We went to sleep during a huge thunderstorm and then slept somewhat fitfully until after 11am this morning. I made our coffee and was sitting outside while Ton lingered in bed.
I had tried listening for mouse noises, but had heard none so I was hopeful that the mouse had moved on before we arrived. It turns out I was wrong. He is still in François and it turns out is a bit of a jerk. During the night he gnawed his way into a packet of cookies that had passed inspection yesterday, and to taunt us dropped a piece cookie in the bed during the night to announce his presence. Ton woke up to find the cookie under her in bed.
We debated whether to go shopping today for a mouse trap, but by the time we had eaten breakfast and gotten organized enough to get going it was 2pm, so we decided to go tomorrow. So the mouse gets one more night before we start hunting for it in earnest.
The pizza machine at the campground.
Ton has been fascinated by the pizza machines we have seen near roads and in shopping centers around Europe. Since we last stayed at this campground they have installed one. One of the highlights of Tons day was studying the operation of the machine up close. The machine here delivers either a cheese or pepperoni pizza for about €13. It looks like you deposit your money, and about 5 minutes later a hot pizza appears already boxed for carryout. I asked Ton if she wanted to try one and she laughed and said only if I have not had any food at all for about 3 days. So fascination with the machine does not equal consuming the product for Ton.
The trip was off to a good start. Our flight on Delta was on time and uneventful. As normal neither one of us managed to sleep much if at all on the flight. Immigration was a little slow, but that meant our bags were waiting for us when we came out.
We arrived at the storage place for François at 11am and he was waiting for us in front as promised. A quick look around and everything seemed ok. We turned on everything and it worked. So far so good.
The next stop was a local grocery near the storage to pick up enough food to last a couple of days while we recovered from jet lag. Our shopping was a little disjointed as we were pretty jet lagged, but after about 30 minutes we had a slightly weird selection of food, but adequate for a day or two until we got out for a proper shop.
The drive over to the campground was stop and go, the worst traffic we had seen in Amsterdam so what should have been a twenty minute drive took a little over an hour. We checked in and had our spot by 12:30. Everything was going exactly to plan.
The plan for the rest of the day was to unpack our bags, have a light dinner and relax to try to get over the jet lag. When we opened the closet where we store the cleaning gear and things like spare paper towels and toilet paper our plan came to a screeching halt.
It was clear that François had been occupied by a mouse while he was in storage. All of the paper products had been shredded. Opening other cabinets, different food products and plastic packages had been gnawed thru. We had a couple of boxes of milk products that in Europe can be stored as dry goods until opened. The mouse had gnawed thru those containers causing the milk to leak out all over the cabinet.
The next three hours were spent emptying out all of the cupboards, sorting thru all of the dry goods we had left in the cabinets to see which ones had been chewed thru. We ended up throwing out quite a bit of food we accumulated . Interestingly the mouse preferred rice products over noodle products! We finally gave all of the cabinets a good scrubbing and washed all of the dishes and pots and pans.
Finally about 6:30 Ton decided that things were clean enough. By then we were both too tired to eat, and just crawled into bed. The only question left is the mouse still on board, or has he moved on.
Our flight was delayed two hours, but Delta had sent us an email telling us so we just delayed our departure from the hotel by two hours. Check in was relatively smooth except KLM has a self service check in that was new to us. You load your bag into a machine, answer some questions and place your own tags on the bag. When you are done the machine swallows up your bag. No interaction at all with a human, I am not sure this is progress.
Right on our new time of departure we were off and arrived around 2pm in Portland. Everything at home was as we left it.
This trip we added 5 new countries (Czechia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) to our travels. We also revisited a couple of sites in France and Germany. I think we covered about 5000 (3000ish miles)kilometers in François, I forgot to check our mileage at the beginning.
I am already looking forward to our next trip in the fall.
Today we slept in a little as we had only one chore to do before dropping François off for the next 3 months. Ton was worried about the weight of our bags so she went thru and took a couple of things out of the bags and left them in François.
About 10 am we headed off to a truck wash that the owner of our storage facility had recommended. We pulled in to a giant bay designed to take a semi-truck and the trailer. 3 guys swarmed François while we sat in a waiting room and drank a cup of coffee. 20 minutes later François was cleaner than he has been in years including the roof. The cost was about €20 more than if we had gone to a self service carwash and I had fed in coins while doing it myself and getting soaked, so I decided it was worth it.
