Sun. July 24: Discovering Gdansk, Poland and the Home of the Teutonic Knights

The sun rose over the Baltic Sea at 4:44 AM. After spending the previous day at sea, with no shortage of things to do aboard the Viking Sea, we docked in the port of Gdynia, in Northern Poland. We split off into two groups- Beth, Meg, Gary, and Page explored the old town of Gdansk while Dave and David headed out to the countryside to see Marlbork Castle, a sprawling Teutonic castle and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In Gdansk our first stop was a 12th century Roman Catholic cathedral, famous for its organs of 7,876 pipes, 5 keyboards, and one person playing all of this! It is the most popular church to be married in because of its melodious organs. You have to book your wedding at least 2 years in advance for this church. Our guide said, "First you book your wedding, then you spend 2 years finding a fiance!"

We arrived in old town Gdansk, a city over 1,000 years old. We crossed over the river lined by row houses, similar to the ones you see in Amsterdam. At one time this was one of the biggest ports in Europe.

 

The 14th century medieval treadmill crane (seen below) still stands along the river port. It has 4 giant wheels inside that men turned by walking in them, much like hamster wheels. It could lift 2 tons and was used to load and unload cargo.

Our guide, Agnes, was typical of hip, trendy young Poles. She was especially excited about Pope Francis coming to Gdansk in a few days for the World Youth Conference. She guides in the summer and teaches elementary school during the school year. She led us through the great gate entrance to the old city and we were immediately struck by how beautiful the buildings were. She told us how many people have an image of Poland as being made up of dull, grey buildings reminiscent of the Soviet era when in fact, Poland has always been beautiful, even when the Soviets occupied Poland. She told us it was against Communist propaganda to show how beautiful Poland is.

The many diverse facades of the buildings were so beautiful.

In the square is a monument to Daniel Fahrenheit, a physicist, engineer, and glassblower born in Gdansk. It holds an antique thermometer to honor his contribution to a universal temperature scale.

We meandered down several, narrow cobblestone streets and like most medieval cities, there was a huge, towering church in the square. This one is the biggest brick church in the world and holds 25,000 people.

Since Northern Poland was on the Baltic Sea and ship building and sea port trade was a major part of their economy, you will see several  statues and fountains with a "Neptune" theme. This one was particularly interesting with a sea horse's tail replacing the fig leaf!

There were many bakeries along the streets and families were returning from church, sitting outside at the cafes enjoying coffee and pastries. Page had one of the waffle pastries layered with nut butter and elderberry jam. It was delicious.

One of the side streets was made up of lovely homes and restaurants with front porches. Old stone gargoyles jutted out over the porches as rain spouts. Our guide pointed out this cat which belongs to the owners of this house and frequently perches on the gargoyle spout in order to be the most photographed cat in Poland!

The old town square is lined with merchants and guild houses.

Anywhere we go in Europe we see unique, interesting fountains. This fountain was a square with 4 lions in different poses positioned around the points of the square. Rubbing the lion gives you good luck!

It's hard to believe that so many of these beautiful cities were partially destroyed during World War II. This picture taken right after WW2, in the area we walked, is a somber reminder of the devastation of war and the determination of Europeans to rebuild and restore their beautiful towns to their former grandeur.

On our way back to Gdynia, where are shipped was docked, we passed Gate #2 in the Gdansk Lenin Shipyard where protesting workers were fired upon by the Communist regime in 1970, lighting a spark that led to Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, and ultimately Polish independence.

While we went on the city walking tour, Dave and David were off to the Polish countryside in search of the magnificent Malbork Castle, the largest brick fortress in the world. (It has 30 million hand-made bricks.) No question. It lived up to its reputation!

The Teutonic Knights (part of the Crusades) built the fortress in the 1200's as their headquarters for protecting the surrounding agricultural land from the Prussian tribes. The UN designated it a World Heritage area in the 1960's because of its key place in Polish history. In between it underwent various expansions and then Germans used it as their headquarters during the war until the Soviets took it by force in 1945. (Previous to that it has never been successfully breached.)  As you can see from this World War 2 photo, it underwent a massive restoration and is now spectacular. 

