only 50km from the Poland border we quickly could tick off another country on our list of countrys visited in the Cali ... current 10 diffrent countries(Mieke joined us everywhere ! ) , our own country Belgium included (if Wales counts as a diffrent country from the UK add one more)

Arrived at a very small site with nobody at the reception , walked back to the Cali as just a car pulled up , the lady of the house...

Checked in only 17€ all in (dog + wifi ) yes finally afther 5 days in Germany who could think that in Poland at a campsite at a farmershouse we could get free wifi!
Finaly i can catch up with the forum , some might think i bailed out....not!
https://www.eurocampings.co.uk/pola...118106/?_ga=1.209960597.1672506987.1490810889

A nice and quite garden all to ourselfs here .

Sanitairy is basic but clean , only minor thing the heating in the showerblock is not on but i suspect they will not put it on just for the two of us.

Afthernoon thee with some special cookies....

Only sound is birds singing ...
It's about to be a quite night here....

 

[Hotel California]

So in the meanwhile it's got dark and nobody showed up to join us at the campsite....
Guess this would be the house of our closest neighbour this night....
He came out , i saw him but he was pretty shy....but a rather noisy fellow.....

 

[briwy]

Looks a great trip Wim.
Must go to the museum some time.
Do you know who actually built the car stacker thing as the company I worked for is German and did one about thirty years ago.

 

[Hotel California]

Looks a great trip Wim.
Must go to the museum some time.
Do you know who actually built the car stacker thing as the company I worked for is German and did one about thirty years ago.

Affraid i do not know that Brain....think you need to over there and check yourself

 

[Hotel California]

Current at Auschwitz afther leaving the lovely small campsite thismorning


Did about 350km , Auschwitz is very busy and entering the camp itself needs time and reservation if you want guided tours.
We did not made reservations and where very glad we could get in , from 16.00h entrance is free as the last guided tour starts at 15.00h
https://www.bezoekkrakau.nl/bezienswaardigheden-krakau/auschwitz-museum-plan-your-visit/

Now parked up at sort of hostel / religic center where you can use the garden to pitch up , showers and toilet in a sanitairy block included 20€ , wifi inside at the reception so very happy!
https://m.campercontact.com/en/pole...ego-1-ozwiecim-auschwitz-polen?sitecode=29309
Weather is realy freezing , rain-hail-snow ....had it all themp. not above 10cel.

Tomorrow we check out some saltmines in the neighbourhood and thuseday Birkenau camp as on monday it seems there is a special day and both the camps are closed.

Not much to show off the pictures we made today but still worth the visit , strange to spend the night in our Cali having everything we want so close to the place 1,5 milj. harmless people lost theire lives............

 

[WelshGas]

Excellent travelogue. But, not a criticism but did you really mean " hostile"?

Now parked up at sort of hostile / religic center where you can use the garden to pitch up

Hoped you meant HOSTEL!

 

[Hotel California]

Thismorning woke up afther a very quite night , we where only three campervans overnight .
As today there is a special event : the marsh of the living...." both camps are closed today and so we head of for the nearby saltmine in WIELICZKA .
http://www.wieliczka-saltmine.com/
A 60km drive from Auschwitz and we plan to come back so we can visit Birkenau camp on thuseday.
We could park up in front of the mines , leaving Mieke again in the Cali (she loves to sleep in the Cali when we are away , she don't even leaves her pillow and usually don't even drink from her water ....when we come back she always have sleepy-eyes....


The Saltmine is realy huge and over 700y old , and has a city undeground with shop , restaurant , exibitions , chapels (you can get married underground and every sunday there is a ceremony)
Afther getting a ticket you descent to about 90 m using the stairs and the guides tour takes you further down to 130m max , the mine itself is almost 300m deep .

They have amazing sculptures in salt and the wooden constructions are a engeniering art of work.
The picture below is a realy huge hall all carved out in the salt , stairrcases , flooring ,...everthing is salt .
Even the chandeliers hanging on the celing are salt!
The workers in the old days stayed underground for days and started carving in thiere free time and made everything theireselfs

Also a couplle of lakes are underground , the tour shows how they used carve out block of salt in the early years , later the used water to get the salt out...

Those chandeliers are huge and weight over 200kg




Afther 1,5 hours of guided tour you can stay underground to have lunch or coffee in the resraurant and use a elevator to go back op in groups .

There where miners at work....

 

[Hotel California]

Spent the night at the same place as the night before , @the "hostel"

Ended up with three campervans and one big white when it got dark.
It accualy is a very nice place to see the Auschwitz camps , you can sleep on the parking of the museum they only charge 10€ (No facilities ) as ours was 20€ but way much better everything you needed.

Plan was to see Birkenau camp (Auschwitz II) .
Only 1,5km further from Auschwitz .
We got there very early arround 9.30am and enterd the camp when almost no other tourists where there....it leaves a very big impression....


