Post by kaima on Jul 24, 2008 6:29:10 GMT -7
This is the companion piece that follows the "Frugal Traveler" article in the "Wilna - Vilnius" thread.
To read the extensive blogging / commentary that follows the article, go tohttp://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/shipyards-to-sheratons-in-gdansk/index.html
It was threatening rain when I walked unchecked into the Gdansk shipyards last Friday, my eyes focused on the beautiful jungle of industrial machinery up ahead. Elaborate steel cranes, painted green, loomed over the rusty carcasses of half-built ships, and inside the sagging brick warehouses, I imagined, were heavy and mysterious tools. My camera batteries were fully charged, and I was hoping to spend the day photographing these historic shipyards, birthplace of the Solidarity movement, which brought down Polish Communism in the 1980s, and now nearly bankrupt.
The security guard running after me had other ideas. I was only a couple of hundred yards into the vast complex when he stopped me and explained, in vociferous Polish that didn’t need translation, that I wasn’t welcome. And so I turned around and walked away from the Gdansk of my imagination — a postindustrial nightmare wrought in concrete and steel — and toward the Gdansk of reality, a much brighter place.
Gdansk is centered on the Main Town, a neighborhood of arched passageways, gilded ornamentation and stately brick buildings that testify to the city’s wealth in the 16th and 17th centuries. Church bells ring out the hours, buskers embark on indie-folk careers in the cobblestone streets and children slurp ice cream cones and clutch helium balloons along the waterfront promenade. Gdansk, it turns out, is a tourist haven, the anchor of three Baltic Sea towns — Sopot and Gdynia are the others — that make up what might well be termed the Polish Riviera. Outside of Poles and a few Germans, who knew this was such a hot spot?
You, my readers, did. Of the 24,000 who voted on my destination this week, more than 56 percent chose Gdansk over Copenhagen and Hamburg (thanks in part to Trojmiasto.pl, a local Web guide that rallied the pro-Gdansk crowd). “It’s a delightful place, full of old world charm, that hasn’t been American-ized yet like many other parts of Europe,” wrote Moe. Others extolled its “wonderful architecture” and “interesting history”.
Gdansk was also, many of you noted, inexpensive — though that, too, is changing. Since Poland joined the European Union on May 1, 2004, the Polish currency has been steadily gaining strength, going from 4.9 zlotys to the euro to 3.22. (That’s 2.03 zlotys to the dollar, down from 4 zlotys.) Unfortunately, this meant that many of the quaint and comfortable hotels near the Main Town were no longer in my price range.
The “In Your Pocket” guidebook, whose Gdansk edition I downloaded as a PDF from inyourpocket.com (and which I read during my overnight Eurolines bus trip from Vilnius, for 135 Lithuanian lita, or about $62 at 2.17 litas to the dollar), directed me to the Willa Jolanta (www.willajolanta.pl), a modern house in a residential quarter about a mile from the Main Town. My spacious apartment, one of six with kitchenette, satellite TV, Wi-Fi and private bathroom, lacked Old World charm, but cost just 180 zlotys a night, or 162 with a discount for staying a full week. And the owners did my laundry — free!
A fruit stand.A fruit stand. Photographs See Slide Show »
That milelong trek to the Main Town might seem like a lot, but walking it day after day got me familiar with the city. On my way down Kartuska Street, I’d stop at a cukiernia (bakery) for a pączek (jelly doughnut, 1.50 zlotys) or a 4 zloty basket of blackberries from a sidewalk fruit vendor. If I was in a hurry — or if, as was often the case, it was raining — I’d just hop the creaky but reliable tram (3 zlotys per ride, 12 zlotys for a 24-hour pass), and five minutes later I’d be soaking up Gdansk’s 1,011-year history and culture.
Walk through the Highland Gate and you’ll pass the city’s most important treasures along the Royal Way. A former prison now houses twin museums, one devoted to amber, the other to torture (26 Targ Wêglowy; 48-58-301-4733; admission 10 zlotys). The towering brick Town Hall is home to the Gdansk History Museum (46/47 Ulica Dluga; 48-58-767-9100; admission 8 zlotys). And the 1549 bronze fountain statue of Neptune has become a popular meeting place. Even among the throngs of souvenir-seeking tourists, it’s easy to be amazed that all these glories have survived centuries of change and turbulence.