We dropped François at the storage and moved to our airport hotel. Tomorrow we have an early flight to Portland.
Today was packing and cleaning day in François. Ton does most of the packing and cleaning and I do a lot of sitting around interspersed with some lifting when required.
I always have mixed emotions on these packing days. I am excited to be going home to see friends, and our boys. I look forward to having the space of the whole house, and to have a routine. It is nice to have water close by, and not wonder whether we will have hot water to wash the dishes in. It is also nice to be fully literate when we go shopping.
On the other hand I miss the adventures Ton and I have. I miss how close we are when we travel and the routine of setting up and living in a very small space. I miss the freedom of the road, and the ability to plan our trips on the fly. I miss the new people we meet and the new experiences we find when we are on the road including holding up a package of food and trying to decide if it is pork, beef, or chicken based on the clues we can discern from the packaging. The good news is we have a few more years of travel in us and we will be able to experience a few more trips around Europe and who knows maybe somewhere else.
We were off early towards Amsterdam and with light traffic and minimum construction we arrived in the small village of Achthoven near the University town of Leiden around noon.
Our neighbors for tonight.
We are staying in a campground on an old cattle farm. In front of the farm is a large canal with some industrial sites. We are going to spend the next couple of days preparing François for storage. To put it more accurately, I am going to hover around François while Ton does most of the work to prepare François for storage.
A boat going down the canal in front of the campground.
My only contribution was a long hike to a Lidl to get some snacks to take home, and a couple of beers for tomorrow. We did get out for a short walk in the evening when Ton took the pictures for today.
The large house next to us, I couldn’t decide if it was abandoned or still lived in from the road.
We planned on going into Munster today, but when we woke up it was cold and grey. We lay around in François the morning and at noon we decided that if we were going into town we had better get moving.
The Market Street in Munster.
We had forgotten how completely Germany shuts down on Sundays. The French have a reputation for taking it easy on Sundays but the Germans have them beat. All of the stores are closed and most of the restaurants are closed until 5pm. Even the breweries are shutdown.
Walking in we saw this sculpture commemorating the reunification of Germany in 1990.
When we got to the center of town the streets were empty, and the only thing open was the church. We were inside the church when I heard some sirens and a lot of engines on the main street. I stuck my head out and saw two motorcycle cops leading a couple of hundred motorcycles down the market street.
Part of the parade of motorcycles celebrating the finale of Motorcycle Week in Munster.
I asked one of the motorcycle cops what was going on and he told me that the parade of motorcycles was the finale to Munster Motorcycle Week. It was a good day as they had the downtown pretty much to themselves. We spent a little bit of time looking for an ATM, Germany does not charge a transaction fee to buy Euros, only the exchange rate. We were going to buy some for our next trip, but it looks like our debit card is suspended. Our bank has ended their 24 hour help line and directs you to their website which is manned by AI which does not understand, my debit card does not work in an ATM. So we finally gave up and went back to the church.
This pot was hanging from one of the columns of the church, we think it is for incense.
While we were in the church I checked the Sunday schedule for the bus and it said the last bus was in 12 minutes, so we cut our visit short and hustled to the bus stop. The time came and went but there was no bus 22, the board showed a bus 11. Ton and I were trying to figure what to do when a young German lady came up and asked us about bus 22. She was also confused that it had not showed up. We were planning alternative ways to get home, and she called her mother to look for a ride, when about 10 minutes late good old bus 22 pulled up and we happily jumped on board. The Germans have something to learn from the Poles about how to run a transit system.
A cool clock in Munster.
We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the campground.
Woke up early to see Fred and Denise off, and since we were up we decided to get an early start also. As we were saying good by to Fred and Denise we made preliminary plans to meet them somewhere in Europe next year.
We picked Munster as our next stop as it was most of the way to the Netherlands, and Denise gave it good reviews. The drive was relatively busy, and there were a couple of big construction sites, but we still arrived around 1:30. When we pulled in to the campground it was teeming. There were signs welcoming us to the summer fest, so I had already begun mentally thinking about alternative stops. But when I found someone he quickly assigned us a spot and told us to join the festival at 2:30.
We joined this table of Germans, but it turns out one of them was a Scot in disguise.
