Miscellaneous Gdańsk vistas and views

Plenty of things to do and see as well as visiting those world-class museums. Gdańsk is a marvellous city.

Below: the Tri-city's own rail backbone is served by Szybka Kolej Miejska, with trains linking Gdańsk, Sopot, Gdynia and beyond running every seven minutes. I was delighted to see an unmodernised EN57 electric multiple unit (these disappeared from the Warsaw-Radom line four years ago) in original 1960s livery! This particular unit (EN57-1100) entered service in March 1976, so a good innings and still plenty of life left in it.

Below: a yacht moored by the Sunreef shipyard. Gdańsk has moved on from building freighters for carrying Soviet coal to building pleasure craft for the hyper-rich. This one proclaims that it is registered in George Town, capital of the Grand Cayman Islands, which has a tax rate on income and storage of funds of zero per cent. At least these folk create work for Gdańsk's skilled shipbuilders.

Below: magic hour, on the Motława river, the clouds scud by at high speed driven by strong winds.

Below: Gdańsk's famous żuraw (crane), built in 1445. The winches were operated by a pair of human-powered treadmills, each six metres in diameter, capable of raising loads of up to four tonnes to a height of 11 metres.

Visible from afar once night falls, one of the highest points in the Tri-city area is the 77m-high tower of St Mary's Church, the 'crown of Gdańsk'. I had long imagined that the tower was topped by a neon cross. So, I walked up the 406 stairs to check (20zł/10zł for the over-65s and a defibrillator waiting at the top). It's not neon; it's a metal cross that shines in the reflected lights of the church's external illumination system.

Once up top, you can look down and marvel upon the works of mediaeval town planners who built Gdańsk's main town (główne miasto).

Below: the Great Armoury, housing exhibits from the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts.

If I were to have my time, my choices again, I'm sure I would choose to live in the Tri-city/Pomerania rather than in Warsaw/Mazovia. But maybe that's just the holiday mood talking... Below: Gdańsk's Golden Gate (Złota Brama Długouliczna), its restoration nearing an end, and above it the Prison Tower.

This time last year:
Reflections upon the Road, Eastern Poland

This time two years ago:
Britain changes course

This time three years go:
Lawn to meadow, meadow to forest
[two years on, the re-wilding has taken hold]

This time six years ago:
Town and country in summer

This time seven years ago:
Across the Pilica to Strzyżyna

This time eight years ago:

West Ealing to Castlebar Park – waiting for Crossrail

This time nine years ago:
Trump flies into Warsaw

This time ten years ago:
Making Poland's railways safer

This time 19 years ago:
Lublin and the Road

Gdańsk's Solidarity Museum

Another absolute must-visit Museum in the Tri-city area is (to give it its official title) the European Solidarity Centre. Another world-class museum that attracts visitors from far and wide, to see where the course of our human history was changed for the better.

I'll start with a personal reflection. It was conventional wisdom in the mid-1980s that the world was split into the West, the Soviet bloc and its allied communist states, and the non-aligned Third World. And that is how things would remain for ever and ever and ever. My British friends advised me to forget about Poland's struggles for freedom from the Soviet yoke; Martial Law in 1981 showed how such things would end. Just as they did in Berlin in 1953, in Budapest in 1956, in Prague in 1968 – with tanks in the street. All protest is futile. That's just the way things are. But the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe did not give up. The system under which they lived was unjust, brutal and stupid. They knew that one day it must topple. The only questions were when, under what circumstances, and what they had to do to achieve their dream of freedom and dignity.

The planned economy imposed on the Soviet satellite states was unable deliver toothbrushes effectively, let alone cars or flats or good food at affordable prices. Protest against this system and you're met with repression. And with every decade that passed since the end of WW2, the gap in living standards with the West grew wider and wider.

Something had to snap; Gdańsk was the place where a crack opened up that would within a decade topple the entire system based on Marxism, Leninism and brute force. But how did that happen? 

That's what the Solidarity museum is all about. In terms of narrative, it takes up the story of Poland (and more broadly of Central and Eastern Europe) where the WW2 museum left off – in 1945, with the region subjugated by Stalin's Soviet Union. 