You are free to walk arround and some sheds are restored to show how people needed to live during theire prisonship.
Thats also the place where the most people where gassed and cremated....the ovens where distroyed by the Germans by the end of the war trying to earase the traces of theire killing.




Toilet block unrestored and restored...



This are the remainings of the gaschambers...




Seeing this makes you wonder why and how this could happen , those people had almost no chance getting out there and survive.
Most only got 1400cal/day to eat...


Sanitairy block.



We walked about 2,5 h and just walkt out ....imagine what it was spending several months there(most only survide a few months....)

 

[Hotel California]

We had lunch at the parking , view from inside the Cali...



and took off direction Tsjechie ,
Must say Poland was very nice , spent three nights alltough the weather was not all that good this time of the year.

Entering Tsjechie and looked up a campsite in the ACSI guide , not many are open this time of the year so needed a bit of a detour to get here , but oh boy such a nice place .
Run by a Dutch couple in the middle of nowhere : Camping VIDLAK in OPATOV
http://www.campingvidlak.cz/eng_index.htm
We arrived afther about 350km driving mostly motorways and first impression was they where closed....
But the owner showed up and assured it was ok . There is a Dutch couple with a caravan and us ....no more on a site witch has 50 pitches....
Only 19€ all in wifi inside at the reception ...sitting next to the fire!


We had a nice walk in the forrest with Mieke , she was a good girl again spending a lot of time in the Cali...she get's to tick yet another country on here "been there , done that list" , so does the Cali





Look at our view from the Cali...



Owner said to just pitch up on the gravel track as he not expects to much company , making sure we don't ruin the gras...it had rained a lot the last days.
Must say there supposed to be a lake but as you see they dryed it out....owner says they been working to support the borders and water wil go in the next week

 

[Hotel California]

When we woke up on wednesdaymorning afther a very quiet night , used the exellent showers , breakfast and said goodbuy to the owner who explained the route we best should take and seems you need a tag/ vignette to drive on some Tsjech motorways as we did allready some the day before without having this , i got the tag on the first gasstation we passed before getting back on the motorway.
It is a sticker like the one needed in Austria minimum is 10 days and coast about 10 euro


We hoped to drive about from Tsjechie in to Germany a good 500km to another site i saw in the ACSI guide , but howevere afther a hour drive the weather got worse and worse , themps droped to arroud 1 to 2 celcius and rain turned into snow .

Even in Germany the weather stayed that way , rain and about 5 celcius so not much fun spending the night .
I dicided to keep driving and changed destination to a campsite in Bertrix (Belgium) to meet up with my brother who got a permanent caravan there.
https://www.campingbertrix.be/en/
It took us a 950km drive to get there at 23pm and we spent the night on the parking as the campsite was already closed for the night .
The weather in Belgium was way much better than in Germany so we made a good choise , still a very cold night arround 0 celcius Cali all frozen when we woke up at 7.30 am.
Before entering Belgium late last night we passed Luxemburg and filled up the tank , 0,999 € / liter diesel and had a quick dinner as there i was not in the mood to start coocking in the Cali afther a 10h drive.
And offcoarse took in a small stock off booze as Luxemburg is low on taxes..

If we got all the above in our local supermarket it would coast us 45€ more...
Think i got plenty of gin for a few weeks now....
The five on the left are mine , three on the right for the wife ....fair deal ...no?

 

[Hotel California]

Thismorning the sun came out and we visited the local thursday market at Bertrix where we where glad to enjoy the sun .



Leaving for destination home late afthernoon we got here at 18 pm only 200km drive but still passing Brussels have to deal the daily traffic jams , beeing on the road 12 days and 3100km thru five forriegn countries .
Mieke was happy to see her own backyard

 

[Hotel California]

Want to give away some facts that might be usefull to any planning to head to Poland and Tsjechie.

Poland:

What i found really annoying to start with is that at gasstations , shops ,...they don't speak a word Englisch ....or they will not speak it or they just don't know it .
But for instance if at a gasstation i enter and say pump 6 ...they look at you like a cow in the field ...you need to hold six fingers so they understand. We went to lokal supermarket and it was thesame.
Can't imagine anyone who can not count to ten in Englisch...
We only did the lower part of Poland and used mainly motorway but also did about 150km on smaller roads. Offcoarse reading the regular sings goes but the warnings in written text you don't have a clue what they say...warnings above the motorway on digital signs are like chinese to us they don't bother to put it in Englisch also .
We had motorways where toll needed to pay , you could pay using visa,mastercard,...these roads are marked before you enter them with a sing saying "platna" what means like "peage" in France . It works thesame as in France get a ticket on entering and pay when leaving.
Motorways we did where very good maintained and had very clean parkings and toiletfacilities .
Diesel was at the time a bit cheaper than in Germany , and Germany was a bit cheaper than it was in Belgium
We not changed any euro to zlotty (Polisch current) but still i would reccomend it as you might ending up paying for small parkinglots , toiletvisit , ...and if you give other current they sometimes take it and give zlotty in return but not all do this .
When visting big touristic sites you can pay using Visa,...
We had a nice parkingattended at Auschwitz who took 2,5 euro's and putted zlotty's in the automat to pay ...but when there's nobody there you can't get out.
Overall a nice place to visit , no wildcamping allowed and free aires i did not find allong our trip.
We used campsites out of the ACSI guide and very happy with them.
Police was ofthen seen on the roads , speedcamera's is also very common on the smaller roads , beware...
I now understand why those Polisch are getting over here to buy 2nd hand cars to import them to Poland . I not seen that much factory cardealers , out here every brand has a dealer in almost every city ....overthere very litlle seen so all 2nd hand dealers , or they can not affort new cars or they simply don't want new cars


