23rd May – 29th May 2024
History buffs will know how intimately involved the city of Gdańsk was to the start of the World War 2 but many, including me, will not be aware of how focused the Nazis were in their desire to secure this strageic port city as part of their invasion of Poland, or what a pawn it was in the relationship between the Third Reich and the Soviets. It was here that one of the first battles of the war was fought, and in an unlikely place, the main Post Office building. The Nazis, believing (correctly) that it was acting as as a base for the undercover operations of Polish intellegence operatives, attacked it in the early hours of 1st Sept 1939 at about the same time they were hurling shells from the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein at the nearby military outpost at Westerplatte. The 50 ‘Post Office workers’ who just happened to be quite well armed and good at fighting, managed to hold off the detatchments of German police and elite SS units in a seige lasting 17 hours, providing a David and Goliath narrative, but without the victory unfortunately. They eventually had no choice but to surrender and predictably the survivors were executed by firing squad along the side of the building. The facade of the building, which now houses a museum, survives with bullet damage still visible and there is a fabulous memorial sculpture outside.
There are a few other things that we wanted to see/do whilst we were here. The first was to see the famous Gdańsk shipyards. It was here in 1980 where organized resistance first challenged Communist dictatorship in eastern Europe. A strike by 17,000 ship builders saw Solidarity (Solidarność), led by shipyard electrician Lech Wałęsa, recognised as the first non-Communist trade union in the then Soviet Bloc. The move was one of the first successful steps in a campaign of civil resistance that contributed to the eventual collapse of Communism across eastern Europe. He was Time magazine’s Person Of The Year in 1981, was award a Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and was elected president of Poland in 1990, being the first democratically elected president in Poland since 1926.( He only stood for election as he was exasperated by the views and allegiences of other candidates and his election slogan was ‘I don’t want to, but I have to’.) He saw Poland modernised, facilitated its membership into NATO and the EU and continued to positively contribute to the country’s future prosperity long after his presidency ended in 1995. Despite an abrasive leadership style and some quite conservative political views, he was the type of leader that today’s world is seriously lacking. He is now 80 and hopefully living out a splendid retirement with his wife.
Seeing the shipyards did not require any sort of special journey as that was where our campsite was located. There was space for about 8 vans lined up on a dockside near a small boat yard, surrounded by a moderately dystopian collection of abandoned warehouses and disused cranes. There were some active docks with large cargo ships being loaded and unloaded and fledgling signs of the revitalisation of some of the dilapidated buildings. Otherwise it was pretty quiet around us, until about 3-4am in the morning that is, when it became apparent to us that one area of warehouses near us has been converted into a drinking & partying district and drunk revellers made their way home past us, laughing, shouting and shrieking as they went. It was otherwise a great spot to watch the shipping channel, the yachts and motor boats coming in and going out of the marina and it was only a fifteen minute walk from the old town. The grittiness was part of its charm.
The other thing to do here is to visit the amazing World War Two Museum. This is housed in a very modern, eye-catching building, although mostly below ground level, and tells the story of the conflict in a way that focuses on the human toll of the war, rather than the military campaigns. It also is incredibly enlightening on how big a price the Polish people payed both in lives lost, its destroyed culture and infrastructure, and the loss of its self governance. The statistic that hit me hardest was the ‘percentage of the population killed or significantly wounded’. USA 0.9%, UK 3%, Poland 21%. It underwent such a program of ethnic cleansing that Poland is now still one of the most homogenous populations on the planet. The museum was incredibly moving and a highlight of the trip so far, in a moderately depressing way.
As for Gdańsk itself, the old town was quite lovely. It mostly escaped damage from Allied bombing but at the end of 1944 almost a million refuges from East Prussia poured into the city hoping to escape the Soviet Army. As the Soviets advanced a final battle raged and 90% of the city centre was destroyed by shelling and fire. It is a testament to the resurrection of post-war Poland that has seen the city rebuilt so impressively. It is hard to believe that most of the beautiful ‘old’ buildings are not original. The most impressive of these is St Mary’s Church, a massive brick construction that commenced in 1343, that is one of the two or three biggest brick churches in the world. Apparently. It is huge.
We had our usual day of ‘walking around a lot’, exploring nooks and crannies. Unfortunately this was interrupted by a spell of rain, for which neither of us was prepared for, so we took shelter in a coffee house. Fortuitously for us this served a fine version of the local cheesecake for whick Gdańsk is renowned. ‘We didn’t want to, but we had to…’ We also partook in our first Polish meal whilst here. The obligatory perogies were sampled (dumplings filled with a variety of fillings, mostly meat and cabbage) and other delicious plates of food involving various iterations of meat, potatoes and cabbage. It was very tasty, very filling, and very good value.