When visiting the museum, it's worth the extra money and time to start by visiting the separate 'temporary' exhibition dedicated to the Gdańsk shipyard. [It's been here for four years, according to the museum's website!] This presents the city's history of shipbuilding from the days of the Prussian kingdom, through the role of the shipyards (two of them – one private, one state-owned) in building U-boats in WW1 and WW2 (making Gdańsk a target for allied bomber in the latter conflict), and on to its development in postwar communist Poland as the Lenin Shipyard. By the 1960s, it was the world's fifth-biggest producer of ships (nearly all built for the Soviet Union). And it was here, in 1980, that the Solidarity story begins.

But before the strikes, triggered by the sacking of crane operator Anna Walentynowicz, there were workers' protests in Poznań (1956), Gdynia and Szczecin (1970) and Radom, Ursus and Płock (1976), when Polish workers rose up against the 'workers' paradise' imposed upon them by Soviet tanks. Upstairs in the main exhibition, we are taken through halls explaining how the system had come into existence, the failures of the planned economy, the price-hikes in basic foodstuffs that kicked off street protests, and the first attempts to set up independent and free trades unions.

Below, from left: the cabin from which Anna Walentynowicz operated her crane; an electric truck that Lech Wałęsa* would use as a podium from which to address striking workers, and the Board with the 21 Demands, written down by striking workers on 17 August 1980, originally displayed on the shipyard's gates. This board is on UNESCO’s international Memory of the World Register, a list containing 570 of the most valuable documents of global significance.

The first attempt at wresting major concessions from the communist authorities ended in success with the August agreements of 1980, which included recognition by the government of free and independent trade unions. This was reneged on with the coming of martial law in December 1981. 

Left: an interrogation cell in a militia station. Over the next few years of repression when the economy continued deteriorating further, the Solidarity movement went underground, to re-emerge in 1987. Price-hikes were followed by new waves of strikes; by early 1989 the government sat down behind a round table for talks with Solidarity, which resulted in the partially-free election of 4 June 1989. Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first non-communist prime minister for decades; by the end of the year, parliament had amended the constitution to abandon the 'leading role' of the communist party and change Poland from a 'people's republic' to a normal republic.

The role of Pope John Paul II, who visited Poland three times before communism finally fell, is well documented in the museum. Below: a Popemobile, as used by the Pope during his visits to his native Poland. The most significant of all his foreign trips was his first visit to Poland in June 1979; it set in train a series of events leading up to the establishment of Solidarity and thus to the fall of communism across the region.

One exhibit concerns the creation of the Solidarność logo by poster artist, Jerzy Janiszewski. An inspired work of genius – it absolutely belongs to the ages.

The Soviet communist system collapsed not because the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, but because of Polish shipyard workers created a free trade union in 1981.

Something Poles would note when visiting the museum is a lack of partisan bias. No mud-slinging, no name-calling. Just the historical objectivity. 

Below: take the opportunity to go up to the viewing gallery on the top floor of the museum for this vista of Gdańsk's shipyards; 77 firms operate on its grounds today, busy building everything from offshore wind-turbine masts, to yachts for the mega-rich (Sunreef Yachts), as well as more traditional products such as ferries, container ships and LNG/LPG carrier vessels.

General impressions of Gdańsk tomorrow.

* Lech Wałęsa's offices and library are housed in the European Solidarity Centre building.

This time last year:
Zamość the Magnificent

This time two years ago:
Assessing the passage of time while asleep

This time three years ago:
Summertime dreamland

This time five years ago:
Getting our heads around UFOs

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Bristol-fashioned

This time nine years ago:
The imminent closure of Marks & Spencer in Warsaw

This time 14 years ago:
Along mirror'd canyons

This time 15 years ago:
Mad about Marmite 

This time 16 years ago:
Komorowski wins second round of Presidential elections?

This time 17 years ago:
A beautiful summer dusk in Jeziorki

This time 18 years ago:
Classic cars, London and Warsaw

Gdańsk's Museum of the Second World War

How does one even begin to capture a global conflict that lasted six years and killed 75 million people in one museum? A war that ebbed and flowed across Europe, North Africa, East Asia, fought across vast fronts, at sea and in the air; a war that began with cavalry charges and ended with the atomic bomb – portrayed in just 18 halls?

Located in the place where WW2 began (the shelling of the Westerplatte garrison by the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein, the fight for the Polish Post Office in Danzig), it is obvious that the museum will lean towards a Poland-centric narration. But its overall focus is on human – civilian – suffering rather than the movement of armies across maps, the terror endured by innocent human beings touched by the war. The board of academics that designed the museum included Timothy Snyder (Bloodlands) and Norman Davis (God's Playground), two historians who are steeped in the tragedies that have shaped Poland's development, so not a place for petty nationalisms.

