navigating around the countryside

A few weeks ago I had an interesting trip with a bit of an adventure with a road map.   We traveled with a friend to Kaszimierz (a resort town not far from Lublin) for the afternoon.  It was very crowded that day and traffic was terrible.  It started raining and everyone decided to pack it in and head home at the same time.  After sitting in a traffic jam on the main road out of town for more than 30 minutes, we finally decided to pull out a map and try to get back to Lublin by the back roads.  I'm good at navigating, but it was quite a challenge.  None of the smaller roads in the countryside are numbered highways like they are in the US, so the map simply has lines going between each of the small towns.  The only road signs are arrows at intersections that tell what the next town is down the road.  So we would drive along and I would say, you need to turn right toward Town A soon...and a sign would come along labeled "Town A" and we would turn.  Then I'd look at my map again and find the next town and say, you need to head toward Town B next.  The additional challenge, however, was that the Towns were not called A and B...I had to struggle with the Polish pronunciation so my friend would recognize the sign when he saw it.  It was with quite a feeling of success that we arrived back in Lublin, having avoid the massive traffic jam!