Tsjechie:

We only drove thru Tsjechie and did one overnight stop at a campsite found in the ACSI guide. Very happy with it as i wrote earlyer.

We again did not changed euro's to Tsjechie kronen as we not planned other than fil diesel and use a campsite.
The campsite owner was from Holland and took euro in cash without no problem but don't know if they all do this ...he not accepted bankcards.
As i did research on driving on motorways in Poland so i knew about the tollways in Poland but why i not did any research on driving on Tsjech motorways i do not know..but it seems you need a "vignette" like the one you need in Austria . The cheapest is for ten days it was about 10euro , you get it at gasstations and put it on the inside of the front windscreen.
As i wrote above i got it afther the campsite owner warned me this.
Think there must be a sing warning for the tollroads but i did not get to understand it.

However they let you buy a tol tag , the motorways are in pretty bad conditions in most of the parts we driven...there where many roadworks going on but overall most parts of the concrete is in bad condition. Tarmac was used very litlle .

As in Poland reading digital signs above the motorway ....no clue what it says...
In France they put it extra in Englisch also most the times.

Did about 50km smaller roads and it was very tough driving as the roadconditions where bad and it took us thru very small villages and narrow roads ( but that was thesame when we visited the UK so )

Diesel was about thesame price as Poland so better of filling up before entering back to Germany.

Not seen that much police on the motorway , speedcameras they do got!

But one thing we noticed in Tsjechie.....i think 1/2 of the Tsjech cars are from the VW group! The ammount of Skoda's you see is really amazing , they do build Skoda in Tsjechie so mayby the have cheap prices.

Also not much response from the lady at the gasstation when i asked about the toll tag in Englisch....
Not want to offend any Polisch or Tsjech but thats the way my experience was regarding trying to speak English to tourists.
When visiting Norway Englisch got you somewhere in most conversations.

 

[Hotel California]

For those intrested i updated the posts with the links to the campsites and places we visited.

 

[Hotel California]

We had some bad weather but it seems we where lucky , as now the region is flooded due to heavy rain and melting snow..
In todays news:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pic...land-Hungary-Slovakia-and-Czech-Republic.html

 

[Hotel California]

In the meanwhile the Cali is unloaded and sits back in his garage but now today added my nice metal sing to the wall....we got it at Hannover kundecenter in the shop!
When putting the fresch washed towels back in the rear above wardrobe i bumped in to the sign witch i putted there two weeks ago in a safe place...
One of these he needs a clean and i put my summertyres back on , i was very happy the winters where still on as we got some heavy rainshowers and melting snow and themps. in general not came above 15deg most only just 10 deg celcius.

 

[Hotel California]

As we are on a trip in the UK at this time (the meet and a tour in Cornwal/Devon )
https://vwcaliforniaclub.com/threads/south-west-coast-uk-trip-meet-slimbridge.24196/
we where thinking this time exact a year ago we did the factory vistit with the forummembers combined with our Poland visit...
Today a year ago we visited the Auchwitz camp , still very emotional thinking about that.
Time fly's ....enjoy it while it lasts , compared to those people killed/survived that horror we should stop complaining!

 

[Bill R]

As we are on a trip in the UK at this time (the meet and a tour in Cornwal/Devon )
https://vwcaliforniaclub.com/threads/south-west-coast-uk-trip-meet-slimbridge.24196/
we where thinking this time exact a year ago we did the factory vistit with the forummembers combined with our Poland visit...
Today a year ago we visited the Auchwitz camp , still very emotional thinking about that.
Time fly's ....enjoy it while it lasts , compared to those people killed/survived that horror we should stop complaining!

I also visited Auchwitz last year, and I agree it's a very very emotional and humbling experience. Poland was a beautiful country and Cracow a beautiful city, well worth a visit

 

[CampervanTime]

Ditto too, we went to Auchwitz and Krakow last year and found it very humbling and it makes you question humanity.

Krakow is fabulous, the food is excellent and there is a lot to see. A great city.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Time fly's ....enjoy it while it lasts , compared to those people killed/survived that horror we should stop complaining!

I agree wholeheartedly and without reservation.