Below: the exterior of the museum. Looks small, but bear in mind that the halls containing the actual exhibits are at Level -3.

The museum's first and penultimate halls depict a typical Polish street as it would have appeared on the eve of the war...

...and at its end.

In between, the occupation, the Holocaust, Barbarossa, D-Day, and for Poland and Central and Eastern Europe, the replacement of one murderous totalitarian occupier by another. The Pacific War is also covered, though with a focus on the inhumanity of the Japanese occupation of China and other countries in the Far East. Genocide, ethnic cleansing and evil unleashed by war.

The display-case exhibits tend to be rusty bits of broken military hardware dredged out of muddy bogs rather than the pristine weapons more usually seen in war museums; this one, in keeping with the current trends, functions by unfolding an overarching narrative from one room into the next with large photos and multimedia displays augmenting the artefacts.

Explaining how the war started, the exhibition points to the role of totalitarianism, highlighting the similarities in propaganda methods used by Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese military leaders to ready their peoples for war. 

The centre of the hall showing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki draws the visitor's attention to a small cabinet with shards of tableware melted by the blast. Literally a handful of small objects in the centre of a white room with shimmering glass walls. Not much to look at, but haunting when you consider what you are looking at.

The museum is proving a massive attraction to foreign visitors to Gdańsk, of whom there is a multitude, from all over the world. It is heartening that the story of a war which didn't end happily on VE-Day, but with the subjugation of Poland and its neighbours to the Soviet Union, is told to a global audience.

The following table caught my eye. It's evident that Hitler had no chance; he was simply out-produced.

WW2 military-industrial production

	Armoured fighting vehicles	Aircraft	Artillery and mortars	Transport vehicles
Great Britain	28,000	31,000	228,000	481,000
United States	102,000	325,000	717,000	2,380,000
Soviet Union	105,000	143,000	361,000	197,000
Germany	67,500	119,000	233,000	346,000

Walking through the halls, I was reminded of my childhood visits to London's Imperial War Museum; the focus back then wasn't on presenting a coherent a narration, but on displaying room after room of tanks, guns, model ships, medals, regimental colours, paintings and uniforms. Stuff rather than story. Modern Polish museums are quite different, and they are world-class. See my posts on the Schindler's Factory museum in Kraków, the Warsaw Uprising museum, and Gdynia's Migration Museum.

Definitely worth visiting, definitely in the top league of international-scale Polish museums.

A word about audio guides. My take: they can be useful if you're not too well acquainted with a given museum's subject matter; I can also appreciate their role in visitor management, subtly pacing crowd flow from hall to hall. If, like me, you listen to many hours of podcast each week about WW2 history, you probably won't need an audio guide (which costs 12 złotys to hire here, but is free with the ticket at the Solidarity Museum, about which more in the next post).

This time last year:
Przemyśl and a reminder of Putin's presence

This time three years ago:
The four-day working week

This time five years ago:
First half 2021 health

This time seven years ago:
Classic Volgas, Ealing and Ursynów

This time eight years ago:
Memory and Me

This time ten years ago:
Sticks, carrots and nudge - a proposal

This time 11 years ago:
London vs. Warsaw pt 2: the demographic aspects

This time 13 years ago:
Serious cycling

This time 15 years ago:
Outlets for creativity

This time 16 years ago:
The day I stopped commuting to work by car

This time 18 years ago:
Look up at the towers of London

This time 19 years ago:
Wild deer in the Las Kabacki forest

TriCity miscellany

Little more than a fishing village before it became Poland's access to the Baltic in the inter-war years, Gdynia was filling up with modernist architecture by the time Germany invaded. Below: public-sector building currently hosting the local tourist-information office on the ground floor and social security offices above.

Below: angular modernist apartment building on the corner of ulica Armii Krajowej and plac Grunwaldzki, nearer the beaches.

Below: modernist apartment building, on the corner of ul. 10 lutego and ul. 3 maja.

On from Gdynia to Gdańsk by train. Below: passing through Gdańsk Oliwa station. The original waiting room today serves as a bistro – hot food and drink available on the platform. Opened in 1870 and refurbished in 2014, leaving many original features such as the tiling and the wooden platform roof, the station is served by InterCity trains from Warsaw. As such, it is well located for the beach (just over 2.5km, served by trams to Jelitkowo).

