Gdansk – bruecken_schlag

Schlagwort: Gdansk

Photo Hunting in Gdansk

My thing will always be writing. Going somewhere, slowly walking about, trying to take in the space with all my senses and transforming the feeling that I get into words. It is a somewhat sacral act to me. And while I love music and art in general, what I truly am is just a writer.

Yet what would be a more perfect place to elaborate my skills of visual artistry than Gdansk – one of the places that I have tried to capture in words several times, a place I love and cherish, and that I can never get enough of? When I set out with my camera to capture the essence of this true love of mine in photos, I am sure that looking for images that respresent Gdansk to me will open up new perspectives to me and, in turn, inspire my writing anew. And so it does.

The crisp winter air is painful in my lungs because it is so cold. Yet I breathe it in deeply as I walk along Dlugie Pobrzeze, the street that lines the Motlawa River, enjoying the crunching sounds the snow makes beneath my feet. The sun is mirrored in the frost and makes everything glisten. I turn right on Mariacka street.

I have always had a thing for this street with its beautiful houses that have strange little front buildings: stairs leading up to terraces from which you enter the houses. I think I have read about their history somewhere, but I forgot what it was. The street is narrow and, now in winter, it is wonderfully secluded and quiet. The way the sun hasn’t reached the street, but only the church that you see in the very end (the largest brick stone church in the world), makes it a more magical little alley, all toned in shadow. Like from a Harry Potter movie.

Making a turn, there are yet more details to discover. Cast-iron grates. Little pillars. Lanterns screwed onto otherwise unremarkable houses. Small things that don’t mean anything to your regular by-passer. But I like the way the pillar has that round little nub on top, and I like the leave ornaments moving down from it. I like the grate with its twists and unobtrusive beauty. I like the lantern on the wall, old-fashioned and reminiscent of gas lantern times.The turn from Mariacka street has brought me to a little alley that leads right up to the Long Market. This is the core of the old Gdansk. This is where its classic beauty manifests. This is also where it sometimes feels like Disneyland, because after World War II none of this was there anymore. It was all re-made. But I never had the fake feeling here like I had it in Wroclaw or Warsaw. I just think it’s beautiful. It is not my favourite place in the city (we’ll be getting there). But it make my heart wide to stand in sight of the town hall. Looking further up the street, beautiful house borders beautiful house. You’ll find the best Bar Mleczny, Milk Bar, on that street, to the left. It serves delicious Polish food for virtually no money. I love how in this picture I captured the old couple holding hands. I want to walk in a city I love with someone I love, with this natural intimacy on display, when I am that age. Back toward the river, I walk through the Green Gate onto the Green Bridge and turn, and the view that opens up is what makes this my favourite place in Gdansk’s Old Town. But to tell you the truth, I honestly think that if this was all that Gdansk was I wouldn’t love it as much. I would think it too clean, too tidy, too dressed up or perky. I love it because it also has a very different side.

The next day (which you will be able to tell by the weather change in the photos) I go with my friend to Dolne Miasto, a slightly less central, but especially less wealthy part of town. Actually it is just across the Green Bridge and thus very close to the pretty Old Town. But here the streets aren’t well kept and the houses are run down – with few exceptions.

The houses here have the exact same potential for beauty, but for some reason gentrification doesn’t hit. There is no sensible reason for that, but laws of market seem to work differently in Poland from Germany. Surely the beautiful Kamienice, secession houses, would be renovated and rented out for a LOT of money if this were in Munich, Berlin, or Hamburg.

I adore this picture. It shows the place in all its morbid beauty. The brick stone. The balconies. The way time has gnawed its way into the cold stone. And the woman in the red coat carrying home her groceries on the slippery snowed in sidewalk.

Dolne Miasto is also where there is wasteland left in the middle of the city. Economically that is not good, not smart for the city I am sure. But I like it because it opens up potential as of yet unfulfilled. Once the potential will be fulfilled, this won’t be half as interesting a place anymore. Ironic, I know. But my heart wants what it wants – morbidity and wasteland.