We headed over about 5pm and got a couple of beers and asked if we could join some Germans at their table. After we had been sitting for a few minutes one of them asked if we were from the UK. When we replied US she said she was a Scot. It turns out she had moved to Germany many years ago and was happily married to a nice German guy. We enjoyed chatting with them but Tons allergies are really bothering her so we had to decline their kind offer to join them for dinner and head back to François for the night.
Lubeck had let us down the day before. On our last visit we left loving this city. But our experience the day before made us wonder if this was a case where you should not go back to a place because it will not live up to your memories. After an easy morning where we washed the linen of the bed, (another sign that the trip is coming to an end), Denise and Fred wanted to go back into town to check a couple of sights.
The salt warehouses on the river. A collection of really cool building fronts.
Denise really wanted to check out St. Marys church because of the astronomical clock. We covered a lot of the same ground to get to the church. The interior of the church was very interesting though. Like many of the large churches in Germany it was originally built as a Catholic church, and then converted to Lutheran after the reformation. But the interior of St. Marys was interesting because the Catholic influence was more pronounced than in other churches that I remember visiting. It took me a few minutes to confirm that it had indeed been converted to a Lutheran church.
The astronomical clock, our main motivation for visiting the church.
The church was largely destroyed on good Friday in 1942 when the British fire bombed the city. This was the first instance where the British planned a bombing to try to cause a mass fire and they succeeded.
The church bells from 1942 were left as they were found when the Germans were removing the rubble to repair the church.
The other interesting thing was a large mural that alternated figures from the middle ages, with skeletons representing death. Death was a very big theme in this church, including skeletons in the stain glass which is another image we have never seen anywhere but here.
This very interesting mural is illustrating the poem that runs in a scroll below it. The mural was very large and contained multiple figures from kings to peasants all with a skeleton next to it. The death theme is carried over to the stain glass windows in the church.
We really enjoyed the church and were glad that Denise convinced us to go in as we had not visited it before. Fred wanted to try lunch at a very nice restaurant that we had visited on our previous trip. So after leaving the church we headed that way.
The interior of our restaurant reflects the nautical theme you would expect from a meal in the old Sailors Guild Hall.
The restaurant has the great German name of Schiffergesellschaft and is located in the old Sailors Guild Hall which was built in the 1500’s. The interior is really impressive full of dark wood, interesting paintings on the wall, and models of different ships hanging from the ceiling. We had a charming waiter who had us smiling throughout the meal, and the food was elegantly served and delicious. When you throw in good company we had a wonderful time.
This statue represents the devil who was conned into helping to build one of the churches in Lubeck by the workers who told him they were building a wine bar.
After a disappointing day yesterday, Lubeck redeemed itself today by giving us interesting places to see, excellent food, and friendly and funny people. I was personally glad to have my positive view of the city restored.
Ton really likes the stories around these buildings on the market square. The dark one in the center has bricks that were produced locally, but then shipped to Italy to have a dark coating put on them, before being returned to construct the building. The upper wall on the left side with the three copper towers has two large circular holes built into it so that during the fierce gales here the wind can pass thru the walls and reduce the stress on the building.
We ended the day by sitting outside our motorhomes for happy hour and sharing stories from our travels for a couple of hours. To complete our very good day, we learned that our appeal of the fine we had received in France that we had spent 2 days preparing and 2 days driving to submit was successful.
Our good friends Fred and Denise Cook were in Lubeck so today we were up early and on the road to meet them. After a easy trip on the Autobahn from our place on the Polish border we arrived in Lubeck around one in the afternoon and parked up next to their Expedition Vehicle.
The gate to the old town in Lubeck.
It had rained a bit on the drive, but luckily when we arrived the rain had backed off for a while and we were able to head into the city for a walk around. Lubeck is one of my favorite cities in Germany, the first time we came here I really liked it.
The Trave River in Lubeck.
We walked thru the old town for a bit trying to decide whether to have dinner tonight or lunch tomorrow. Since it was nice today we decided to get our walking in, and save eating for tomorrow when it is supposed to rain.
Fred and Denise enjoying some Marzipan desserts.
We did pop in for some Marzipan which is a local specialty in Lubeck. Despite being very disappointed with the service we did enjoy the food and Fred and Denises company.