Our day to leave Gdańsk was Saturday and I managed to sneak in another ParkRun on our way. There are two runs here and we got up early and headed to the one to the southwest of the city centre in a suburb called Południe. It was in an area of parkland containing two lakes with the course being one and a half loops around them. The advertised parking was not an option as it was gated residents parking for the local appartments. We managed to find a corner of another carpark nearby to wedge ourselves into and went off to find the start. There were lots of long, lean club runners bouncing around, seemingly doing 3 0r 4 laps as a ‘quick warm up’, thus making me feel quite inadequate. It was hot already by 9am and my performance was no where near as good as last week’s PB in Świnoujście. It was a good job that the route was obvious because here there were no marshalls and no signs at all out on the course!
After Gdańsk we headed south, finally leaving the Baltic coast behind us and heading inland, vaguely following Poland’s most important waterway, the Vistula river, in Polish the Wisła, pronounced ‘Viswa’. We were heading to Malbork, ostensibly an itty-bitty place with nothing to see except it happens to be the site of the enormous Castle of the Teutonic Order of Malbork, the largest castle in the world measured by land area (52 acres), and a UNESCO World Heritage site. So there is definitely something to see here. It was constructed from handmade bricks over a period of 132 years and was completed in 1406, at which time it was the largest brick castle in the world. The Teutonic order were very much like the Knights Templar. Warrior monks who seemed to be creative at combining the teachings of Christianity with battling their enemies for power, territory and wealth. The castle changed hands many times over the centuries being variously occupied by Poland, Sweden, Prussia and Germany. Having undergone a long restoration in the 1800s it was significantly damaged again in WW2, and further by a fire in 1959. Another long restoration spaning 60 years was completed in 2016 and it is now absolutely magnificent.
We took a small detour off our vague trajectory to visit Malbork and it was well worth it. The entrance ticket for the castle included a very good audioguide, which walked us through a quite epic tour, talking us through the vast labyrinth of rooms, staircases and gateways. It automatically moved on to the next passage of information as we moved between stations and even though it was quite busy, everyone was moving in the same direction at about the same pace so it never got congested. Genius. Most impressive was the central heating system. Like the Romans, they had built underfloor heating ducts that were fed by hot air from furnace fires burning in lower levels. Far toastier in the winter than a damp, stone-built Scottish castle with a small log fire in the corner. We had a couple of nights here, our campsite having a great view of the castle across the river, an easy stroll away.
Next on the ‘wandering-south-through-Poland’ section of our travels was the city of Torún. Another place we had never heard of. Situated directly on the sandy banks of River Vistula and home to about 200,000 people, the old town of Torún is one of Poland’s oldest cities. It was first settled in the 8th century and then expanded in 1233 by our old friends, the Teutonic Knights. A lot of history happened, the city passed between lots of different factions and countries and finally was restored to Poland after WW 1. Although its people suffered many atrocities during the war, Torún’s buildings did not suffer any damage as a result of either of the world wars. It is now another UNESCO World Heritage Site with large sections of intact city wall, several beautiful churches, a ‘leaning tower’ (nowhere near as impressive as Pisa) and many surviving Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque buildings, none of which I took any photos of.
Its most famous son is Nicolaus Copernicus. Born in 1473 he was a polyglot, a polymath, obtained a doctorate in canon law, was a mathemetician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, govenor, diplomat and economist. In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money, and in 1519 he formulated a key economic principle. But his life’s work was the writing of a book in which he formulated (quite correctly!) that the earth revolved around the sun, not the sun around the earth. The book was published just before his death at the age of 70 in 1543 and it made a pioneering contribution to the scientic revolution. Makes one feel a trifle ineffectual, does in not?
Torún’s other contribution to Polish culture is gingerbread. Made here since the 1300s with excellent growing land for the wheat and a good supply of honey from the surrounding villages, it has become an important part of the history of this country. So much so, that a 17th-century epigram by poet Fryderyk Hoffman speaks of the four best things in Poland: “The vodka of Gdańsk, Toruń gingerbread, the ladies of Kraków, and the Warsaw shoes”. We bought a packet and ate it whilst sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree in the main square. It was tasty but a bit dry and would be much enhanced by a quick dunk into a cup of tea.
This place was also crawling with many large groups of school children, bused in from who knows where. In one tense moment we got wedged between two groups moving in different directions down a narrow side street. It was noisy, there was no room to manouver, none of them were looking where they were going. It’s a miracle we got out of there alive……