And things are changing already. Walking back towards the Old Town, with a beautiful view onto the towers of Mariacki church and the town hall, there seems to be construction work going on at the Island of Granaries that cuts through the Motlawa River. But now, all snowed in, the place looks as morbid and out of time as the wasteland above. The ruin of the old granary adds to that. Fugitive. Momentary. Perishable. What a strange thing time is, and how sweetly strange it is when it is visible like this.

Sopot on a Winter Day

Januar 28, 2014 / bruecken_schlag / 3 Kommentare

Sopot. I first got to know it by its German name Zoppot which sounds so much harsher and less accessible than the soft-sounding, sinuous Polish equivalent. Thinking about the place has come to evoke pictures in my mind of when it was a German spa town and people would come here to enjoy their summer retreat, or as the German old-fashioned expression goes: Sommerfrische, a word I love and that translates to summer freshness. I blame that on the beautiful books I have read that are set here and that paint pictures of a distant past that are coloured in the soft tones of patina.

I have never been to Sopot on a hot summer’s day when the pier costs an entrance fee and the beach must be overcrowded with tourists. My personal associations with the town are not ones of summer freshness. I have, however, been here in the winter. So far most of my visits were accompanied not only by great cold, but also by grey skies. I always liked it anyway because I love the Baltic in all its shades of grey. But the last walk I took through Sopot on this crisp winter day was special. And I will try and share some of my impressions with you.

I walk around the last house that seperates me from the open view ontop the sea, and as I pass the corner, my heart jumps, as it does when I see the Baltic – my favourite sea.

When I finally set foot onto the beach, I can hardly see anything because I am blinded by bright sunlight, mirrored by the snow that has covered the sand in a pocketed white blanket. Wind is making my eyes tear up, and the cold is crawling into my sleeves as I take off the glove and reach for my camera.

I make my way toward the Sopot pier, the longest wooden pier in Europe with its old fashioned ambience. It invites for strolling, dandering, sauntering. If only it wasn’t around -16 degrees today.

Looking North toward Gdynia, the water is smooth as glass and reflects every soaring seagull, every ray of sunlight. To the South, toward Gdansk, the is greyer and less calm. The thick wooden stilts the carry the pier are entirely frozen over with a dense icy coat that produces funny looking outgrowth. They look like mammoth legs.

The day is blue and white. I cannot even fathom what it could be like in the summer. The idea of green doesn’t seem to fit. This place belongs in the clear and transparent colours of winter. Even the clouds play along with it. Big and white, with silver-grey linings, they collect just above the horizon as though they wanted to cushion the bright blue skies. Looking left and right, the Baltic has frozen over, and a thick layer of snow grazes the ice. Poeple are walking on it.

It looks a little bit like the froth that waves make. In the original fairytale of the Little Mermaid, when mermaids die, they lose their soul and become froth on the sea. Such a melancholy thought. The little mermaid herself gains immortality for her undying love and joins the spirits of the air. I am sure she is around somewhere.

Walking along the beach it looks surreal how at times it is the sand covering drifts of snow, then again it is snow that overcasts the sandy beach. Different animal tracks can be seen on the untouched surfaces, mainly birds‘. The bare branches are dark and dead against the intense winter colours, but there is life all around, if only it doesn’t always show itself openly.

When dusk is setting, the light changes. The colours grow warmer, but the temperature goes colder yet again. Little flakes of ice are in my scarf just below my mouth – from breathing. The light fades, but the beauty is increasing. I find an abandonded boat on the beach. The sight of it sets free all the longing, all the craving, all the wanderlust I carry in my heart year round.

Once more, I walk down the pier. Because I can. And because as heartfelt absolutely certain as I am that I am going to come back, as much does it pain me to say good bye. Every time. I walk the pier to the very end. On the ice cover in the marina, there is slight, weird movement. I only see it at second glance: The seagulls. They have cuddled up in a huge swarm and sit on the ice in a huge crowd, warming one another. It looks beautiful, a symbol of „united we stand“, of „together we are strong“.

