Although I had to be in Gdańsk this morning, I did not relish arriving there at 5am on the night train from Warsaw. My ticket was for Gdańsk, but I paid a small consideration to travel onto Gdynia, from where I'd return to Gdańsk in good time for the event I was moderating. This gave me 45 minutes extra sleep on the train, which was welcome.
At Gdynia, I found the station I'd last visited the previous summer fully reopened after its comprehensive
remont. The post-war architecture has been sensitively restored to something approximating its original state, though with contemporary white-on-blue signage and raised floor guide-markings for the visually impaired.
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| Arrival at Gdynia Główna, just before six am. My night train is on the left. |
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| One of the five restored mosaics; this one depicts the coastal economy. |
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| Waiting room and ticket hall |
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| Mosaic with the winged wheel symbol of PKP, Pegasus, and the Zodiac. |
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| The station frontage: façade as seen from Gdynia's Pl. Konstytucji. |
Mosaics from 1957 had been uncovered and the socialist-realist lamp fittings are working. And the crisp, cloudless morn, shortly before sunrise, offered the ideal conditions in which to admire the restored station.
As your photos show, it is a marvellous "zabytek," and you saw it in all its glory. BUT, I think you are somewhat over-generous. The remont has not given Gdynia a railway station for national or international travel in the twenty-first century: heavy entrance doors (demanding enough for travellers with luggage or prams, let alone wheelchairs), glass interior doors (ditto), lack of proper cover for the long platform and (so far at least) no escalators or lifts to the long-distance platforms. No St Pancras-like renovation here, I fear!
ReplyDelete@ Liz
ReplyDeleteGood point - PKP remonts rarely come near best practice when it comes to accessibility. Having said that, Warsaw's Metro, small though it be, is much more wheelchair friendly than London Underground!
Bardzo interesujące. Pozdrawiam serdecznie.
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