Except that they haven’t. The Main Town should not to be confused with the Old Town, which was leveled and rebuilt, Soviet style, after World War II. The history museum had numerous photos of what Gdansk looked like in 1945, after the Nazi invasion and years of Allied bombing: near-total ruin. Ninety percent of Gdansk’s Main Town was rubble, and it took decades of craftsmanship to achieve the historic-looking neighborhood visitors see today. How exactly that was achieved was left unclear by the museum, which had minimal English translations.
Video
In fact, Gdansk’s history seemed more a buoyant atmosphere than a scholarly pursuit, a backdrop for the city’s surprisingly vibrant cultural life. The week I visited, the International Street & Open-Air Theatres Festival (FETA) was taking place, and troupes from 14 countries, including Canada and Iran, were performing comedic, pyrotechnic and just plain abstract shows (mostly free!) all around the Main Town. Les Sages Fous, the Canada duo, had a particularly arresting act in which they steered a steampunk boat down Ulica Dluga, encountering a baffling array of deep-sea puppet creatures. And Teatr Wybrzeze (2 Ulica Sw. Ducha; 48-58-301-7021; tickets 20 to 30 zlotys) featured a production of “The Tin Drum,” by the Nobel winner Günter Grass, who was born in Gdansk, then known as the Free City of Danzig.
For a moment, Gdansk felt as it might have in the 16th century, when Shakespearean companies would swing through town, entertaining the masses — and the occasional Grand Tourist.
High culture aside, Gdansk was a fine place simply to eat, drink and make merry. I spent one happy evening at the cozy Café Kamienica (37/39 Ulica Mariacka; 48-58-301-1230; enjoying a brandy-spiked latte (12 zlotys) while rain slicked the narrow sidewalks outside. Another evening, I cuddled up with a plate of pork chops, cabbage salad and a dark beer (20 zlotys) in Jadalnia Pod Zielonym Smokiem’s festive, smoky basement (125 Ulica Szeroka; 48-58-320-7865; .
Bar Mleczny TurystycznyLunch at Bar Mleczny Turystyczny.PhotographsSee Slide Show »
For lunch, I went for chicken cutlets and mashed potatoes (13 zlotys) at the bargain-basement Communistic cafeteria Bar Mleczny Turystyczny (8/10 Ulica Szeroka; 48-58-301-6013).
My toast.My kielbasa toast.Photographs See Slide Show »
Another time, at a waterfront stand near a future Hilton hotel, I ate toast smeared with lard and topped with sautéed onions, kielbasa and sliced pickles. It was the best — and most disgusting — thing I’ve ever eaten, and it only cost 9.50 zlotys.
Gdansk also served as a gateway to maritime pleasures. Sopot, a small beach resort about 20 minutes north by SKM train (skm.trojmiasto.pl; round trip 6.20 zlotys), is the party spot, where Poles sun themselves during the day by the Baltic (shockingly calm when I saw it), then indulge in beer, vodka and fried fish when it gets dark.
But even Sopot has its touch of history: like other classic spa towns in northern Europe, it was founded in the early 19th century for the wealthy. And up through World War II, it was a favored getaway for German officers, whose affection for it might have earned it a reprieve from destruction. Its fortunes, however, declined after the war, and by 1994, when reader Diana visited, “Sopot had the ghostly feel of a European vacation spot that was once glorious.”
Now, like Gdansk, Sopot is resurgent. A 93 million-euro project to redevelop the city center means construction cranes and torn-up streets are as common as bikini thongs and Belgian waffles. A high-end Sheraton (www.sheraton.pl/sopot) just opened alongside the Free City-era Grand Hotel (which counted Hitler and de Gaulle among its guests, and is now a Sofitel). At the end of Europe’s longest wooden pier, the 1,690-foot Molo, you can hear pounding dance music emanating from the beachside Copacabana club — the beat of progress.
Józef K.The cafe Józef K. Photographs See Slide Show »
And yet Sopot also has an intellectual, bohemian side. At Józef K. (4/1b Ulica Kosciuszki; 48-58-550-49-35; , a cafe named for Kafka’s luckless protagonist, the décor captured perfectly Kafka’s world: typewriters and antique TVs hid in the corners, a tree sprouted from a table, and flea market paintings were adorned with cartoon thought bubbles. Over several hours, I nursed a dark beer and flipped through a Taschen book on the history of art from the cafe library.