Then, something seems to have disturbed them in their corner as suddenly they rise as one into the air. So many individual animals, yet moving in one swift movement, together, forming one body, and setting again as a breathing living cover onto the ice, onto the sea.

If this isn’t all too symbolic of my yearning for travel, my craving for flying and still having a home to come back to, of my wish to be myself in all my individuality and still have attachments to others, I don’t know what would be.

Green Bridge, Gdansk, Poland

Green Bridge in Gdansk, Poland

Januar 26, 2014 / bruecken_schlag / 2 Kommentare

There had to be a bridge in Gdansk. There was no way one of my favourite cities of all times did not have a bride. In all honesty, though, the most well-known bridge in Gdansk’s Old Town, across the river Motlawa, is not all that exciting. But when you cross it coming from the Old Town onto the Island of Granaries and then turn around to look back – that is when it is stunning.

This bridge is called the Green Bridge, Zielony Most, as it leads up to the Green Gate, Zielona Brama. There has been a bridge in this place since the 14th century, while the gate was built in the late 16th century and, so I read, shows Flemish architectural influences – something I have yet to find out for myself since I have never been to the Netherlands.

I have to say that to me the gate is just very hanseatic with its red bricks. Also I quite like gates. In a way, they complement the idea of the bridge – they allow you to pass through somewhere. Of course they have another semantic component when they are closed. But I have never seen the Green Gate closed. Instead, it is always inviting with its four passage ways onto the Long Market and onto the Long Street – the gems of Gdansk’s Old Town. From the bridge you have a view of the Dlugie Pobrzeze, the street that lines the banks of the river Motlawa. In the summer souvenire stands are pressed up against each other there side by side. In the winter it is wonderfully empty and quiet. And cold. Seriously cold. But even the cold is different in Gdansk. It is crisp and genuine and of amazing clarity. Oh, the beauty.

If you have read My Mission statement, you know why I love bridges. To me they are the most universal symbol of connection, of bringing people together and overcoming anything that may seperate us. I want to present to you pictures of bridges that I really love in places that I really love on my blog every Sunday. If you have a picture of a bridge that you would like to share with my readers as a guest post, feel free to contact me!

Hanseatic Beauty – Pearls Along the Baltic

Mai 28, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 8 Kommentare

On my blog I have repeatedly referred to the „hanseatic beauty“ of certain places. I have also frequently linked back my passion for this specific beauty with my home town of Hamburg and the stamp it has left forever on my soul. Now I don’t know how much anyone who is not acquainted with Northern Europe might be acquainted with what I mean by hanseatic, but I think everyone should be, because really, if a city is a Hanse city, in my book it is pretty much down as a must see travel destination.

Lübeck, Germany – the city called the Queen of the Hanseatic League

The Hanseatic League, or Hanse, was a trade union in the Middle Ages that linked together different port cities mainly in the Baltic, but also in the North Sea. Between the cities that were part of it, there were beneficial trade regulations and diplomatic privileges. They formed a network of support all over Northern Europe. In some ways, through their mutual history, they still feel obliged and connected to one another today. There used to be very many of them. In Germany, seven cities carry the name Hansestadt, Hanse city, until today: Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald and Wismar. In other countries, well known cities that used to be part of the Hanse are Gdańsk, Toruń and Szczecin in Poland, Riga in Latvia, Tallinn in Estonia, Stockholm in Sweden, Antwerp in Belgium and Groningen in the Netherlands.

What all these cities share is that they have been places of trade, mainly sea trade, for centuries. That means one thing above all: They are all connected to the water. Every Hanse city is located either directly by the sea or at least by a river, and in every one of them water plays a great role when you look at the city’s general build-up.

View to Tallinn’s dowtown over the Tallinn Bay in the Gulf of Finland

Where there is water, there are certain other things. Like bridges!! Hamburg, they say, has more bridges than Venice. That might be due to the fact that Hamburg is just a lot bigger than Venice, but it only makes sense that Hanse cities should have a lot of bridges given that their key feature is being built close to water. I have written about some of them in this post on Riga and this post on Greifswald.