In Gdańsk for the sights. Below: the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre, formerly the old town hall. Designed by Antonis van Obberghen as the Spanish Armada was sailing to England (1588). The Flemish architect was also responsible for Gdański's Old Armoury (now the Fine Arts Academy, as seen in this post), and the extension of Toruń's Gothic town hall.

Below: ulica Piwna (lit. 'Beery Street'), looking north. The holiday season is already in full swing.

Below: the Court of the Millers' Guild. Visible behind it to the left is the Great Mill of Gdańsk, dating back to the 14th century.

Below: a slice of northern Europe. I reiterate the words of Jonathan Meades – Europe's real divide is not east-west; it is north-south. Gdańsk has more in common with Amsterdam, Hamburg and Helsinki than with Varna, Constanta or Split. 

Left: the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of the largest brick-built churches in the world. Interestingly, the church hosted both Lutheran and Catholic services for decades before becoming entirely Lutheran in 1572 – and reverting to Catholicism in 1945.

Below: seen outside a Gdańsk shop a Nefryt TV set, manufactured in the mid-1960s by Warszawskie Zakłady Telewizyjne. Its insides are filled with toys representing children's TV shows of that era. We see, for example, Bolek i Lolek, Koziołek Matołek, Reksio and Tytus.

This time last year:
Footpath between Widok and Chynów station is opened

This time two years ago:
Summertime, and the living is lazy

This time three years ago:
Thoughts occasioned by the picking of fruit

This time five years ago:
First half of 2019 - health in numbers

This time six years ago:
Key Performance Indicators - health - first half 2018

This time seven years ago:
Three and half years of health and fitness data

This time eight years ago:
First half of 2016 health & fitness in numbers

This time nine years ago:
Venus, Jupiter – auspices

This time ten years ago:
Down the line from York

This time 11 years ago:
Cider – at last available in Poland

This time 12 years ago:
Despondency on Puławska

This time 13 years ago:
Stalking the stork

This time 15 years ago:
Late-June lightning

Gdańsk, Northern Europe

Having watched Jonathan Meade's excellent 2008 travel documentary, Magnetic North at least three times, I am convinced that the main division in Europe is no longer East and West, but North and South. And ever has it been thus, the 45 post-war years with an Iron Curtain having been a temporary anomaly.

 As Mr Meades points out, the wine-drinking South and the beer- and spirits-drinking North are two entirely different faces of our continent, sharing a common culture and history, but divided by climate - and therefore by attitude to life. Magnetic North is a journey starting in Northern France, through Belgium and Holland, along the Baltic Coast, and ending in Finland. While the South is pleasure-loving and soaked in sunshine, the North is grim and Gothic; austere and hard-working. For the North, strong alcohols chemically ease the existential and climatic angst of being. 

Gdańsk features prominently in the series; it bears the hallmarks of northern-ness. 

I am a fan of the Tri-City - Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia - a coastal agglomeration of three-quarters of a million inhabitants. Had I the choice of where to live and work in Poland today, it would be the ideal place, one where I'd be hard-pressed to find boredom. Gdańsk alone itself has much to commend it for - a historic centre, beaches, a national park, museums, universities, but when added seamlessly to the resort town of Sopot, the port city of Gdynia and attractive hinterlands in all directions, it makes for one of the great European locations.

Gdańsk is thoroughly European; as a former member of the Hanseatic League since 1358, Gdańsk or Danzig (or Gduńsk in Kashubian) became wealthy on Baltic trade. Houses, warehouses, mills, churches and markets were built within a fortified wall. In the churches, Latin abounds, bridging the linguistic divide between the Slavs  and Teutons. Although  heavily damaged during WW2, the old town was restored to reflect the Flemish, Dutch, French and Italian influence as well as the Germanic. The result is an extremely atmospheric mediaeval centre. Let's take a look...

Dominican monastery behind the Basilica of St Nicholas (1239). 

The Prison Gate, reminiscent of Glamis and Cawdor castles in Polanski's Macbeth

Fine Arts Academy in the Renaissance building of the Great Armoury

Hanseatic brick: warehouse converted into a hotel

Ulica Długa ('Long Street'); main route through the old town

Ulica Garbary ('Tanneries Street'). Note the eagle on the roof at no. 13.