The main cathedral in Lubeck with an art display consisting of colored umbrellas suspended above the market.
After our lunch of Marzipan, we headed back to the campground where Denise and Fred treated us to a delicious dinner in their camper. We spent the rest of the evening telling stories of our travels. It was a great night of friendship that we really enjoyed.
We are not actually in Szczecin nor in Poland, but in a small German village just over the border called Mescherin. It is about 10 kilometers outside of Szczecin but we really wanted to use Szczecin in the blog. Nothing gives a better feel for the Polish language than a place name whose first four letters are SZCZ. By the way Szczecin is a major port. The picture above is Poland taken from our campground in Germany.
We are unfortunately at the stage in the trip where our goals are traveling to Amsterdam and not seeing cool places. Today we programmed over 400 kilometers of travel. The first 200 kilometers were on 2 lane roads paralleling the construction of a new freeway, so a lot of the time we were in construction zones. Luckily we got to use the new freeway section that has recently been completed for most of the last 200 kilometers and it was quite nice.
The road Greta picked for our last 2 kilometers to our campground. It was cement blocks with hooks built into them. I would have turned around, but before I could do it two cars including a new BMW had pulled in behind me. So we decided it was a road and carried on. Luckily our little parade didn’t run into anyone coming the other way.
We arrived at the campground and the manager did not speak any English, but after some effort we got everything sorted. We also forgot we are in Germany, surprisingly Germany is the least credit card friendly country in Europe. After some digging around we came up with enough Euros to cover tonight, but one of our first stops will be an ATM tomorrow.
After we got settled in we waived to our neighbors and they waived back and shouted over “Are you Americans?” Stephanie and Perry are from Colorado and have been driving a rental RV around Europe for the last 6 weeks. This is their first experience in Europe and are loving it. We spent a couple of hours exchanging stories. As much as it is nice to meet people from all over Europe while we are traveling, it is always nice to run into Americans as the conversation is different because we are all strangers in a strange land. The stories always go to ways we embarrassed ourselves by not quite getting how things work here, and things that we see that we wish we had in the US, as well of course to things that we do better at home. We really enjoyed their company.
Sopot is a suburb of Gdansk that is refereed to in travel guides as the St. Tropez of Poland. So we decided to check it out today. It was a quick trip on the tram to the train station, and then a very short train ride to Sopot. We arrived to a very nice main street that led right down to the ocean.
On the main street they had this statue to Corporal Wojtek the Bear. He was captured and tamed by the Polish II Corps during WWII. Wojtek was inducted into the Polish Army though he was Iranian by birth. He fought with the Polish II Corps in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany. He learned how to salute, and would ride in the passenger seat of one of the trucks of the transportation unit of the Corps. At the end of the war he was discharged from the Polish Army and sent to the Edinburg Zoo in Scotland where he lived until 1963. If you are a military history buff the story of the Polish II Corps is one of the most fascinating tales you will find from WWII.
Sopot is a very nice beach town with the typical array of souvenir shops, restaurants and ice cream stalls. The waterfront is very clean, and the beach is wide and the sand is inviting. As a weekend destination it would be really fun.
The main plaza facing the largest hotel.
It is also the home of what is reported to be the longest pier in Europe. We walked up to the pier hoping to take a stroll out only to find that it required a ticket to get on the pier. After a short debate we decided to pony up the money as we are unlikely to return to Sopot.
Looking down the longest pier in Europe.
It seems like it is pretty new, and it is quite long. We walked out to the end of it to see what the longest pier in Europe felt like. At the end of the pier was the same pirate ship that we kept running into in Gdansk, so now we know where they went on their two hour ride.
Looking back at the beach from the pier.
The only down side we saw to Sopot was the water itself. Away from shore it looked pretty clear, but right up against the beach there were seaweed beds that made the water look dark and not too appealing. So our rating is beach and sand outstanding and on par with St. Tropez, water not up to the crystal clear green and warmth of the Mediterranean.
The crooked building in Sopot. This picture is not distorted, that is how the building is built.
We finished our visit with a lunch at KFC. KFC is by far the dominant fast food place in Poland. They are everywhere, and about every other rest area on the freeway has a KFC in it. Ton thought it was interesting, because while chicken is a big part of Polish food the traditional dishes were all baked or grilled. We saw no Polish fried chicken. The KFC was different than the US and good, but in the future we are going to stick with the Milk Bars for our Polish lunches.
