Direct trains and buses were not easily available to travel from Lithuania to Gdansk, so we took a cheap flight from Vilnius. Our first stop in Poland was in a really beautiful port city. We were amazed by the buildings when walking around the first night, and couldn’t believe that these Flemish and Scandinavian looking buildings had made it through World War II. The next morning we took our “free” walking tour and found out the truth. The majority of the city had been flattened by the war, and all of these buildings that looked like they were from the 17th to 19th centuries were actually rebuilt in the 50’s and 60’s. But it was still a fun European city with a great vibe and a lot of tourists. Another great place to sit on the square and watch all the people go by…. We stayed in a great Airbnb right in the thick of the old town that I will recommend.
Gdansk is a port town on the Vistula river and has a history of ship building and shipping industry. The old riverfront buildings were now popular with the tourists and made some fun pictures. There was a huge old medieval crane building that used to unload cargo from the tall masted ships, the hoists powered by humans in a hamster-like treadmill. The actual river was rerouted years ago to stop flooding, so now the whole area is just hotels, restaurants and museums. You can still imagine what it must have been like when the city was in its medieval prime years. The shipyards were also the birthplace of the Polish solidarity uprising in the 1980’s as one of the first events to help bring down communism.
The city also has some fantastic churches and museums and we visited several of them. Many of the museums have free days so we planned it out a bit during our 6 nights in Gdansk. One interesting museum was the amber museum. You can find amber on the beaches in Poland and the Baltic countries, and 75% of the worlds amber is from this area. Amber is fossilized tree resin that is 30-50 million years old and is used in jewelry making. I didn’t know much about amber but now I do. The St. Mary’s basilica in town had a 15th century astronomical clock which also had some fun medieval moving characters to do some bell ringing. I’m always up for some moving clock people… We also went to a St. Bridget’s basilica which had an huge amazing Amber alter. Really fancy and reminded us of some of the really gold churches we have seen.
Gdansk was also the site of the start of World War II. Hitler started his takeover of Poland here in 1939, which quickly led to the rest of Europe taking sides for the war. We visited a fantastic museum that explained the war from the Polish perspective. Poland really had a tough war with a lot of people displaced, imprisoned, and killed in the holocaust. Even though Poland actually ended the war on the “winning” side, they still had their borders shifted again and ended up spending the next 40 years behind the iron curtain. The museum did a great job of showing all of the hardships that the Polish people had to endure. Educational, interesting, but also very emotional.
We also took a day trip to the Malbork castle. It was about an hour train ride to get to the huge castle built by the Teutonic knights (religious crusaders) in the 13th century. These knights started coming here as part of the Northern crusades to convert the Baltic pagans to Christianity. It had been deteriorating a bit by the years, and then took some more destruction during World War II, but now it is almost all the way restored. It has a huge complex of monk parts, churchy parts and castle parts that take several hours to go through with an audio guide. The location on the river make it a classic photo spot in this part of Poland. Bricks are the chosen building method around here because of all the clay in the soil.
We also ate a lot of good food as usual. Poland is known for the potato dumplings, known as perogies, and we ate our fair share of them. Meg also was very fond of the soups- especially Zurek, the sour rye soup which sometimes even has dumplings in it. The prices were reasonable for everything around here but nothing was super super cheap. Somehow I thought Poland might be on the really cheap end of Europe but the economy is doing quite well. The combination of Agriculture, Manufacturing, and now high tech is making Poland a real rising star in Europe. The prices are cheaper than Paris or London, but it isn’t the super bargain that it once was.
It is time to leave Gdansk but it is not time to leave Poland. There is much more to experience and learn in this country. Next stop is the smaller town of Torun!!!!