The fortress has three separate castles - the High, Middle and Lower Castles, separated by multiple dry moats and towers. These features made it amazing and fun to prowl around - envisioning what it was like when the 500 Teutonic knights and 200 servants lived there. Inside the fortress was magical with vaulted ceilings, frescoes, and art work everywhere. One center courtyard in particular caught our attention. It had 50+ window-openings that had intricate relief of people, animals, dragons and other goodies. What fun it was to find and photograph them.  

 Malbork Castle: if you are ever in Poland it is a 'must see'! 

We invited a special dinner guest to join us tonight. Constantine Pappas is one of the entertainers on board. He is a young graduate of Fresno State, majored in opera, and is an amazing singer of all genres. We have enjoyed watching and listening to his performances. He entertained us at dinner with stories about the ship and what it's like to try out for theater and singing productions, including auditioning to be part of the Viking performance group. His  ultimate goal, after he finishes traveling around the world on Viking, is Broadway and with his outgoing personality and talent, we expect to see his name in lights some day soon. 

We experienced the earliest sunset on our trip thus far, 8:58 PM and looked forward to the next day in Berlin, Germany.

Exploring Medieval and Modern Tallinn, Estonia

The sun rose at 4:44 AM today, welcoming us to Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn is an old city established in medieval times. Today's Estonia, including old towns like Tallinn, fuses modern and medieval- beautiful old buildings and traditions combined with a growing tech sector and modern buildings. It was here that Skype and Spotify started. According to the Wall Street Journal, Estonia produces more tech start-ups per population than any other country in Europe. It is a city with charm by the bucket load and its old town is a UNESCO site.

Walking into the old town, we passed many cute shops and restaurants, including this colorful bicycle-themed  bistro.

 

We walked on cobblestoned streets, headed up to the walled Upper Town, or Toompea, feeling like we stepped back into medieval times. We meandered through narrow alley ways, arches, and tunnels into the maze of this charming city.

We entered the town square where there was a huge open air market of local crafts, surrounded by beautiful  old gabled buildings.

Page bought a pair of beautiful hand painted earrings from "Pippin" who designed and made the earrings. She packaged them and signed her name for Page and drew a cat on the bag.  Many of the crafts people dressed in traditional costumes.

 As we neared the top of the hill we came upon the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, a Russian Orthodox Church.

 The view of the city was stunning- red roofs, "Old Thomas" the rooster weather vane, and even a proud sea gull eyeing all the visitors as if to say "Welcome to my realm"!

We walked back down through the village encountering several interesting things along the way- an old wooden pig planter, the entrance way to Balthasar's Garlic Restaurant with a dessert called Jalkiruoat- Garlic ice cream on a bed of rhubarb with fresh strawberries, honey garlic, and a passion fruit caramel (needless to say, we didn't stop to try it), and several pretty doors. Knights in shining armor, charming door fronts and medieval dragon window ornamentation- so many things that make Tallinn such a charming town.

Tallinn is famous for their marzipan (and things made from linen and wool). We stopped at a marzipan confection shop. Marzipan candies are made from almond paste and are molded into a variety of flowers, buildings, fruits, cartoon characters, etc.  We tried the marzipan and decided they look prettier than they taste..

We noticed two interesting modes of transportation on the street- these beautiful carriage horses with longs woven French braids and an old Chrysler Imperial car decorated for a bride and groom getting married in the church nearby.

As we walked back to port, we noticed another huge ship (on the left) docked next to our "small" ship on the right. Traveling with 900 passengers seems a lot, but imagine traveling with 2,000 or more!

After another scrumptious Viking dinner, the evening ended with the Viking performance, The Long and Winding Road,  on the ship's pool deck backed up with a live band. Adam, Constantine, and Eric, 3 very talented young, professional musicians on tour with Viking, performed a medley of Beatles' hits. The sunset at 10:09 PM as the ship sailed for Gydnia, Poland (412 nautical miles).