Torun is unique in Poland in that it was mostly untouched in WWII. The buildings you see in the town center are the original buildings and not reconstructed like in most of Poland.
Today the most striking thing about the visitors to the city were that they were almost all Polish school children. The city was teeming with groups of students being led thru the city by their teachers. All ages were represented from early elementary school to high school. They brought a fun energy to the city.
Ton always has a list of places to visit when we go to a city and my job using google maps is to try to find them. One of the things on the list was a small sculpture of a dog that is famous locally. We looked for it all day and thought we had missed it, until we got lucky and just as we were walking up a group of school children who had surrounded the sculpture moved away from it. We had passed it several times, but every other time it was engulfed by a class hearing the story of the cute dog.
On our hunt for the dog we were doing some window shopping and came across a bakery with very interesting pastries and a big wood fired oven. The pastries looked vaguely familiar, but not particularly Polish. While we were discussing where we had seen these pastries before the owner waved us in. It turns out they are Georgian pastries. We figured that we had seen something like this in Bulgaria. The owner was quite nice and took time to explain the different pastries to us, and showed us the oven. We feel bad as we intended to go back, but the weather got in the way and we didn’t.
Our next stop was St. Mary’s Church. It is an old Gothic Church just off of the main square. One difference in Poland compared to much of Europe is that the churches of the town are normally not on the main square, but a block or so away. So a lot of time the churches are at least partially incorporated into neighboring buildings and are not as monumental as churches that occupy their own space.
We have seen a lot of churches over the years we have been traveling here. We pop into them and take a look around. The interiors are always beautiful, but lately few have been memorable. The interior of St. Mary’s was memorable. The stain glass was beautiful and different than most churches. But what made it most interesting is the wall art which is from the 1300’s and well maintained but not heavily restored. The same was true of the floors which looked like they are from the original church. We were fascinated to see a church that had not been thru a 20th century restoration. It somehow felt more authentic.
We had lunch in a Milk Bar which is our favorite find in Poland. Again a good hearty lunch like mom would make it if she was Polish. We have learned and instead of both of us ordering an entree. We ordered one entree, and one huge bowl of ham and potato soup that was more than enough for the two of us.
As we were looking for some more statues we came across a Cat Cafe and figured what the heck. So we went in for coffee and a desert. There were 5 cats on duty, but being cats they were all taking naps in the windows where the sun was. Eventually a couple of the cats woke up and made a pass thru the restaurant but decided that no one deserved their attention and went back up to the windows. Our coffee and desert arrived on a robot which was pretty cool and it did meow at us when it arrived. The desert and coffee cost as much as our lunch, but it wasn’t delivered by robot or have cats involved.
Torun has a leaning tower so we had to go check it out. It is part of the fortifications in the city walls. It is leaning quite a bit. In Torun you are supposed to place your feet agains the base of the wall and then conform your body to the wall. If you can hold that position for 5 seconds it means you have a clear conscience. After a couple of attempts I managed to do it, but what it really takes is good core strength which I don’t have anymore.
By now it was about 5 pm so we decided to head back across the mile long bridge to our campground. It turns out it was a good thing we left when we did. About 15 minutes after we got back a large thunderstorm complete with hail rolled thru. We hunkered down and rode it out happy that we made it back just in time.
About 30 minutes after the storm ended there was a knock on our door. Someone from the campground informed us that we had to move to another part of the campground as the police were going to be using the part we were staying in tomorrow starting at 8. We were the last one she informed so all of our neighbors had already staked out their new spots. Someone from the police was putting police tape around the perimeter where we were parked. We packed hastily and moved. Just as we settled down another large thunderstorm rolled in so Ton whipped up some noodles for the night.