'The Amsterdam of the North'; the old mill is now a chocolate factory

St Mary's Basilica; left, the high altar, right, the astronomical clock (1464)

Left: the Great Organ of the Archcathedral of Gdańsk Oliwa, 9km (5.6 miles) from the Old Town is well worth a visit, especially to take in a concert. Starting with J.S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (sends shivers down the spine to hear its terrifying majesty blasted out on a 18th century organ of such as size), the concert reflects Northern Europe's culture and heritage including works by Handel and Gounod; familiarity across time and space. An Englishman, Dutchman, German, Dane or Swede would feel equally at home with the setting and the music, the Latin inscriptions and the architecture. The motto of the City of Gdańsk ("Nec temere, nec timide" - neither rashly nor timdly) is worthy of contemplation, and would not appear odd had it been the motto of  No. 167 (Gold Coast) Squadron, RAF.

Gdańsk, like Edinburgh, another favourite city of mine, merits many revisits - there are so many attractions, so much to see and do, that another journey beckons already. And like Edinburgh, it's one that works well in the dusk, in the wet and cold of a Northern European autumn, winter and early spring. Settling into a warm cellar bar down a cobbled side-street for a plate of herring with vodka shot followed by an amber Belgian monastic ale as the wind lashes rain onto mediaeval brick and slate is a comforting prospect.

⁶ But who is able to build Him an house, seeing that heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him? - 2 Chronicles 2, v 6.

This time last year:
Herons in Jeziorki, summer's end

This time two years ago:

Sublime September sun, Ealing

This time four years ago:
Stepping up the pace

This time five years ago:
Evolution of human consciousness

This time six years ago:
Farewell to Ciocia Jadzia

This time seven years ago:
By train from to Konstancin and Siekierki

This time eight years ago:
Summer's end, Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
Ząbkowska, Praga's newly-hip thoroughfare

This time 12 years ago:
Catching the klimat

This time 14 years ago:
Road to Łuków - a road trip into the sublime

Seaside, Sopot

Consider this: you can leave Warsaw Central at quarter past seven in the morning, and have your toes in the Baltic by half past ten. Train times from Warsaw to Gdańsk have halved since the late 1990s. Whether you choose to alight at Gdańsk Główny and take the number 8 tram to Stogi or carry on to Gdańsk Oliwa and catch the number 6 tram to Jelitkowo, a late-morning dip in the sea is now eminently doable from Warsaw. Should the call of  waves and sandy beaches still lure you out of season, when the crowds have thinned and the accommodation cheaper, a short break makes eminent sense.

Below: sand between the toes - the water, heated all summer in the captive tank that is the Baltic Sea, is warmer than the bracing breeze from the north. The beach stretches all the way from the estuary of the Martwa Wisła ('dead Vistula') in Gdańsk, via Sopot, to Gdynia, the cliffs of which are visible on the horizon, as is Sopot's pier.

Below: on to the pier (molo) itself. Europe's longest wooden pier (511m), it is however only a quarter of the length of Southend's pier (2,140m), which stands on cast-iron pillars. The wind was brisk; note the swan in the foreground water, it was enjoying being bounced up and down on the waves.

Below: view of the pier from the western side. For those used to the tidal amplitudes of the seas around the British Isles and French Atlantic coast, high tide and low tide in the Baltic are no more than 10cm apart, due to the sea's narrow opening to the ocean.

A resort town for nearly 200 years, within the borders of the Free City of Danzig, Zoppot (German spelling) was a popular resort for Poles and Germans alike between the wars. Its Kasino-Hotel, now the Grand Hotel, (below) served as Hitler's HQ during the invasion of  Poland in 1939. Martin Bormann and Vladimir Putin also stayed here. More than just a touch of Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel about the place.

The sun has set, but Sopot's night life is about to get going. Below: this is the Dom Zdrojowy ('Spa House'), hotel, conference centre and art gallery, with adjoining gardens.

New to me (my last visit to Sopot was exactly four years ago, in September 2017) is this statue to Wojtek the Bear, the first one being unveiled in Edinburgh in 2015. Fittingly located on ulica Bohaterów Monte Cassino, the street named for the heroes of the 1944 battle - of whom Wojtek was one (helping to carry crates of shells to the Polish artillery crews). Wojtek spent the post-war years in Edinburgh Zoo, dying in 1963. This statue was unveiled on 1 September 1939, the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of WW2.

[More about Wojtek the Bear in Edinburgh here and here.]