My second favourite symbol after the bridge may be the ship, signifying travel, movement, and freedom, and yes, of course there are lots of ships in Hanse cities. I love the port atmosphere of Hamburg’s huge and bustling port, the second biggest in Europe after Rotterdam, with its cranes and its overall industrial charm, just as much as I love the cosy and cute museum port in Greifswald with its old sailing boats and wooden masts. Size doesn’t matter in this one, as long as the sound of seagulls is to be heard.

View of the cranes in the port in Hamburg, Germany – from the ferris wheel at Hamburg’s funfair Hamburger Dom

Next to the water, there is usually another specific feature of a Hanse city – the granaries. Where there was trade, there had to be places where to store the goods. In Hamburg there is a whole district called Speicherstadt – granary city. Now, what could possibly be so interesting about a couple of old storage buildings? The architecture!! The typical hanseatic granary is built from red brick stone. It is my favourite material, above all because it looks different and equally beautiful in any weather. In sunshine it will glow fiery, and in grey and misty rain it will keep its earthy, honest feel.

Waterfront with granaries in Gdansk, Poland

Granary City – Speicherstadt – in Hamburg, with the brick stone granaries on the right

Not only the granaries feature red brick stone in Hanse cities. Most landmarks in any of the cities are made from this material. There is a style called Brick Gothic that is predominant along the Baltic Sea. This is of course because in this area, there were no natural stone ressources, but clay from which the bricks are burnt. Although this is not directly related to their hanseatic character, I love this style of architecture and it feels like home to me. Find a few iconic examples here:

Monastery ruins, Eldena / Greifswald, Germany

Monastery ruins of Eldena in Greifswald, Germany

House of Black Heads in Riga, Latvia

Holstentor in Lübeck, Germany – Lübeck was called the Queen of the Hanse in the Middle Ages and the richest and most important city in the league

By these elements – water, ports, and red brick stone architecture – I would recognize a Hanse city at any given moment. But what also factors in my love for these places is the mentality of the people. We are talking about places here that have been connected to the world via trade for ages, and that have therefore acquired an international feel for an equally long time. The Hamburg coat of arms has a city gate on it – the Gate to the World, they say. The Bremen coat of arms holds the Key to this very Gate to the World. Hanseats take pride in being open, curious, and worldly. They are direct, engaging, honourable people who make their word count. Sometimes they come across as a little blunt or harsh, but the warmth they display given a little time is heartfelt and true. They will usually greet you with a handshake – but when they hug you roughly, you will know that they mean it. I know where I am at with Hanseats.

In my honest opinion, all of these cities that I have mentioned here are horribly underrated as travel destinations. Most of them are close to one or even several beautiful beaches that grant you delicious summer fun when you come at the right time of year and that won’t be as overcrowded as Mediterranean beaches. The cities all have a long and proud history and a rich cultural life, of course each in relation to its size. The people are generally friendly and curious for the world, used to visitors and open to whatever travellers have to contribute to city life. Personally, I may at times have trouble with German patriotism, and what I say now may go against all I have said about pride so far – but I am truly proud of being a Hanseat.

Have you been to any of these places? Do you think they make good travel destinations?

I’ve Got the Month of May

Mai 22, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 14 Kommentare

May has been my favorite month ever since I can remember. That transition phase between spring and summer is so full of hope and opportunity, so bursting with expectation and dreaming. Nature is exploding in all her most beautiful colors and the sky has that special color that is both coyly pastel and stunningly intense and deep.

The train ride between Berlin and Gdańsk never ceases to be of indescribable beauty to me. Between Berlin and Frankfurt / Oder, the first hour of the ride, I can’t help but notice how different the landscape looks now from the way it did when I made the journey in the winter. The wide and rolling fields of Brandenburg are now not barren, brown and lifeless. They are juicy green and promising. And as I look out the window, suddenly I my heart starts leaping. Green has been substituted by garish and bright yellow.

