Our friends recently visited Gdansk and highly recommended that we see Malbork castle so we were off bright and early to visit. The castle was a short drive away, and we were up early expecting some kind of large police event at 8 am which is why we had to suddenly move sights last night. As we were finished packing up there were about 8 guys in t-shirts and shorts relaxing under a tent smoking and joking as we used to say in the Marines. We decided the police event was most likely a family picnic. As we had plenty of time we punched Lidl into Greta Garmin before we left and she told us there was one less than 2 kilometers away. After an extended shop we are well stocked with food.
The drive over was quick and easy and we were one of the slowest cars on the road which I enjoy, it allows me to sip my coffee while the other cars slip around us. The only weird thing is Greta announced there would be tolls, and when we pulled onto the freeway there were nice toll booths dispensing tickets. When we exited the freeway 100 kilometers or so later I pulled into a toll booth and handed the ticket and my credit card over to the attendant and she immediately handed the credit card back to me and raised the barrier. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth we sped on out of there.
The skies were looking kind of threatening so we headed straight over to the castle. The entrance fee comes with an audio guide and it was one of the best audioguides we have ever seen. It knew where you were on the castle grounds and automatically told you about the room you were in without any button pushing. It also did a good job telling you which doors to use to stay on the path which in a building of this size was critical.
Malbork castle is either the biggest castle in the world, or Europe, depending on the source and how they measure things. It is immense, and is definitely the biggest brick castle in the world. Construction began in the 1300’s by the Teutonic Knights after they were thrown out of Jerusalem by the Turks, who maintained it for about 150 years. It then came into the hands of the Polish kings who had it until Poland was partitioned in the late 1700’s, where it became part of Prussia.
It is an immense brick building that was expanded several times under its different landlords. The audio guide says it was never captured, but it then mentions that in one siege the defenders after running out of food, sold it to the attackers. I’m not a lawyer but that sounds like a surrender to me. The castle was severely damaged at the end of WWII and Malbork became Polish again. It has been rebuilt to its current state over the last 60 years.
We wound thru brick courtyards, across moats, and up and down multiple flights of stairs over 3 and 1/2 hours. It was a lot of walking but the quality of the audio guide kept our interest, and they even allowed for a break in the middle of the tour recognizing the amount of work it took to cover the huge castle.
At the end of the tour we headed back to François for a well deserved dinner. The thunderstorms that we were worried about never came so we spent the evening relaxing and listening to the trains passing by on the back of the campground.
