After a morning of opera houses in Bayreuth, I am now in Poland for the first time.

Entering Poland via motorway was anticlimactic. I had my passport out, read to show. I was only faintly worried that they would turn me away at the border to lack of mud flaps on the car, which my guidebook insisted were necessary. I was looking forward to another passport stamp....

But Poland has joined the Schengen area, so the only thing that happened was that the line of traffic slowed down for a few minutes, single-file. And then a new, wide-open, concrete motorway stretched before the car for miles on end.

Eventually there was traffic - bad drivers, tailgating at high speeds, an overturned vehicle, trucks overtaking on uphill slopes where they are not allowed to. Miles of pine forest and distant hills. It rained throughout Germany, but in Poland, the sun came out, and it is finally dry again.