Polska

We have been looking forward to December since May. That's when our friends the Kennedy's finalized their plans to come and visit us! Besides just being able to hang out and have fun with them we have been excited about taking an adults only trip with John and Larisa. After discussing several different destinations we settled on Gdansk, Poland. Larisa is an awesome trip planner and she found us a great deal on the flight as well as a really nice hotel and had some great ideas on things to see and do in Gdansk.

We got there about dinner time and got our little, tiny rental car (Larisa said that the rental car company said no luggage would fit in the back) and found our way to our lovely hotel, Villa Angela. Before we left home I had looked up the hotel so I could leave a number for our sitters in case they needed to reach us. It was interesting/funny to read that the Villa Angela is "gay friendly" and we joked a lot about it, but there wasn't even on gay sighting during our stay. Anyway, the hotel was quite nice and really pretty. The receptionist, Berte, who seemed to be working the entire time we were there, was sweet and helpful. There was a resident cat, who liked to hang around at breakfast and get whatever food the guests would send its way. The breakfast was different there. Besides the expected things like cereal, toast, and yogurt there was potato salad, cold fish, ham, and some honey that smelled funny and tasted even funnier.

Jared and I outside our hotel

We asked Berte for a recommendation for a restaurant with authentic Polish food our first evening. She gave us directions to an authentic Polish restaurant in the old part of the city. Thanks to the GPS we were able to find it pretty easily and then found a spot to park. Before we had even stopped the car a police van with three policemen pulled up behind us and called John over. They told him that he had to pay 50 zloty. John asked why and they asked for his license, registration, and passport. Once the officer had them he told him again that he had to pay 50 zloty. At this point we had been in Poland for about an hour, we had NO zloty and were standing in the cold with no idea what was going on. Thankfully, one of the policemen spoke German and John speaks great German, so he asked again what was going on. But every time John would ask what was going on he would get no response other than that they would keep asking for 50 zloty. John wouldn't pay if they weren't even going to tell us what we were paying for so they pulled a "boot" out of their van and put it on the car. Only 50 zloty would get them to take it off. At this point John was really upset and the police officer looked like he was about to beat John up or arrest him or both. Jared walked over and talked to one of the officers; he gave them his business card and asked what we could do to get the boot taken off the car. They were still asking for 50 zloty. So Jared asked for directions to an ATM and withdrew the money, came back and paid them, then they wrote us a ticket, took off the boot and drove away. They didn't even make us move the car, so I'm not so sure why we needed to pay a fine if it was alright to park there for the rest of the night. It was really scary and not how I wanted to start our trip. At the time it made me think that the rest of our trip would not be very great. Later we realized that 50 zloty is about $20 and we should probably have just paid and moved on even though it was such a total SCAM!

But after that we found the restaurant and enjoyed some good food. The restaurant was decorated with boars heads, lots and lots of boars heads. We tried many different types of pierogis, which reminded me of ravioli, little dough pockets filled with meat, or cheese, or vegetables, or fruit. Probably they could be filled with almost any yummy things; the ones I tried were potato and cottage cheese and were so delicious. Despite the great food (and the boars heads) we mostly talked about what had happened with the corrupt police officers. From that point on in the trip every silly thing that one of us did would be followed by someone else demanding "50 zloty!"

The next morning we sampled the funny breakfast foods and then set out for the city again. Learning from our experience the first night we parked in a clearly marked parking space and went back often to feed the meter. The first place we went was the Amber Museum, where I learned that Gdansk is the amber capital of the world. Actually, first we went to the museum gift shop which was filled with beautiful amber jewelry that kind of spoiled me for all the other amber jewelry we would see later at stores around town. But then we toured the museum and learned about how amber is formed, where it's found, and the history of amber in the region. It was really interesting and there were a lot of neat things to see. My favorite thing was a tree with amber leaves; it looked to me like the tree of life does in my imagination.

I loved these ships made of amber

Then we went to a little imbiss and had some really delicious food. I had pierogis again, this time they were filled with potatoes and what looked like cabbage, and some really great potatoes that I could eat every day they were so good! Jared had a pork steak that was good, but not as good as the ones we eat here at home. While we were eating we noticed a homeless man standing by the imbiss asking for food. The imbiss workers gave him a sandwich and he was also happy to eat what we couldn't finish. It was really sad to see him cold and hungry and I was glad that we were able to give him something.

After our lunch we decided to walk around the old city and see what we could find. I love a trip with a good outline, but plenty of room to stop and do whatever fun thing comes along. We looked in a few jewelry stores and then stopped to look in the window of a candy store. What a surprise when we saw a live candy-making show! There were three Polish guys making candy, it looked like taffy at first when it was on the counter. Then they put the candy on a hook and twisted and pulled it for what to me seemed like a really long time, my arms would have been screaming and those guys must be really strong. They rolled red, green, and yellow candy into different shapes and then stacked them all together and rolled them some more. At this point the candy was about eight inches thick, but the three guys working together rolled it thinner and thinner until the candy was about an inch across. As long as they kept the candy moving it stayed soft and pliable, but once they left it alone it got hard and brittle really quickly. Then they cut the candy into little pieces with amazing designs inside. The candy we watched them make had a strawberry design inside, but they had all kinds of fruit designs and flavors as well as ones that had hearts or said I Love You. It was really cool and we bought candy to bring home to all the kids. They gave us each a big piece of candy from the batch they were working on; it was amazing, still warm and so sweet. Can you tell I really liked that candy store?