The day started with a misfire. We wanted to visit the Solidarity Museum near the shipyard, but thought we would begin at St. Nicholas Church which is the only church in Gdansk that the Soviets did not burn when they captured the city in 1945. Google Maps is usually pretty good so when I put St. Nicholas church into the program and told it we wanted to use transit all looked good. It told us to get off at the Opera House exit, and then proceed on foot for 500 meters. When we got there we found an old abandoned church in an overgrown park. There must be two St. Nicholas Churches. So we put in the museum, doubled back to the tram line and went back the way we came to the center of the city.
The monument in Solidarity Square is a memorial to shipyard workers killed during a strike in 1970 that was a precursor to Solidarity.
We have been very impressed with the museums in Poland and the Solidarity Museum did not let us down. It is a rust colored building made of steel panels that are supposed to represent the raw steel used to make ships. It sits on the edge of the still active Gdansk ship yards, surrounded by huge cranes.
The view from the top of the museum looking out at the very active shipyard nearby.
The museum does a great job of showing the history of worker led dissent throughout the history of the Warsaw Pact. It gives background on the causes of different rebellions in not only Poland but Czechia, Hungary, and East Germany.
When you walk in this display on the roof represents the workers who took place in the 1980 strikes that led to the formation of Solidarity.
The museum excels at giving you the story of the workers movement in Poland beginning with a strike at the Gdansk Shipyard in 1970 over price increases on basic necessities. This strike was violently put down by the police and the army with over 40 workers killed.
A police van and riot control shields.
While the strike resulted in the workers returning to work, it did not lesson the discontent in the ship yard. Also, it was not just the workers at Gdansk who were unhappy, but most factory workers in Poland. One of the biggest sources of discontent was that the factories were just poorly run and terribly mismanaged. While the shipyard in Gdansk was completing almost one ship every 5 days it was doing it despite the management not because of it.
Letters marked with a stamp saying that the letter had been censored by the government.
The strike in 1980 began as many work stoppages do over the firing of a popular worker. Anna Walentynowicz was a crane worker who had worked at the plant for nearly 30 years and popular with her fellow workers. She was also a pain to the management of the shipyard who took revenge by firing her a couple of months before her retirement depriving her of her pension.
When the workers went on strike and took over the shipyard they placed their demands on this piece of plywood and hung it near the main gate of the shipyard. One of the first demands is the reinstatement of Anna Walentynowicz.
The shipyard workers took over the shipyard and made demands to be allowed to form a workers union independent of the communist party. This strike soon spread through out Poland and quickly most industrial sites and mines were also occupied by their workers.
Street graffiti from Poland showing Lenin with a mohawk and one of his quotes saying that if a government does not have the support of its workers it must fail.
These workers were not intellectuals or theorists, they were blue collar workers who were primarily interested in practical things like improving working conditions, and the economic status of their families. Their initial demands were not to be part of the government, just to be allowed to form a union independent of the government. Lech Walesa an electrician from the Gdansk shipyard became the leader of this group and led the negotiations between the newly formed Solidarity and the ironically named Polish Workers Party (the official name of the Communist Party of Poland). In early 1981 the government recognized Solidarity and allowed it to begin to represent the workers in industry throughout Poland.
Different branches of Solidarity in Poland.
In 1982 the Communists decided that Solidarity was too much of a threat and cracked down, arresting many of the leaders and forcing the rest including Lech Walesa into hiding. But, by 1986 the economy in Poland was in shambles and to try to recover the government again recognized Solidarity. This time Solidarity realized that they could not function just as a workers union, but needed to become involved in politics. They negotiated with the Communists to be allowed to run in the next election. The communists allowed a narrow majority of the lower house to be elected freely, and the entire senate. They felt that they could control the outcome. But despite stacking the deck and limiting Solidarity’s access to television and radio they lost all but 1 of the freely elected seats, losing control of parliament to Solidarity. The timing was good as the Soviet Union was also undergoing great economic strain and could not do what they would normally do; which was send in the tanks. As a result of this Poland withdrew from the Warsaw Pact and most of the economic alliances with the Soviet Union. Over the next few years other countries followed Poland’s lead until the eventual fall of the iron curtain.
The headquarters of the Gdansk Shipbuilding.
