Visiting Gdansk Part 1

Yesterday’s wakeup call was at 0445. We had a quick breakfast, jumped on a tram to Warsaw Central Railway Station, and waited 30miuntes of our train to Gdansk! Yes, looking back that 30minutes would’ve been perfect for sleeping, but let’s not get bogged down on the past, okay?

So, we got on the train at 0615, and spent the next almost 3 hours on it. The whole idea of getting on this early train was to see the sunrise from the train, over the majestic Polish landscape, everything was perfect for the perfect sunrise, we even got seated on the Eastern side of the train! So, everything was great until we got outta Warsaw and realized it’s incredibly foggy! We watched the minutes pass on my phone, and we hardly saw any changes outside, when finally, the sun has risen it was the same gray shit as for the 30ish minutes before! Damn, that’s pure unluckiness for you. Oh, and one more unlucky thing… we were facing backwards on the rain which was as pleasant as anything – I can’t come up with a PC metaphor right now.

We got off the train at 0903, the whole city was just waking up. No, actually most people must’ve been up, and at work that’s why it was so quiet on a Friday. Our first thing was to go to a Starbucks and have some coffee… I know. That act raises a lot of questions…What? How? Why? But the simple answer for those questions is there was no heating on the train! –Not for the first hour and a half! I guess it has something to do with the fact, our train’s name was Neptun, which seems like a shotgun for not working properly. Hence when we got off the train, we were literally frozen, and I knew if I wanted to explore the whole city in one day, we would have to stop at a buncha cafés just to warm up. We were really unlucky with the weather, it was quite warm (around 12°C) but extremely windy, with some drizzling. We’ve even received a warning to our phones about possible electricity cutouts. So, these were the conditions for our city trip. After we’ve spent the same amount of money on two cups of coffee that Starbucks probably pays for two tons of coffee bean in Africa, we headed out into Narnia. I mean Gdansk. First, we walked to the downtown, to the Golden Gate. From there we headed East on Dluga street, on one of the most beautiful streets in the World! Gorgeous 4-5 story buildings all the way to the river. Oh, yes, the river. The River Vistula. The most beautiful street(?) or maybe most beautiful riverbank on the World! Simply beautiful! Fantastic huge buildings, nice little cobalt streets right next to the river, which was slowly flowing thru the whole beautiful oldtown thru the exciting shipyards into the Baltic Sea. We followed the flow and headed North. We crossed the river on a turning bridge – not quite sure about the name, but the point of the bridge is, when some ship comes, the whole bridge turns until it becomes parallel with the riverbank and then ships can pass by. Because of the slow river flow there are many islands on the river especially in Gdansk; which also means not using a map while wondering around in the city can be confusing… Yeah, so back to the story; we crossed the bridge and found ourselves on the Granary Island, which seemed to be the place of the fanciest apartments and hotels in the whole city. From the island we got a perfect view on the wooden scary thing called Crane. I believe it was used to get the seeds of the ships that came from “inner” Poland. From the Granary Island we went East to another island, just to enter another island North from Granary Island – that island is where you can find the Gdansk sign and the Amber Eye as well. Sounds chaotic, right? It was chaotic trust me. And from the Gdansk sign we went back on land on a bridge that lifts one of its sides up when a ship comes. We were lucky to see the actions on those babies several times thru our stay. After this little walk in the city, it was finally time to enter the apartment we rented for the night. It was a gamechanger since we were carrying all our stuff with us for at least 12 hours by the time.

The most beautiful street-question mark on the World.
See? It's not really a street is it?

That's me on the picture on Dluga steet,
and Sári's fingers holding the picture of me on Dluga street
on Dluga street.

Unfortunately, it seems like this blog would be too long for one read, so I’ll post the second part of our first day in Gdansk tomorrow!

Till then, take care and have a great day – unless you read this in the evening, then have a great evening!

Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow,

Almos