This picture is the beginnings of the candy making; next they wrapped the entire thing in red candy before rolling it out again.

Later we went for a walk along the river and found a medieval crane that was used in the past to lift loads from the boats on the river. We walked around to the other side of the crane and found that we could go inside and explore the crane museum. I learned that there were huge wheels inside the crane that when turned would lift the heavy ship loads off the boats. The way they turned those wheels back in the 1400s was with manpower, actual men running on the wheels like huge hamsters on huge hamster wheels. We made our way through the museum and after a while Jared and I found a steep narrow staircase that led up to the wheels. There wasn't a sign saying not to (as if we could have read it anyway) or a rope keeping us out so Jared climbed right up and started running. Then he went back and found John so they could run together, one on each wheel. We had not payed the extra fee to take photos in the museum, but Larisa turned off her flash and took a sneaky picture of two. Then we went back downstairs and Jared asked if we could climb on the wheels and the museum worker said YES! Of course we had to go back up and do it again and this time everyone got a turn to run on the wheels and get a photo taken.

Then we spent some time shopping for amber jewelry, on what John and Jared named "Amber Street" because it was all jewelry stores except for one very small bar that makes really bad hot chocolate. After seeing all the awesome pieces in the museum store it was hard for me to find something that I liked as much, but I ended up with some pretty dangly earrings, and a beautiful ring, and Jared surprised me with a bracelet that he snuck and bought when he was supposed to be looking for a bathroom.

It was really cold the entire day so we found a bakery and sat down for some more hot chocolate (I think we had hot chocolate four separate times on this trip) and tried some Polish baked goods. It was really cool to see Jared ordering, he's always really adventurous when we are out, but really we couldn't communicate in Poland the way we can in Germany. There was a lot of pointing at the yummy stuff and hoping that he was understood. We tried babka, chocolate torte that was ruined because they added raisins and some yummy cookies with jam inside.

When we got back to the hotel we met in the breakfast room to play Spades. Oh Spades, not my favorite game, but it was so fun to play it with my favorite friends. We asked for another good recommendation for dinner. The receptionist told us about a pizza place that was just down the road, so close we could walk to it, really. About a mile and a half later we finally got there, I guess that close enough to walk means something different in Poland. The pizza was good; the cheese tasted a little different, but still good. This restaurant was decorated in an interesting way. Every picture was the same, a fire, and the pizza boxes had a witch on them and there were broomsticks nailed to the walls.

The next morning we had another different breakfast before heading out to enjoy our last day in Poland. Our first stop was the Roads to Freedom exhibit, which is about Poland and the Solidarity Movement. It was a small place, but I learned a lot about history of Poland and how hard life was for their people while they were under Soviet rule. There were some really great displays that did a great job explaining what the whole Solidarity movement was about. I had no idea that the events in Poland had such an effect on the other communist countries in Eastern Europe. It's hard to believe that only 20 years ago Poland was part of the Soviet Union.

Jared at the Roads to Freedom exhibit in a display depicting what a grocery store would have looked like during the Soviet rule of Poland

We stopped for lunch at a Turkish restaurant, a departure from Polish food, and had some Turkish food. I had stuffed eggplant which was alright, but I was drooling over Jared and Larisa's Kebab meat over French fries. It looked and smelled so good; I really wished I had ordered the same thing because I know I won't see that kind of Kebab here in Germany.

Up to that point we had mostly been in the middle of town, but for the end of our trip we drove to the Westerplatte that is outside of town. The drive there showed some of the Poland that I imagine must have been built by communists - tall apartment building after tall apartment building that looked sad and boring. There were crumbling factories and roads full of pot holes. At the beach there were slabs of cement all along the shore line. What once had been an ocean resort area is now so, so far from beautiful.

The history behind the Westerplatte memorial is the story of the 182 Polish men who held off the German Navy for a week during World War II. The battle marks the official start of the Second World War. There were about 2,600 Germans fighting against this much smaller Polish force. The Polish surrendered after a week because of low food and water supplies. But even against a much larger force only 14 of the Polish troops were killed. There was a small graveyard for the men who died there and the memorial which was impressive and beautiful. It sits at the top of a hill overlooking the ocean and it tall and looks so strong but it made me feel sad to think of the men fighting there to defend their country which would be invaded first by the Germans and then given over to Soviet rule after World War II.

Larisa, John and I at the entrance to the Westerplatte memorial area

The Polish people were so friendly and kind. Twice I saw restaurant owners giving food to homeless people instead of sending them away hungry. The people at the hotel were so helpful and sweet. The shopkeepers, the museum workers, everyone (well, maybe except for the police, but I think one of them felt bad about what they were doing) was helpful and kind. I loved our time in Gdansk and could have stayed for much longer. What a great trip and wonderful experiences we are able to have because we've been blessed to live in Europe.

Do zobaczenia! (Good bye!)