Gdansk

Thursday night, I caught a train to Gdansk (formerly known as Danzig), Poland. It's been a long time since I was on a night train, so I was more excited than I should have been, but there's something so hopeful and lovely about big train stations at night with all the lights and the waiting (like the Night Owls painting by an artist whose name I can't remember right now) that I just wasn't in the mood to think about what night trains are really like. Which is good, because night trains, especially in eastern Europe, aren't that great. They do have a romantic(ized) faded-glory feeling about them, which is mostly because everything is the same as it was during the Cold War. Sheets, toilet paper, everything. I arrived in Gdansk early Friday morning, a little ragged at the edges and desperate for caffeine, and after changing money and slamming some vending machine coffee, I decided that I should use the beautiful weather (it wasn't supposed to last) and go to the beach.

Gdansk is a port city, but it doesn't actually have beaches. To get the beaches, you have to go to Sopot, which is about 30 minutes away. Sopot is hands down the prettiest little town I've ever seen in Europe - it's like San Fransisco, but with a population of 40,000. There are all these beautiful old run-down villas from the early 1900s, which was when Sopot experienced quite the tourist boom. There are several grand old spas/baths/hotels on the beach in the same style, but recently renovated or currently under construction. Global warming is doing the town a favor, I guess.

It's early enough in the season, though, that the beach was pretty empty while I was there. I saw lots of old couples in matching windsuits hunting shells, some joggers, and a few middle-aged Polish guys in tiny Polish swim trunks. They were all outnumbered by the swans.

I didn't have any food, so the swans left me alone (some afternoon picnickers weren't so lucky). I read and napped and walked in the cold cold surf and ate some fresh fish for lunch and read and napped some more. It was definitely worth the sunburn I got.
Although I love Sopot, Gdansk is also a beautiful city. It's really old, and although most of it was destroyed in WWII, most of it was faithfully reconstructed soon after the war, and then restored after the fall of communism. Most of the work was concentrated in Old Town, where pretty much every street looks like this:

Lots of churches and cathedrals from 1300-1500. The cool thing is that the locals (Gdanskers?) actually use these buildings for religious stuff more than tourism stuff. Not everything that was destroyed in the war has been rebuilt. This island

used to be full of medieval warehouses, and was completely destroyed in WWII. You can walk on the single restored street, but you can't go into the fenced off ruins. Spooky, but cool.
I spent most of my time in Gdansk wandering around Old Town, but I stumbled onto this arts festival (contest?) in the main (not medieval) square one morning when I got off the bus. It looked like a regular junk market, but in the middle of it there was this little stage blasting a combination of Polish techno and American pop, to which 8-12 year old girls were performing dance routines. With ribbon dancers! I don't remember having my own ribbon dancer when I was little (for good reason, I bet, since it's really just a piece of pink ribbon attached to a pink stick and probably cost $15), but I do remember how sincerely I believed that it would make me graceful. A friend of mine in kindergarten or first grade (Ashley, I believe) had one, and she was the most graceful kid in class. Anyways, I was gratified to learn that they are still an integral part of girl culture somewhere in the world. And most of the girls who danced were very graceful for their age (except one who got tangled in her ribbon and fell down) and better dancers than I will ever be. There is a rumor that Europeans lack rythym, but I'd be willing to bet that no one but Poles can shimmy on beat to super-fast Polish techno at such a young age. I was impressed. And a little scared.