EDAN

Flemming and I left Leszno in the morning, before the start of the gliding competition. When taxiing to the runway, we had some communication in Danish with the Danish gliding team over the radio – they wished us a nice flight, and we wished them successful flying at the European Gliding championship. It was nice to meet our countrymen in Leszno.

We were going to have 3 flights that day. The first one was to Neuhardenberg in Germany. We were asked not to cross over Zielona Gora, as intended, and had to deviate from the route in order to comply:

The weather was nice, but with relatively low scattered clouds, and with shower rains here and there.

The airfield in Neuhardenberg is just a small island in the ocean of solar farms:

We were warmly welcomed and offered coffee. Please meet your new air traffic controler:

No, I actually never wanted to become an air traffic controller, it is way too binding for me. I don’t mind working at night, weekends or at Christmas (and have done that many times), but sitting in front of a screen and not being able to decide over your own tasks and timing – that’s not me. Even working at night, I have a freedom of taking a break when it suits me most…

After a short break, we took off again. The small building is the tower:

Our next flight was going to Neustadt-Glewe, for refuelling:

It was probably the first time during the whole summer tour, that I didn’t file a flight plan. It is not mandatory to do it flying between several East European countries, but I just always did it, also on domestic flights. When you are on a flight plan, you get a squawk, traffic information, and the real QNH, not 1013. I experienced better service compare to what I heard on the radio others got who flew without a flight plan.

This time, the rains were getting closer:

The refuelling was easy, but not the taxiing – the surface was so uneven, that we ended up dragging our aeroplane to and away from the fuel station.

Lunch time on the terrace of one of the clubs – we brought ready-made salads with us:

A lady from the club came out and sat at the table together with us. She said nothing at all, was just sitting there and checking her mobile phone. Later, a man from another flying club noticed us, two strangers, and invited for a cup of coffee – it was very kind of him – we happily accepted.

We soon waved goodbye to Neustadt-Glewe:

Our next and last stop for the day was Schwerin.

The reason we ended up in Schwerin was unavailability of any accommodation in other German towns we otherwise considered. Everything was sold out. Of course, one could try German sites and call people renting their properties out – but I don’t speak German (Flemming does) and that would have taken much longer time.

In about 10 minutes we were landing in Pinnow, that had 3 runways (what a luxury!):

I did the paperwork, Flemming – cleaning, the usual stuff:

A short 20 minutes countryside walk – and we were at the bus stop.

The bus took us to our hotel in the center of Schwerin. From the street, we could see the magestic Schwerin Castle:

The hotel was good, and we had a large size bathtub in our room. It was very much needed after three flights on a day, and Flemming too enjoyed it a lot: