just returned from a trip to Poland, took the E30 - A12 from Berlin to the border at Swiecko via Frankfurt (Oder) then onto Poznan, the E30 is a good road until you cross the border into Poland, then "BEWARE" the road is then worse than a farm track with 4 to 6 inch deep ruts in it, if you get the wheels stuck in these ruts you just can't steer your van, you just have to go where the ruts take you unless you adopt the same technique as the locals do and drive with 2 wheels on the road and 2 wheels on the grass verge or straddling the white line down the middle of the road, also be aware that Polish drivers don't care if they are heading to wards you straddling the white line or on the wrong side of the road, they seem to expect you to pull further over onto the verge to get out of their way.
Another couple of usefully tips, make sure the good lady is wearing a sports bra as the roads are so rough her boobs will look like 2 children wrestling under a blanket, and if you see a train or tram level crossing sign SLOW DOWN to less than 10 MPH the rail lines stand up a couple of inches proud of the road, and if you just happen to be in one of the many 6inch deep ruts when you hit the rails,you run the risk of bottoming out or destroying your wheels and tyres.
The A2 E30 gets a bit better between Poznan and Wroclaw but still leaves a lot to be desired with a lot of roadworks along this route, got stuck in a traffic jam for 4 hours while they extracted a HGV from a section of road that had collapsed under it's weight, when we arrived in Wroclaw we decided not to carry on any further, (we had intended to go to Vilnius via Warsaw) and didn't fancy the trip back the way we came so instead we headed for Gorlitz along the A4 - E40, stopped on the first "service area" we came to, services consisted of a coffee machine and a vending machine chained to the toilet wall, plenty of HGVs parked up for the night, so we rather reluctantly decided to do the same, woke up in the early hours of the morning (3am) to the noise of a big argument, it would appear that a waggon driver sleeping in his cab was disturbed by a noise and woke to find 2 men syphoning the diesel out of his fuel tank, we decided to move on as quickly as possible and headed for the German border at Dresden, a point to note here is that even though Poland is now part of the EEC, open borders and all that, if you enter Germany from Poland you are still supposed to stop at the customs check point and declare any items i.e. cigarettes, spirits, gifts etc. bought in Poland.
Sorry if I seem very negative about Poland I didn't intend it to be, many of the places we visited were very nice, in fact some of the architecture was beautiful, but I think I will wait a few years untill they have got all the European funding and improved the road network before going back.
