POLAND: A STROLL THROUGH THE GDANSK OLD TOWN

June 20, 2019

We had gotten up early after just a few hours of sleep and had walked all over the largest castle in the world in Malbork, and we were ready for a nap.  It was good to get back to our hotel, the Ibis Stare Miasto (Ibis Old Town), a hotel from a familiar (to us) French chain of budget hotels.

Our room wasn't especially fancy, but it was clean, exceptionally well-located (as we would later discover), and had everything we needed.

The view from our bedroom window didn't indicate anything especially spectacular in the neighborhood:

However, after my nap, we headed out to explore, and almost immediately we began to discover the beauty of Old Town Gdansk.

Some historical background is important here. Gdansk is in northern Poland on the Baltic Sea. Having a strategically significant port, for centuries it bounced back and forth between Polish and Prussian/German ownership. When under Prussian or German control, it was known as Danzig. Between the World Wars, Germans formed the vast majority of the city, and it was a quasi city-state under the auspices of the League of Nations, but Poland had access to its harbor and built a garrison there, which became the target of the first shots of World War II.  Once the war began, Danzig was annexed by Nazi Germany and incorporated into the Reich.

As a German-occupied city, Danzig was heavily bombed by both Allied and Russian forces at the end of the war. The Russians captured the city on March 30, 1945. All Germans were forced out and replaced with ethnic Poles, and then Danzig was given to Poland (under Russian control) and renamed Gdansk.

Today Gdansk is the fourth largest city in Poland, with a population of about 500,000.

On to our walk. We started off down a cobblestone street:

. . . and the first thing I noticed was the linden trees in bloom. I will always associate linden trees with my German mother, who planted two in our front yard to remind her of her homeland, and of my German grandmother (Oma), who harvested the blossoms, dried them on a sheet spread on the redwood picnic table on our patio, and made the dried blossoms into tea.

I was glad to see the street signs included English translations beneath the incomprehensible Polish words (which was a sure indication we were in a tourist area). Also, we were surprised to see canals flowing through the town:

This is  my dream backyard:

Our first stop was St. Bridget's Church, which was reduced to brick dust by the bombing raids of the war. The Poles rebuilt it using the original plans from the end of the 14th century. It was completed in 1973 and designated a Minor Basilica by Pope John Paul II in 1992:

There was a small entrance fee, which normally wouldn't have been a problem, but since arriving in Poland we had tried to withdraw cash from multiple ATMs without success. At first we thought it was an ATM issue, but eventually we realized that it was a card issue, even though I had called our bank in advance to let them know we would be traveling, and even though we had not had any problems in either Iceland or Greenland. It took three phone calls to Visa to finally correct the problem, the final call being made while we were standing in front of an ATM withdrawing cash. What a pain, and unfortunately we never got back to St. Bridget's.

I did sneak a few photos from the entrance, however. The loft has a unique the metal railing depicting a host of musicians:

We saw this much of the interior (below), but we missed the famous altar made of amber that includes a vessel containing the heart and blood of John Paul II. We also missed the memorial to the massacre of Polish officers at Katyn and the crosses used during Solidarity strikes.

Outside the church we noted two important statues: a crucifix and a statue of the Polish Pope, John Paul II.  Poland is 87% Catholic, the 7th highest Catholic population per capita in the world.

Just as we were walking away, the church bells began to ring. Ahhh.

One of the few structures in Gdansk that survived World War II is the octagonal Jacek Tower, built at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. It is almost 120 feet tall. Jacek, aka St. Hyacinth, brought the Dominican order to Poland in the 13th century. It now houses a business, and no tourists are allowed inside:

This strange angle makes the tower look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa:

Across the street from Jacek Tower is Hala Targowa, or Market Hall, which I think is some kind of a food and general merchandise shopping area. Unfortunately, we didn't know that and so didn't go inside!

The royal chapel of the Polish King John III Sobieski sits at the end of a long pedestrian street:

I love the layering:

At this point, we were just soaking in the sights, unaware of what most of the buildings were, which can sometimes be a nice way to travel. Ambience was more important that history for once:

Of course, since coming home I have done a little research about some of the things we saw. The fellow below, Jan Heweliusz, aka Johannes Hevelius, lived between 1611 and 1687. As a mayor of Danzig, we was a powerful man, but what he is most known for is his reputation as an astronomer. He mapped the surface of the moon, discovered four new comets, and named ten new constellations:

A constellations map is painted on a nearby wall:

Just a block or two later, we came across this charming fountain, anchored by four friendly lions. Later, we saw children playing in the spray:

The Baltic Sea region is known for its amber, which is fossilized tree resin. Before this trip, when I thought of amber, I thought of the clear honey-colored stone that often contains bodies of insects or pieces of a plant. In Poland, amber jewelry is a important part of the economy, and the hub of the amber industry is Gdansk. Rather than the honey-colored stone, however, the amber most prized for jewelry is opaque creamy white, yellow, or brown. Dozens of amber jewelry shops like the one below line the streets in one neighborhood of Gdansk. I bought a yellow amber necklace here, and later on, a white one in Kaliningrad, Russia, which also has a port on the Baltic Sea.

We spent several lazy hours strolling through this beautiful city, and a busker playing "It's a Wonderful World" on his flute provided the perfect background music for our evening.

We needed a little something to eat before we headed back to the hotel, so we stopped at a sidewalk cafe with a picture-perfect view (see left photo below). Remembering some of the divine soups we had eaten at a Polish restaurant in Los Angeles, I ordered a bowl of fish soup. The cool temperature, the idyllic surroundings, and the flavorful soup earned this dining experience an A+.

We noticed this statue at the beginning of our walk through Old Town. It is Swietopelk II, the Duke of Pomerelia from 1215 to 1266, who was so important that he was known simply as "The Great." When we passed it again on our way back to the hotel, "The Great" looked more like "The Grandpa":

More of those hideous Locks of Love:

They totally ruin the view:

I saw this advertisement--for what, I have no idea--in several places. I loved the image, so I took a photo. My son translated the caption as "What are you staring at?" 

We made it back to our hotel, where I had some pretty amazing chocolate ice cream. I would later learn that Poland loves its ice cream.

READING

Death in Danzig by Stefan Chwin is a must-read if you are traveling to Gdansk. It tells the story of two groups of people: the Germans who were driven out of Danzig by the Russians at the end of World War II and the Polish people who moved into their hastily abandoned homes, took over their possessions, and renamed the city Gdansk. Chwin does a great job of humanizing both groups. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the displaced Germans, many of whom were killed by the Russians as they fled the city, but I could also understand the feelings of Polish families who had been exiled or imprisoned in Russia for so long.

The story of this transition is told through various characters' voices, among which is a German doctor who discovers his lover's body on his autopsy table in the first chapter of the book and who decides to stay rather than join his departing friends and neighbors, and a young Polish boy whose family moves into one of the formerly German-occupied homes, still full of the previous inhabitants' things.