Last Post - The Pause

It turns out that the Russian habit of pausing to reflect before the start of a journey is not mirrored by a similar pause at the end.  One has arrived and one gets on with doing whatever made one come.  But not rounding things off seems somehow wrong.  Back in Oxford, the past month seems slightly unbelievable.  Did we really see the wonders of Red Square?  Did we really inhale Moscow's worst ever smog?  Did we really rip over the Gulf of Finland in a hydrofoil to a magical, fountain-filled palace?  Did we really walk in the blustery wind on the shores of the Baltic?  Did we really eat dumplings with two delightful Lithuanians?  Did we really go bowling in Minsk?

We have a great treasure-box of memories and we've also learned a huge amount.  How you can't understand the Second World War without also seeing it from the east - and what a truly world war it was, blighting lives from Liverpool to Minsk to Kaunas to Washington (the impact goes on).  What an incredibly rarity the last twenty years have been, in terms of relative peace in Europe.  The consequent potential - despite its many defects - of the EU.  The awful misery of the totalitarian soviet system and the ever-present danger of freedom being eroded again, this time through the corruption of capitalism.  All this we're only just beginning to understand - and we'll journey on.

Thanks to...

... all the people who made this trip and the experiences it included possible and so incredible: Darya; Marina and Hartmut; Andrei; Katya; Sasha and Elena; Tatiana; Douglas and Ruth; Max, Elena and Yuri; Minvydas and Tautvydas; Dejan.

Some Stats

5 countries
9 cities
5 art galleries
4 museums
26 cathedrals
3 synagogues
1 mosque (from a distance)
1,000,000 pancakes
ditto pierogi
3 former homes of writers (1 closed)
3 boat trips
1 spit
8 palaces
1 Kremlin
2 monasteries
5 currencies
1 sea

Home!

Oxford and 'normality' ('humped zebra crossing' said a sign at Paddington - what would we have made of that in Russian?!).  We stopped over in Berlin with our wonderful friends Marina and Hartmut - it was so good to see Gotzkowskystrasse again and catch up with them.

Goodbye Gdansk!

Off to Berlin!

Back in Gdansk

We got stuck in a long traffic queue on our way back into Gdansk, but made it due to some nifty navigating.  The full moon hung over us, pale as dried honesty.  Very nice dinner at an Italian restaurant in ul. Długa.  And tomorrow we head back to Berlin.

Kashubia

From Karwia we drove through the area known as Kashubia, to its capital Kartuzy (named after the Carthusians who founded a monastery there?).  The Kashubians are a western Slav people, devoutly catholic, and their language is close to the original Pomeranian.  The countryside is beautiful - rolling hills, pine forests, lakes.

Wild Baltic

The Baltic is the colour of unpolished silver.  We went north from Hel and had more coffee at Karwia, on the north Polish coast.  Brave souls were actually in the sea.  Lovely walk up to the beach through pine woods.

To Hel and Back

Today we hired a car and set off to explore the Polish countryside.  We drove around the Gdansk suburbs for about an hour, as there were NO signs.  Eventually we got going north.  Coffee at Władysławowo.  Then along the Hel Peninsula to Hel itself - a seaside town right at the end of the spit of land that stretches out into the Baltic opposite Gdansk.  VERY windy.

Full Moon

Last night we strollled down to the waterfront and had dinner in ul. Długa, rounded off with digestifs at the Café Literacka in ul. Mariacka.  Gdansk v. atmospheric - magical.

Proustian Waffles

Fourteen years ago, when I arrived for my secondment in Brussels and was looking for a place to live, I remember wondering why I was making life so difficult for myself - not just doing law, but doing law in French!  I wondered how I could make things even more difficult and imagined this would be doing chemical engineering in Polish in Gdansk.  Brussels was summed up by the smell of waffles in the snow.  Here in Gdansk today I saw a waffles ('gofry') stall.  The waffle connection brought the Brussels thought back and fourteen years slipped away.

As a footnote, I was wrong.  Gdansk is a delight.  Though the chemical engineering in Polish might have been a bit of a challenge.

Palaces of Post

We've been visiting post offices in Warsaw, Minsk, Moscow (Nick), St. Petersburg, Vilnius and now here in Gdansk.  We've seen some incredible ex-soviet Palaces of Post - huge covered amphitheatres of unattended counters, unfathomable ticketing systems, unsmiling officials and marble columns.  Buying a stamp is a major production.  But they're part of real life and we wouldn't have missed them.

Warsaw

Minsk

Gdansk

Glówne Miasto

Afternoon spent sight-seeing in the Glówne Miasto: Żurow Gdański (Gdansk crane), Brama Chebnicka (Gate of Bread-Sellers), Brama Zielona (Green Gate), ul. Długa and Długi Targ, Dwór Artusa (Arthur's Court), the Fontanna Neptuna, the Złota Kamienica, the Town Hall, Dom Uphagena, Brama Złota (Golden Gate), Dwór św. Jerzego (St. George's Court) and Brama Wyźynna (Upland Gate).  We went into two Basilicas - Kósciól Mariacki and Kósciól św. Mikołaja.  The former is beautiful and features brilliant statues and an extraordinary astronomical clock.  It's a fabulous, energising city.

Dwór Artusa -
Renaissance stove showing Lutheran sympathies

Fine Moustaches

Gingerbread and Amber

Lovely lunch on the waterfront - I bought some gingerbread from the shop on ul. Mariacka where Copernicus's 'house-keeper', Anna Schilling, used to live, to go with our coffee.  Later, we bought some amber - turns out the German word for this is 'Bernstein'.

Spruce

In another etymological news item, it emerges that 'spruce' comes from the Polish 'z Prus' ('from Prussia') - the good merchants of Hanseatic Gdansk used to export tons of the stuff.

Lenin Shipyards and Solidarność

Before lunch, we went out to the former Lenin Shipyards, so famously on tv at the beginning of the 1980s as the scene of the Solidarność strikes.  On the way, we happened upon a 'Roads to Freedom' underground exhibition - an excellent, moving account of that historical moment.  Watching Wałęsca, Jaruzelski, John Paul II etc brought it all back.  It's hard to credit absolutely the exhibition's claim that the Solidarity strikes 'led directly' to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but undoubtedly they showed (a) that something could be done and (b) that communist totalitarianism did not go completely unchallenged.  Very poignant to see the 'dominos' of the former iron curtain states that fell - and we appreciated again the exceptionality of Gorbachev.  There's a monument down at the shipyards themselves - incongruously we found ourselves there at the same time as three nuns.

Fabulous Gdansk

Wow!  I was imagining a grim, industrial city but Gdansk is an exquisite array of Renaissance / Hanseatic houses, the sunshine made crisp by the Baltic breeze.  We spent most of the morning on admin things - our last Palace of Post, hiring a car and visiting bookshops (English Unlimited and Empik).  In the course of it, I learned my Russian GCSE grade - A* - yay!

Białystok → Gdansk

We trained.  9 hours in a slightly malodorous train through wonderful Polish countryside - too bad I slept through the Mazurian Lakes.  Chopin was from Mazuria and presumably that's where the word 'mazurka' comes from.  Now in the splendid Dom Aktora in Gdansk.

Nick On Piano

Nick's been trying out the pianos in various hotel lobbies.  He sounds really great and the barmaid here loves him.

Ho Hum

Waiting to see if we are driving or training to Gdansk.