This time last year:
Repeatable moments of joy

This time two years ago:
Spectacularly glorious day, Ealing

This time five years ago:
Evolution, the future and us

This time seven years ago:
Relief as Scots vote to remain in UK

This time eight years ago:
The S2 opens all the way to Puławska

This time nine years ago:
Thundering ghost from out of the mist

This time ten years ago:
Push-pull for Mazowsze

This time11 years ago:
Okęcie runway repairs are complete

This time 13 years ago:
I know that painting from somewhere...

This time 14 years ago:
The March of Progress, ul. Postępu

World's largest ship calls into Gdańsk on its first commercial voyage

Imagine a standard, 20-foot container, the basic unit of today's containerised logistics. Now imagine a hundred of them. Now, imagine a thousand of them. Still managing to hold them all in your imagination? Now multiply the thousand by 18. Yes, 18,000 twenty-foot unit equivalents - that's how many containers will fit into the largest ship on earth. The first of 20 vessels, collectively called the Triple-E Class, has just completed its maiden commercial voyage from the Far East, calling into Gdańsk today.

The Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller docked at the Deepwater Container Terminal in what was a significant demonstration of Poland's new-found capability as a global logistics hub. I wrote about DCT Gdańsk last year; the port continues to grow apace, and now that the local customs and sanitary-epidemiology inspectors have pledged to be more helpful, there's no reason why Gdańsk can't challenge Hamburg and Rotterdam as a major player in container trans-shipment.

The visit of the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller was a big event. As she approached Gdańsk, a veritable flotilla of ships and boats of all shapes and sizes sailed out to greet her (ships are still referred to as 'she' in English!). Below, from left: a fire-boat plays its hose; the guided-missile frigate ORP Kościuszko and the sailing vessel, the Dar Młodzieży are among the dozens of craft to escort the huge visitor to Gdańsk.

Sunlight plays a crucial role in the photography of sailing ships! Below: a broadside view of the Dar Młodzieży, just outside the harbour

Below: full frontal view of the world's biggest ship. Count the containers - 22 across. And she's already berthed in Rotterdam and Hamburg along the way, so what's left is a long way from a full load.

Below: in the harbour, being shunted towards the dock by a quartet of tugs, one of which is visible in this shot.

Below: there's huge media interest in the event. Like the arrival in Wrocław of the first Pendolino train, or the arrival at Okęcie of LOT's first Dreamliner, the crowds came out in large numbers, with many spectators viewing the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller from beaches on either side of the container terminal.

This was not a courtesy visit; those containers are full of goods. Before long, the huge cranes started unloading the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller. Question is, will Polish exporters make the most of the chance of a direct sea-route to the Far East to start reducing Poland's trade deficit with that part of the world?

A great day for the Polish economy. The state treasury will collect taxes and tariffs on the goods passing through this port - money that otherwise would have gone to Germany or Holland. And the jobs are here in Poland too. DCT Gdańsk is expanding; a second terminal will soon be built; before long, Gdańsk will be able to handle several ships of this size simultaneously, great news for Gdańsk, Pomorze and Poland.

Post-industrial Gdańsk

I arrived in Gdańsk by night train early this morning, and before indulging in a Lenten breakfast at the Scottish restaurant (egg and cheese McMuffin, salad w/ yoghurt & dill dressing, pure orange juice), I paid a visit to the Cradle of Solidarność, the Gdańsk Shipyard.

The place is winding down, but there's still some activity with a handful of workers coming and going. There was a debate last year as to the possibility of keeping the iconic cranes that characterise Gdańsk's skyline. The scrap value of the steel is far outweighed by leaving the cranes in place. Like Łódź, Gdańsk's industrial heritage has enormous potential - leave it in place and use it as an identifiable focal point for new development. I hope the cranes will stay, as well as the brick-built tenements that surround the shipyard.

Footbridge. Gdańsk Stocznia station.

Shipyard gates, famous worldwide during 1981 strikes

There's little happening now in the bankrupt shipyard

Save the cranes - an iconic part of Gdańsk's skyline

Resting and rusting: communist-era status symbol

Brick tenements, at the end of the street, the shipyard.

8x8 armoured personnel carrier used by communist Militia in 1981

Crosses commemorating dead shipyard workers killed in 1970

There's more to Gdańsk's history than just its old town.

This time last year:
The watercolours of Isaac Quinton

This time two year:
Silver birches and blue skies

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki's wetlands in late winter (2009)

This time five years ago:
Jeziorki's wetlands in late winter (2008)