Around the corner was Galeria Kinsky (10 Ulica Kosciuszki; 48-695-95-1743), a two-story bar in what was once the home of Klaus Kinski, the Sopot-born German actor. Surrounded by red velvet curtains, threadbare Victorian divans and two Polish women I met on Couchsurfing.com, I could easily imagine that not much had changed since the mad movie star’s death in 1991.
Still, after days of indulging in history and nights of indulging in less ennobling activities, I desperately wanted to get close to the shipyards. The multimedia Solidarity Museum (1 Ulica Doki; 48-58-769-2920; admission, 6 zlotys) offered a great primer on the shipyard protests of the 1980s, after an electrician by the name of Lech Walesa led workers in a strike that created the Solidarity movement, forced concessions from the government and knocked the first cracks in Polish Communism. But it didn’t sate me.
So, on Sunday, after another jelly doughnut breakfast, I took to the water, renting a red kayak (15 Ulica Zabi Kruk; 48-58-305-7310; two hours, 20 zlotys) and paddling down Gdansk’s waterways, past the promenade and its restored facades, which I saw from below, much as an ancient Baltic trader might have.
The shipyards.The shipyards.Photographs See Slide Show »
Farther downstream, the canal opened wide, and there, across the wind-rippled waters, were the shipyards. The rusty cranes looked like families of prehistoric animals, with monstrous specimens looming over babies that themselves perched over sheds and gas tanks. I considered crossing the small bay and going ashore, but given that this was probably illegal, I simply snapped a few zoomed photos and turned southeast, toward the narrower channels.
A family of swans.A family of swans.Photographs See Slide Show »
Soon I was floating through canals shrouded in reeds, paved with lily pads and populated with waterfowl. There were tiny black ducks with bright orange beaks, mottled gray-and-white birds and a brood of swans whose patriarch circled me threateningly until I’d put some distance between myself and his flock. This was not exactly the Gdansk I’d planned on seeing, but it didn’t really matter anymore — that figment of my imagination paled in comparison to the real Gdansk, the one I wouldn’t have found without my readers to guide me.
To read the extensive blogging / commentary that follows the article, go tohttp://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/shipyards-to-sheratons-in-gdansk/index.html
It was threatening rain when I walked unchecked into the Gdansk shipyards last Friday, my eyes focused on the beautiful jungle of industrial machinery up ahead. Elaborate steel cranes, painted green, loomed over the rusty carcasses of half-built ships, and inside the sagging brick warehouses, I imagined, were heavy and mysterious tools. My camera batteries were fully charged, and I was hoping to spend the day photographing these historic shipyards, birthplace of the Solidarity movement, which brought down Polish Communism in the 1980s, and now nearly bankrupt.
The security guard running after me had other ideas. I was only a couple of hundred yards into the vast complex when he stopped me and explained, in vociferous Polish that didn’t need translation, that I wasn’t welcome. And so I turned around and walked away from the Gdansk of my imagination — a postindustrial nightmare wrought in concrete and steel — and toward the Gdansk of reality, a much brighter place.
Gdansk is centered on the Main Town, a neighborhood of arched passageways, gilded ornamentation and stately brick buildings that testify to the city’s wealth in the 16th and 17th centuries. Church bells ring out the hours, buskers embark on indie-folk careers in the cobblestone streets and children slurp ice cream cones and clutch helium balloons along the waterfront promenade. Gdansk, it turns out, is a tourist haven, the anchor of three Baltic Sea towns — Sopot and Gdynia are the others — that make up what might well be termed the Polish Riviera. Outside of Poles and a few Germans, who knew this was such a hot spot?
You, my readers, did. Of the 24,000 who voted on my destination this week, more than 56 percent chose Gdansk over Copenhagen and Hamburg (thanks in part to Trojmiasto.pl, a local Web guide that rallied the pro-Gdansk crowd). “It’s a delightful place, full of old world charm, that hasn’t been American-ized yet like many other parts of Europe,” wrote Moe. Others extolled its “wonderful architecture” and “interesting history”.