The story is wonderfully told. It inspired me to accidentally write a short college report on the Solidarity movement in Poland. In addition to seeing new sites and enjoying cool food and drinks, I sometimes learn new things.
The clock on the marker square. After the museum we returned to being tourists.
Old habits are hard to break. Our daily routine is pretty set. One of us is up around 7 am, if it is cold we stay under the blankets until about 7:30, then I get up and make coffee, and warm a cup of milk for Ton. After I am done with that I go for a short walk or I empty the cassette for our toilet and fill the water, to give Ton some privacy to get ready for the day. After she is ready she prepares breakfast. If we are moving on I take the dishes to wash while Ton starts to organize the interior of François for travel. When I get back with the dishes she puts them away while I unhook the electrical cable and put it away. If we are on a normal travel day we are usually on the road by 9:30. If we are in a hurry because we have a long drive we will dispense with breakfast and have sandwiches, that gets us on the road before 9.
It was a short drive to Gdansk today.
I had gotten up early to watch the Timbers play Kansas City at 4:30 in the morning, fortunately they won. The game was over about 6:30 so I climbed back into bed for a bit, but at 7:30 I was up making coffee. We kept telling ourselves we weren’t in a hurry, because it was only about a 45 minute drive to our new campground and technically you are not supposed to arrive before noon. But despite everything our routine could not be stopped and we were on the road at 9:30. We arrived at the campground about 10:30, but the manager just sent us off to find a place.
One of our neighbors in the campground. Two German guys are traveling using antique farm tractors to tow their trailers. We’ve seen a lot of interesting RV’s over the years, but never one involving farm equipment.
We got an early start into Gdansk, and were in the old town before noon. Gdansk had gotten great reviews from everyone we knew who had visited it, but we were still surprised about how nice it was.
One of the gates to the Long Market.
Most old towns in European cities are centered on a central square, usually called the market square. The pattern is pretty much the same, a town hall, a market building, some impressive homes that used to belong to the wealthy merchants, and in most of Europe (but not Poland)the most important church.
The Long Market was rocking today. The building on the right is the old town hall.
Gdansk does not follow this pattern, there is no central square, but a wide long street called the Long Market. The street is about a mile long and has all of the same buildings (again except the church), just stretched out over this stretch of road. We enjoyed the change of pace. The town was very busy as it was a glorious Sunday to be out, and a lot of the locals were enjoying their town with the tourists.
Looking across at St. Mary’s Church, which is located one block over from the Long Market.
It was a great day to people watch and take photos and we enjoyed joining in with the promenade. Unlike in the summer when the foreign tourists arrive today the crowd was mostly Polish. After going up and down the Long Market we headed over to the main church one block away.
St. Mary’s Church.
St. Mary’s Church is said to be the largest brick church in the world. However, a few years ago we visited the Cathedral in Albi France where we were told it was the largest brick church in the world. We aren’t sure which is larger but we can vouch to the fact that they are both immense brick buildings. Like a lot of the churches in these parts, St. Mary’s has alternated between being a Catholic Church and a Lutheran Church. Today it is Catholic, and when we stuck our head in there was a Mass underway so no pictures of the interior.
The statue of Neptune on the Long Market.
Gdansk is a port city and today is a large commercial port and ship building center. The city is built around the Vistula River, and a tributary of the Vistula called the Martwa Wista. The center of the city has several islands that are also full of historical buildings. It gives it an Amsterdam like feeling to me, but instead of canals it is branches of the river.
The local Pirate ship going down one of the branches of the Vistula.
Today was intended to be a check the city day without a set agenda. It turned into a real fun day of wandering, people watching, and trying local delicacies. Over the course of the day we had another Milk Bar lunch, stopped in a nice brewery, and visited a coffee shop in the converted home of a rich guy from the 18th century.
The buildings are tall, narrow, and deep, because property was taxed based on the width of the home as it faced the main street. If anyone had a fat house they were showing off their wealth.
On the way back to the campground we decided to extend our visit by a day as Gdansk has a lot more to offer. We have not begun to explore the history of the city including it’s role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.
We are going to be spending more time in Gdansk after today.
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.
Walking up to Malbork Castle.
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.
One of the towers of the castle from the inner courtyard. This is one immense brick building.
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.
A panel in one of the chapels in the castle.
