Gdansk; Monday, 21 July, 2008

The original plan, as set out last October when I booked it, was that Monday would be a relaxing day with a gentle journey mid-morning up to Luton airport to catch an early afternoon flight to Gdansk. I even changed the day I was flying out as Mondays’ flights were at 13:30, as apposed to Tuesdays which were at 08:00. Then just six weeks before I was due to leave I got an e-mail from Wizz letting me know that my flight time had been changed to 08:00, checkin at 06:00. From Luton this left me with three options. A very expensive cab ride in the early hours of the morning. A night bus and night train at an even earlier hour of the morning, of bite the bullet, pay the extra and stay overnight in Luton.

As so it was that I awoke at 5:30 to the sound of the first departure of the morning roaring past the window of the Ibis hotel Luton Airport. After the bleary-eyed stumble through the shower I checked my bag (for about the 40th time), checked out of the hotel and walked the short distance up the hill to the airport.

One very smooth checkin, uneventful flight (save for the choir of screaming babies on board), transfer to the hotel and chekin and luggage drop later I found myself in the centre of Gdansk having a wander around the streets.

The entire city was levelled during World War II so it is amazing to see a virtually intact 18th century city with countless churches and riverside buildings. From the ruins of the war every building was reconstructed from it’s rubble and its all credit to the people of Gdansk that they have rebuilt such a beautiful city.

I stopped for a quick late lunch and then boarded a ferry for the short journey down the river towards where it joins the Baltic at Westerplatte. This small spit of land has the unique distinction of being the very last part of Poland to fall to the Nazi’s, holding out for nearly two months, and also the very last part of Poland to be liberated. It is also the location were, at dawn, on September 1st 1939 the warship Schleswig-Holstein launched an attack, signalling the start of the invasion of Poland, and with it the start of World War II. The whole site was destroyed during the course of the war, and, unlike Gdansk itself, has not been rebuilt. Instead the ruins of the bombed out buildings are still where they were when the guns finally fell silent in May 1945. Nature is slowly taking back the site, but, if anything, this makes the ruins look all the more eerie.

The site is well worth a visit, though it has to be said, not during a massive thunderstorm that started just as I arrived. The rain was of such ferocity that it was obvious that it could only continue like that for a few moments, but just when you thought that it managed to find even more fury and increase the pounding. With lightning bolts cracking around me (at one point the flash of lightning and sound of thunder were simultaneous) I decided that hiding under a tree was a bad idea and instead ran to a nearby bar to shelter under its awning, but just this short run I got soaked through, and my bag was saturated (to the extent that my guidebook was unusable for several hours before it dried out)

Eventually, the rain petered out into a light drizzle, which was good enough for looking around the site. After having had an explore I caught the bus back to the centre of town and stopped off at the 24 hour post office to get some stamps for postcards before grabbing a bite to eat.

After dinner I had another wander through the old town up to the historic dockyards. In my mind I had expected a much wider approach, perhaps a grand boulevard leading to the internationally famous gates of the Gdansk shipyards. Instead, the gates that feature in almost as many stories of the fall of communism as the scenes of the Berlin Wall being breached, are down a small residential street. Looking at them I could vividly remember the news stories from the late 1980’s when the world watched as the Solidarity movement in Poland finally forced the collapse of the communist government. Just looking at the gates I could visualise in my mind the moustached face of Lech Walesa being carried on the shoulders of his colleagues through the gates and on to become the first democratically elected president of Poland.

Just to the side of the shipyard gates is a reminder that the struggle was not without loss. Whilst the campaign of the 1980’s lead to the fall of communism, similar action in the 1970’s lead to the deaths of over 40 striking shipyard workers when the army went in to break up the strike and Marshall law was imposed. Today, three high crosses tower over the site, and plaques on the walls remind visitors of the sacrifice that those strikers made.

With the sun rapidly setting, and the light drizzle slowly increasing, I decided it was time to head back to the hotel and try to catch up on some sleep.