Gdansk was also, many of you noted, inexpensive — though that, too, is changing. Since Poland joined the European Union on May 1, 2004, the Polish currency has been steadily gaining strength, going from 4.9 zlotys to the euro to 3.22. (That’s 2.03 zlotys to the dollar, down from 4 zlotys.) Unfortunately, this meant that many of the quaint and comfortable hotels near the Main Town were no longer in my price range.
The “In Your Pocket” guidebook, whose Gdansk edition I downloaded as a PDF from inyourpocket.com (and which I read during my overnight Eurolines bus trip from Vilnius, for 135 Lithuanian lita, or about $62 at 2.17 litas to the dollar), directed me to the Willa Jolanta (www.willajolanta.pl), a modern house in a residential quarter about a mile from the Main Town. My spacious apartment, one of six with kitchenette, satellite TV, Wi-Fi and private bathroom, lacked Old World charm, but cost just 180 zlotys a night, or 162 with a discount for staying a full week. And the owners did my laundry — free!
A fruit stand.A fruit stand. Photographs See Slide Show »
That milelong trek to the Main Town might seem like a lot, but walking it day after day got me familiar with the city. On my way down Kartuska Street, I’d stop at a cukiernia (bakery) for a pączek (jelly doughnut, 1.50 zlotys) or a 4 zloty basket of blackberries from a sidewalk fruit vendor. If I was in a hurry — or if, as was often the case, it was raining — I’d just hop the creaky but reliable tram (3 zlotys per ride, 12 zlotys for a 24-hour pass), and five minutes later I’d be soaking up Gdansk’s 1,011-year history and culture.
Walk through the Highland Gate and you’ll pass the city’s most important treasures along the Royal Way. A former prison now houses twin museums, one devoted to amber, the other to torture (26 Targ Wêglowy; 48-58-301-4733; admission 10 zlotys). The towering brick Town Hall is home to the Gdansk History Museum (46/47 Ulica Dluga; 48-58-767-9100; admission 8 zlotys). And the 1549 bronze fountain statue of Neptune has become a popular meeting place. Even among the throngs of souvenir-seeking tourists, it’s easy to be amazed that all these glories have survived centuries of change and turbulence.
Except that they haven’t. The Main Town should not to be confused with the Old Town, which was leveled and rebuilt, Soviet style, after World War II. The history museum had numerous photos of what Gdansk looked like in 1945, after the Nazi invasion and years of Allied bombing: near-total ruin. Ninety percent of Gdansk’s Main Town was rubble, and it took decades of craftsmanship to achieve the historic-looking neighborhood visitors see today. How exactly that was achieved was left unclear by the museum, which had minimal English translations.
Video
In fact, Gdansk’s history seemed more a buoyant atmosphere than a scholarly pursuit, a backdrop for the city’s surprisingly vibrant cultural life. The week I visited, the International Street & Open-Air Theatres Festival (FETA) was taking place, and troupes from 14 countries, including Canada and Iran, were performing comedic, pyrotechnic and just plain abstract shows (mostly free!) all around the Main Town. Les Sages Fous, the Canada duo, had a particularly arresting act in which they steered a steampunk boat down Ulica Dluga, encountering a baffling array of deep-sea puppet creatures. And Teatr Wybrzeze (2 Ulica Sw. Ducha; 48-58-301-7021; tickets 20 to 30 zlotys) featured a production of “The Tin Drum,” by the Nobel winner Günter Grass, who was born in Gdansk, then known as the Free City of Danzig.
For a moment, Gdansk felt as it might have in the 16th century, when Shakespearean companies would swing through town, entertaining the masses — and the occasional Grand Tourist.
High culture aside, Gdansk was a fine place simply to eat, drink and make merry. I spent one happy evening at the cozy Café Kamienica (37/39 Ulica Mariacka; 48-58-301-1230; enjoying a brandy-spiked latte (12 zlotys) while rain slicked the narrow sidewalks outside. Another evening, I cuddled up with a plate of pork chops, cabbage salad and a dark beer (20 zlotys) in Jadalnia Pod Zielonym Smokiem’s festive, smoky basement (125 Ulica Szeroka; 48-58-320-7865; .
Bar Mleczny TurystycznyLunch at Bar Mleczny Turystyczny.PhotographsSee Slide Show »
For lunch, I went for chicken cutlets and mashed potatoes (13 zlotys) at the bargain-basement Communistic cafeteria Bar Mleczny Turystyczny (8/10 Ulica Szeroka; 48-58-301-6013).
