Welcome to Gdansk!

After over 20 hours of travel on three flights, covering well over 5000 miles, we have arrived in Gdansk, Poland! The last leg was aboard a small jet plane from Copenhagen to Gdansk, about an hour’s flight across the Baltic Sea, where I got my first taste of just how cold our trip was going to be; boarding and disembarking was a hurried scurry out of the terminal and across the tarmac to the waiting plane through the very wintery air of Northern Europe.

The airport is teeny; we watched through the window as two men unloaded our luggage and brought it into the terminal, and customs is one man sitting on a high stool beneath two signs: "Items to Declare" or "Nothing to Declare", looking bored. A cab had been arranged for us by the hotel, and our driver awaited with a crude block-lettered sign on a battered piece of cardboard.  In his late sixties, and a man of few words, to say the least, he kept the tradition of cabdrivers around the world alive, speeding around slower traffic, cutting-off other cabs, and muttering what could only be assumed as some colorful descriptions of the other drivers’ skills.

Mariacka Street - Looking East outside Gotyk House

Our arrival to the oldest part of Gdansk was something out of a fairytale: three- and four-story townhouses marching side-by-side down cobblestoned streets, gothic archways leading in and out of the Old Town, and a gothic-style cathedral in the heart of it all. How lucky we are to be staying at the Gotyk House, Gdansk’s oldest house, and just the damn cutest hotel we could imagine.  The place is chock-full of supposed legend and history, claiming that Nicolaus Copernicus shared an alleged affair with a wealthy merchant’s daughter right here in these very rooms.  For more on the hotel and the legend of Copernicus and Anne Schilling, click here.

Gotyk House with St. Mary's Cathedral

Our room is small in square-footage, but the high, pitched roof ceilings help to keep it from feeling cramped. The bathroom is surprisingly modern, with the extra surprise of a heated towel rack.  That right there is enough to make the place worthy of a good review, but it only gets better; we were warmly greeted by the hotel staff, assisted with our bags up two flights of stairs, and were brought up a tray with delicious tea to help us warm-up and settle in.

After a long nap, we were ready to take a walk and explore the most immediate few blocks around us.  Being so far North, night comes earlier than we are used to, and by 4 o’clock, the sun had almost completely set, and the temperature had dropped about 5 degrees to a chilly 30F. The streets of the Mariacka, which were reduced to rubble in the Second World War, are beautifully reconstructed, with many of the porches and decorative gutters typical to the Old Town rebuilt from the original stonework. The streets are lined with cafes, pubs, restaurants, jewelry shops (mostly silver and amber), galleries, antique shops, and only one or two small souvenir stalls. You get the feeling that although the residents and shop owners know that the Old Town area is a draw for tourists, they are too proud of the history and heritage to completely exploit the opportunity, unlike the cheap and tacky stalls surrounding the many ruins in Italy or the shrines in India.

We meandered up and down the streets, just taking in the feeling of the town.  The first day I am in a foreign country, I feel like I am in a daze; the reality of being so far from home, in a place I have only barely even read about hasn’t really sunk in.  

I just kept looking at my husband, squeezing his hand, and exclaiming, “We’re in Gdansk. POLAND. We’re really here!”

 We finally stopped on the other side of the Motława River at the Hotel Gdansk, which I had read good reviews of and knew had its own brewery and restaurant. The views of the Old Town from the other side of the river are just spectacular! 

The staff at the brewery was helpful, spoke English well, and served us our first taste of Poland: two .5 liters of their very own lager.  

After our first round, we decided to order a couple of light dishes from the appetizer side of the menu: smoked sausages with beer-braised sauerkraut served with mustard, and a herring dish with what we ended up calling a “creamy slaw” of cabbage, pickles, capers, and sour cream.  Surprisingly, the herring was both our favorite, although I will admit to eating almost a whole bowl of the sauerkraut, it was that good!  After another round, this one the wheat, Heffe-style beer, we decided to walk back towards our hotel, possibly stopping at another pub along the way.

By this time, the weather had proved just how changeable it can be here; we had experienced clear skies, rain, snow, sleet, and hail, all within about 2 hours.  As we walked back across the river, the wind had picked up and snow in big fat flakes swirled around us, battering our faces and turning ears and noses red. A barge restaurant on the river was playing big band music over a PA system, and I will admit to dancing in the snow with the Hubby in the middle of the bridge as a gaggle of teenage girls giggled behind their mittens, embarrassed on behalf of our tragically unhip display.

We stopped in at Pub U Szkota, a supposedly Scottish-style pub.  The only thing “Scottish” was the name, the wood interior, and a few pieces of tchotchke on the walls, although they did have both Guinness and Murphy’s on draught.  The bartenders served behind the tiniest of work spaces, slinging mostly Polish and Czech bottled beers to the young crowd. 

At over thirty, we felt pretty ancient to the mostly late-teens and early twenties crowd that grew larger and louder as the night progressed.  Although both pubs boasted fully stocked bars, this is most definitely a beer-drinking region, with the only exception being shots of vodka and the occasional cognac or brandy.  Not really a beer fan? Here the bartenders make “girly beers”, pumping or pouring syrups and flavorings into the bottom of .5 liter glasses and topping with light beer. The available choices included raspberry, ginger, chocolate, and yes, even coconut. Coconut beer? No, thank you.

After some cajoling, we did decide to give a flavored local beer a shot.  The bartender was great, offering three bottled versions: a local Polish honey beer brewed a couple of towns over, a Czech beer brewed with natural grapefruit, and a chocolate beer.  We decided on the grapefruit as it was deemed the least sweet. It turned out to be summery, refreshing, and almost like grapefruit Fanta. We also got talked into a couple of vodka shots.  To be fair, there wasn’t that much “talking into” to be done; he said vodka, we said two, and, I think, earned a little bit of cred.  The vodka was deemed to be “the best” around. It was a little sweet, distilled with herbs, and highly sippable, although custom dictated taking it as a shot, which I had no problem complying with.

We decided it was time to call it a night, to try and get to bed to help acclimate to the time zone change (+9 hours), although we were told it was too early to turn in.  Most bars are open to 2 or 3 in the morning, with the after-hours clubs and bars open to 7 in the morning; at 10:30, most folks were just getting started.

Along the narrow streets home, we discovered our favorite thing about any town that has a late-night scene: cheap, filling, easy food!  Feeling a bit peckish, we made our last stop of the evening a small kabop shop, which offered a delicious wrap most similar in style to a gyro: shaved meet in flat bread, topped with veggies and sauce.  

Our choices were either “spicy” or “garlic”; we chose spicy, topped with three types of cabbage (no lettuce here!), onions, pickles, and sauce. Oh, how good was this going to be?! So good, that despite my penchant to want to document everything when we travel, especially food and drink, I have no picture. It was all I could do to not devour it within the one block back to our hotel.  First bite honors went to the Hubs, and his happy-food groan made me realize without even tasting our kabop that we should have gotten two instead of sharing, and at 12 zloty, or about $3.50 USD, why the heck not?

And, so ends our long day of travel and the first 12 hours in Gdansk. We are so happy to be here, and can’t wait to do, see, and taste more of Poland and further explore my family roots.