It is the first rape field in blossom that I see this season. I could just cry. They say that up here, you can see with the naked eye if someone will be coming for a visit in three days. Everything is spread out into the open. Everything is just there. In this world and in this life that holds so many surprises for us on an everyday basis, I think it more than calming to find myself in this Northern Germany plain that doesn’t keep anything from me. Barren brown and grey fields in winter. Explosions of green grass, golden wheat and yellow rape in summer. This is home to me, a place where I can feel secure and at peace, unafraid of the surprises that may lurk around the corner.

At my most recent stay in Poland, after our visit to Grudziądz, Karol decides to not go back on the Autostrada – the large highway – but on the quiet country road by ways of the countless cute little villages on the way to Gdańsk. After the humid, hot day with stunning blue skies, small clouds has started to emerge, and now they are thickening across the wide dome above us. Nothing hinders the eye from wandering along the horizon on either side – no hills, no house, no tree distorts my view, and the sky looks different on every end in millions of shades of white, grey and blue as it meets the earth with its astonishingly juicy green fields. The rape is blossoming a little more carefully here than it was in Brandenburg – the fields are not of the same unbroken golden yellow colour, but they are intertwined with green. The rape is not entirely ripe yet, still waiting to give out its explosive force entirely.

On another day, Aga and I take the tram from the Gdańsk city center out to Brzeźno and walk from there to the park in Jelitkowo. It is too windy to walk right by the Baltic Sea beach, so we take the tarmaced trail behind the bank slope. Families with little children abound, young and old couples walking holding hands, friends chatting away, cyclists, skaters, buzzing life. The trees jutting out of the slope show leaves of such tender bright green that I feel any touch would have to destroy them. When we get to the park, we lie on the grass for an hour, sleeping, chatting and wreathing daisies.

Back in Berlin, the chestnut trees have exploded. In German the blossoms are called blossom candles, „Blütenkerzen“, as though they were something that shed light and was burning brightly into an already bright summer’s day. The pink ones have been my favorite trees since I was in high school. Their color is not subtle, it is crazed and screaming, exciting, fresh and fitting for visions of summer.

And speaking of blossoms, there are of course the cherry and apple trees that have their white beauty on display as though they were ready for their wedding. They never look as gorgeous as they do when in blossom, no matter the appeal of a tree carrying ripe fruit. I cannot help but think how the entire change of seasons and the idea of the passing of time is so iconically symbolized in the little white flowers on these trees. They remind me that every moment is precious, and they make the promise of a good tomorrow. I find hope in them.

Do you have a favorite month? What do you like about this time of year?

What’s one more Identity?

Februar 28, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 25 Kommentare

A couple of weeks back I was having drinks in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district with Adam of Travels of Adam – if you haven’t yet stumbled upon his great blog you should make up this oversight as quickly as you can. We had a great evening of drinking wine and chatting about travel, life in Berlin and blogging. We finally left the bar to walk to the tram stop together, and when we had just one more pedestrians’ traffic light to cross, we saw the tram get in to the stop. The traffic light was red. It was obvious that we’d miss the tram if we waited for it to turn green. Adam asked: “Wait or run?” I said: “Run!”, and so we did. As we got on the tram, Adam said: “You are so unlike any other German I know, I love it!”

This got me thinking back on all the times my German identity has been questioned – even if in jest.

In Bristol, England, I walked into a coffee shop to buy a latte. After taking my order, the barista asked: “So how are you today?” I replied: “Really grand! Enjoying being away from home for a bit.” He asked: “Where’s home?” I said: “Germany.” He looked up puzzled: “I thought you were Canadian! You don’t have a foreign accent in your English!”

In Mostar, Bosnia, hostel owner Bata gave me advice on how to get into one of my favorite sights, Blagaj’s Tekkija, without having to pay an entrance fee. He said: “You’re almost local, you just tell them ‘Gdje si, legendo!’ [which roughly translated to ‘What’s up, my man!’] and pass right through.”