My toast.My kielbasa toast.Photographs See Slide Show »
Another time, at a waterfront stand near a future Hilton hotel, I ate toast smeared with lard and topped with sautéed onions, kielbasa and sliced pickles. It was the best — and most disgusting — thing I’ve ever eaten, and it only cost 9.50 zlotys.
Gdansk also served as a gateway to maritime pleasures. Sopot, a small beach resort about 20 minutes north by SKM train (skm.trojmiasto.pl; round trip 6.20 zlotys), is the party spot, where Poles sun themselves during the day by the Baltic (shockingly calm when I saw it), then indulge in beer, vodka and fried fish when it gets dark.
But even Sopot has its touch of history: like other classic spa towns in northern Europe, it was founded in the early 19th century for the wealthy. And up through World War II, it was a favored getaway for German officers, whose affection for it might have earned it a reprieve from destruction. Its fortunes, however, declined after the war, and by 1994, when reader Diana visited, “Sopot had the ghostly feel of a European vacation spot that was once glorious.”
Now, like Gdansk, Sopot is resurgent. A 93 million-euro project to redevelop the city center means construction cranes and torn-up streets are as common as bikini thongs and Belgian waffles. A high-end Sheraton (www.sheraton.pl/sopot) just opened alongside the Free City-era Grand Hotel (which counted Hitler and de Gaulle among its guests, and is now a Sofitel). At the end of Europe’s longest wooden pier, the 1,690-foot Molo, you can hear pounding dance music emanating from the beachside Copacabana club — the beat of progress.
Józef K.The cafe Józef K. Photographs See Slide Show »
And yet Sopot also has an intellectual, bohemian side. At Józef K. (4/1b Ulica Kosciuszki; 48-58-550-49-35; , a cafe named for Kafka’s luckless protagonist, the décor captured perfectly Kafka’s world: typewriters and antique TVs hid in the corners, a tree sprouted from a table, and flea market paintings were adorned with cartoon thought bubbles. Over several hours, I nursed a dark beer and flipped through a Taschen book on the history of art from the cafe library.
Around the corner was Galeria Kinsky (10 Ulica Kosciuszki; 48-695-95-1743), a two-story bar in what was once the home of Klaus Kinski, the Sopot-born German actor. Surrounded by red velvet curtains, threadbare Victorian divans and two Polish women I met on Couchsurfing.com, I could easily imagine that not much had changed since the mad movie star’s death in 1991.
Still, after days of indulging in history and nights of indulging in less ennobling activities, I desperately wanted to get close to the shipyards. The multimedia Solidarity Museum (1 Ulica Doki; 48-58-769-2920; admission, 6 zlotys) offered a great primer on the shipyard protests of the 1980s, after an electrician by the name of Lech Walesa led workers in a strike that created the Solidarity movement, forced concessions from the government and knocked the first cracks in Polish Communism. But it didn’t sate me.
So, on Sunday, after another jelly doughnut breakfast, I took to the water, renting a red kayak (15 Ulica Zabi Kruk; 48-58-305-7310; two hours, 20 zlotys) and paddling down Gdansk’s waterways, past the promenade and its restored facades, which I saw from below, much as an ancient Baltic trader might have.
The shipyards.The shipyards.Photographs See Slide Show »
Farther downstream, the canal opened wide, and there, across the wind-rippled waters, were the shipyards. The rusty cranes looked like families of prehistoric animals, with monstrous specimens looming over babies that themselves perched over sheds and gas tanks. I considered crossing the small bay and going ashore, but given that this was probably illegal, I simply snapped a few zoomed photos and turned southeast, toward the narrower channels.
A family of swans.A family of swans.Photographs See Slide Show »
Soon I was floating through canals shrouded in reeds, paved with lily pads and populated with waterfowl. There were tiny black ducks with bright orange beaks, mottled gray-and-white birds and a brood of swans whose patriarch circled me threateningly until I’d put some distance between myself and his flock. This was not exactly the Gdansk I’d planned on seeing, but it didn’t really matter anymore — that figment of my imagination paled in comparison to the real Gdansk, the one I wouldn’t have found without my readers to guide me.