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.
A column in one of the main rooms depicting the Teutonic Knights converting pagans to Christians, often by killing them it seems.
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.
A well with a stork on top of it. In local folklore storks are considered symbols of sacrifice for the young.
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.
One of the chapels had ten virgins carved in the entryway. This group was the group that did not plan well and ran out of oil for their lamp. While they were away getting oil the prince they were waiting for arrived, so they missed out on a chance to marry him.
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.
In the middle ages green was the most difficult pigment to produce and therefore the most expensive. The paintings in Malbork have extra green to prove the wealth of the Teutonic Knights.
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.
This is Torun’s version of the Pied Piper. In this case the instrument is a violin, and the critters that were removed from the city were frogs. The building in the background is the old city hall which is in the center of the market square.
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.
One of the many school groups in Torun today.
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.
The cute dog sculpture that was a big hit with the student groups visiting the city.
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.
The owner of the Georgian pastry shop hamming it up with Ton.
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.
The spires of St. Mary’s Church.
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.
Wall Art and Stained glass from St. Mary’s Church.
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.
One of the cats in the cat cafe.
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.
Our robot cat waiter delivering our snacks.
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.
You can see the tower has quite a bit of lean to it. The lady in the stripes is trying the clear conscience test.
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.
Copernicus was born here and even though he left when he was 7, he is well represented in the town.
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.
It rained hard all night last night. When we woke up we had a discussion about whether we should move on, or just hunker down for the day in Poznan. About 10 am the rain let up and several other RV’s pulled out so we decided to head on.
Looking across the Vistula River towards the cathedral in Torun.
Our destination for today is Torun. It is a university city famous as the birthplace of Nicolas Copernicus. The drive over was smooth even though the rain continued most of the way. We arrived about noon and set up François in a half full campground. When I picked the campground on Park4night, I told Ton it was just across the river from the old town. What I didn’t realize was the bridge across the river is over a mile long, so we are not as close as we would like.
The bridge over the Vistula River is a lot longer than I imagined.
We were kicking around heading over to the town for a reconnaissance when it began to rain hard again. So instead we just settled down and took advantage of the good wifi to stream some movies for the rest of the afternoon.
I had been looking forward to Poznan for some reason. But it turns out my history was wrong. I thought Poznan had survived the war intact, but it turns out it had sustained damage, just not catastrophic damage like other Polish towns.
The market square in Poznan. A few of the buildings are original, but most have been rebuilt since WWII.
Poznan is known as a market city and is famous for its universities. The market square was very nice. What was interesting for us was that in the center of the market square was another block of buildings built in Baroque style. The buildings are very well done and decorated with different motifs. The block in the center of the square was built to replace wooden stalls that sold various goods in the 1600’s.
One of four major statues in the square commemorating different stories from the history of Poznan. The cement block buildings in the background are for some reason attached to the beautiful Baroque buildings in the picture above. I am guessing they were built by the communists after WWII.
Poznan is famous for a unique type of croissant called a St. Martin croissant. It is not light and flaky like a French croissant. We decided we wanted to try one. Also, every noon at the town hall clock Poznan has a famous display where two goats (the symbol of Poznan) come out and butt heads twelve times. So we decided to kill two birds with one stone.
The interior of the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. A beautiful Baroque church near the market square.
There was a coffee shop that served St. Martin’s croissants and was directly in front of the town clock. We ordered a croissant and a beer (don’t judge us we are on vacation). The croissant was interesting, we couldn’t agree on what it reminded us of, I thought a scone and Ton thought a less sweet cinnamon roll.
The goats are supposed to come out of the door above the clock.
As we were eating our croissant a large crowd was gathering in front of the town hall. About 10 minutes before noon, a guy came out of the building and made a long announcement in Polish. The people who understood Polish started to drift away. Those of us who didn’t hung on hopefully until noon, but as we suspected the announcement was that the goats were not going to appear today.
This street art is famous as it gives the appearance of 3 dimensions. Poznan has a lot very nice street art.
A little disappointed (with both the croissant and lack of goats) we headed off to our next destination. As we were leaving Ton started to sing to the tune of a French song she had learned in school called Le Coq est mort (the rooster is dead), Le Goat est mort. I told her they weren’t dead just on vacation, and she said no they are dead to her.
