We had a little rain this morning but it was refreshing because it has been too hot for the last week. It didn’t last long and was quickly warming up after breakfast. We decided to stay in a little hotel in the center of town where we were close to everything. I didn’t feel like walking too far and just wanted to relax a little and take in the culture.
I like the peaceful town of Radom with its local small town charm (even though it is considered to be a big town). I haven’t heard any police cars for days now and I think that the people are a lot calmer and friendlier.
Today I will try to find a computer to transfer the galleries to the site and then take a long nap out of the reach of the sun. Kind of a slow day. I have biked a long way and there is so much to see that I have to go back on my journal I carry with me everywhere to see what I have forgotten. Every town and country is different than the last.
Switzerland seems so far away now but this trip has really opened my eyes to something different. The everyday comforts of Switzerland are the absolute luxuries here but the people seem to live and strive anyway. The people here work as hard as I do and in some cases harder, but they don’t have the same reality as me. The world doesn’t seem that fair in this manner as it is only a geographical change that makes a world of difference.
Most of the people I meet here express a frustration due to a lack of jobs and a high cost of living but still remain positive in their attitudes.
Anyway tomorrow I the last town in Poland then it's on to Ukraine which is where our trip will take its final form. Since we started our journey we have had thousands of people on our site and we have met literally thousands of people with the goal of raising public awareness to an ongoing problem in Ukraine of which I am also guilty of ignorance for the last 20 years. But now I am at an age where I pose too many questions to let this one slide. An environmental catastrophe that was somehow forgotten…
Over the last years I have asked many people what had happened to the Ukraine since the disaster but rarely did I get a response to the question. It's not that it was covered up but I guess people just wanted to forget. Until the massively publicized 20th anniversary of the disaster, did anyone know of the ongoing problems of Ukraine and surrounding areas? I don’t know how many times I heard at work "... did you know that..." or "...I thought that it was over..." during the first couple of documentaries that aired due to the 20th anniversary.
Anyway I'm just rambling here but the point is that I am planning to find out what life is like now for the survivors and people who cannot block this catastrophe from their day to day life. This drives Emmanuelle and me to our goal.
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