March. First days of Spring, florists were full of red roses because of International Women Day, time to sit with your family and love ones at Eastern table, to share an egg and to look for Eastern rabbit according to our Polish tradition. Month full of impressions. For some people time of Lent was moment for life reflections, for other a few days free of school or work have given opportunity for ambitious activity. Both of these options were equally tempting, but we (Michal, Bartosz, Maks and Agata) have decided to go to Plattling for a weekly journey as a preparation to European Championships which are taking place in the last weekend of May.
We packed our club's bus and left Cracow at the Tuesday evening (22.03.2016). After 200 km, we realized about quite important fact. We haven’t checked the water level in Plattling. It usually is unpredictable. Probably it’s easy to guess, water level in Plattling was so law that paddle could be unpleasant and moreover it could be dangerous for kayak and Kayaker. We launched a creaky, but well-oiled machine of huge, kayaking family which helped us to find alternative plan.
It turned out that the best solution was Graz (city in Austria where is one of the best hole in Europe in our opinion), so we changed a destination in GPS and we carried on with our trip. We arrived to Graz at 6 am. After visiting the city we've found a cheap hotel in the center, where we went in the evening, after afternoon training sessions.
The two following days we spent on paddling at local spot with only a few breaks for dinner, game Ryzyko and thawing our limbs.
At the Thursday’s afternoon we were invited to master of local kitchen- Phillip for dinner, and on Friday we were sightseeing magnificent city center and we climbed on Castle Hill among trees and rocks which was more beautiful than majority castles in Europe.
During these three days, which we spent in Graz, water level in Plattling was rising up, thanks to rainy weather, so we decided to change place of residence. We left musty smell of our room (we had enough space in our room to make a dry place, but when our windows were open the sound was as loud as the artillery alarm. Due to this windows stayed closed…) and we started next journey.
It was a great Saturday. During the way we saw a beautiful church, so we blessed our fridge which was full of Eastern beverages.
At our final destination, in Plattling, clear sky greeted us. Sun, high water level and azure above our heads caused that we spent on paddling every free minute.
We stayed in the hostel over a dozen kilometers from town. Also there we spent Eastern breakfast in intimate circle.
There were a lot of other kayak lovers in Plattling. We met groups of Spanish, English and Finnish. At the Tuesday evening we checked out and we went to Cracow. Strangely enough we didn’t lose keys or broke down the bus, or any of those the most stupid things (which were persecuting us on previous trips) so we happily came back to home before midnight.
@ASJ