Polish history is incredibly tragic, and the tourism board of Poznan inadvertently sums the tragedy up with this matter of fact statement about the cathedral. “The Cathedral was built in 968 and then repeatedly destroyed.”
We have fallen in love with Pirogi’s which is a dumpling. Ton had read about a Pirogi restaurant that was supposed to be fantastic called Na Winklu. We weren’t sure we would get in as it is a hole in the wall with just a few tables. We were lucky and got the last table. We have had boiled Pirogi’s which are very similar to Chinese dumplings in several places in Poland. Na Winklu also had baked Pirogi’s which we have never had before. We ordered a plate of each. They were both fantastic, the boiled ones reminded Ton of Thai dumplings, her only regret was that we didn’t have the Thai sauce for the dumplings. The baked ones were like another Thai dish called Curry Puffs and were also very good.
The baked Pirogi’s.
When we came out after lunch we saw dark skies building up, so we decided to head back to the campground a little early. We timed it well as it started to rain just as we arrived and continued for the rest of the day.
Another street art wall. This one is interesting because it is a sculpture of musical instruments, but when it rains the rain water runs thru the instruments as it is tied into the roof gutters.
The day was off to a slow start because we ended up having a charming conversation with our host last night. We are staying on a small farm complete with chickens, ducks, and large fields of wheat. The campground comes with two cute dogs who decided we were worth hanging out with, and a cat who deemed us unworthy.
When we woke up in the morning we found a cartoon of eggs on one of the chairs outside François for us. We had some for breakfast and they were delicious. Last night I had asked if I could borrow a hose to try to clean some of the dead bugs that were coating the front of François. Instead at sunset the husband showed up with a hose a bucket of soapy water and a long handled scrub brush, and proceeded to scrub down the front of François. What great hosts.
In the morning we went to pay, and ended up chatting for 45 minutes about life in Poland, hosting guests in a campground, and living life for joy, not profit. She confessed that her dream would be to immigrate to the US with her son, and husband. Like most Poles we have talked to she has family in the US, in this case an uncle in Boston who she would like to visit one day. She was charming and we also met her mother who was out to feed the chickens. It was a great start to our day.
Eventually we were on the road to Poznan. We haven’t been to a grocery for a while and as we were approaching Poznan we saw a LIDL and our afternoon was complete. We nearly filled a basket with necessities and then were on our way to the campground. By the time we arrived it was too late to do a reconnaissance of Poznan, so we gave François a scrubbing on the inside and enjoyed a nice pasta dinner.
The cover photo is of a narrow gauge railroad that runs in front of the campground. One of the engines is a steam engine, but the one I got a picture of appears to be a diesel engine, but a cute one.
Today was about driving and getting to western Poland to continue our travels. It was a pretty quiet drive, but we quickly missed our quiet roads in the Baltic States. Poland has some of the densest truck traffic we have seen in Europe, I think more dense than even Germany. We don’t know where they are all going , but there are a lot of them.
The owner of the campground is showing me two travel trailers that were produced in communist Poland in the 1980’s. There was a demand for RV’s even under the communists. The company is still in business today.
We are the only customers at a small family owned campground tonight. We have met the whole family. The husband has a great collection of communist era vehicles that he spent about 2 hours showing me. The wife very proudly showed us a video of their sons preschool getting an English lesson today, he is 18 months old!
The ILSA van produced in Poland from 1952 to 1994.
He had two copies of a van I had never heard of called the ILSA. It was produced in Poland from 1952 to 1994. He told me the original engine and transmission was based on Ford trucks that the US had given the Soviet Union as Lend Lease in WWII.
The top of the engine of the ILSA, accessible from the passengers seat.
He bought this one from the Krakow transit authority in 2015 where it had been used as a night bus. The production of the van continued for nearly seven years after the fall of communism. It has a feature I have never seen in any vehicle. The top of the engine is accessible from the interior of the vehicle. You remove a cover in the center of the dash and the engine is right there. He joked that it was so the guy in the passenger seat could work on the engine while they were driving!
Two more cars from his collection. The car on the left is an East German produced Trabant. The one on the right is a Fiat 125P, built under license in Poland in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
These are the kind of encounters that make these trips so much fun. The family was so welcoming and we spent two hours looking at cars communicating mainly thru Google translate, and it was fabulous.