Tekija, Blagaj, Blagaj, Bosnia and Hercegovina

The Tekija of Blagaj, one of my favorite places in the world

In Rijeka, Croatia, we were having a lovely night in someone’s back yard singing, dancing and, again, drinking the night away. I sang songs in Croatian and was totally in my happy place. My friend Nina said: “You have strange hobbies for a German girl, Maki. Shouldn’t you be working in a Hypo Bank and have a boyfriend that you see just once a week?”

In Nis, Serbia, I was hanging with hostel people in the smokers’ lounge when the phone rang. The hostel owner, Vlad, ran to get it, leaving his cigarette in the ashtray. When he didn’t come back after a while, I took it and said: “Vlad won’t finish this, eh, I might as well.” His co-worker by the same name looked at me in awe and said: “When you try to get back into Germany, they won’t let you. They will think you’re Serbian.”

In Novi Sad, Serbia, we were singing, drinking and eating Ajvar in my friend Lazar’s kitchen well into the night. Ajvar is a delicious paste made from egg plant, tomatoes and peppers. There was a large jar of it and one spoon, and it circled. When the jar was almost empty and Lazar was scratching remains from the ground, I advised him to do it with the spoon’s narrow end to get even the last bits out. His face split into a grin. “You blend in very well here.”

In Gdansk, Poland, I was visiting a conference, but hanging out nights with my friends who use a lot of swear words, especially the infamous “kurwa”, an approximate equivalent to the English f-word. Finally one night I told them: “Guys, you gotta stop it with the swearing. I almost said ‘kurwa’ at the conference today!” They all broke into laughter, and my friend Karol said: “Marielka, I think you may have deserved the right to Polish citizenship now.”

This is me at the Sejm, Polish parliament, in 2007. I wouldn’t have thought back then that anyone would ever attest me a Polish identity…

It looks like I’m not your prototype German. I’m not sure what that would be, but apparently not someone who crosses red traffic lights, speaks foreign languages, tries not to let food go to waste, sings Balkan songs, finishes a stranger’s cigarette, or swears (in Polish at that!). When writing about this, I noticed how many of these stories involve people in foreign countries that I consider friends. It also brought to mind that I have a Croatian nickname, Maki, and a Polish one, Marielka. I realized how integrated, how much at home I feel in so many different places.

When I posted this photo of my Australian friend Steve and I, taken at Lake Shkodra in Montenegro, on facebook, my German friend Stefan (who speaks approximately every language in Europe) commented it in Bosnian by the words: “Ti ces nam vratit kao prava Bosanka” – “You will come back to us like a true Bosnian girl”.

When someone attests me a new cultural identity, it is the ultimate step from being a traveller to being a part of the culture in some small way. It makes me very happy to think that I am a little Canadian, a little Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Polish, and of course also a little German. I like to think that I have been drawn to Middle Eastern and Eastern Europe because part of my soul has always been there, because there is something inside of me that has always been Slavic – while that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate and identify with my German heritage. Don’t get me wrong, I’d never want to get rid of that! I throw on black, red, gold colors when we play international soccer tournaments just like any other German, and I am ready to sell Germany as a lovely travel destination to anyone who wants to hear it. I am most certainly German, and as difficult as it sometimes feels to say this: I love my country.

The beauty of all these little anecdotes, however, is that I don’t have to be exclusive on this one. This isn’t a monogamous relationship. In a globalized, fast paced, cosmopolitan world that asks of young people to be flexible, variable, willing to adapt and open to new things, I seem to have taken on multiple identities already – and with every new one that is added to that, the only question that comes to mind is: “What’s one more?” I have a beautiful summer love affair with Croatia. I have a strange fascination, an infatuation if you will, with Serbia. I have a difficult, but serious relationship with Bosnia. The US are like an ex-boyfriend who I still think very fondly of – in other words, yes, we’re still friends. Poland is something like the love of my life. I well think I could get married to Poland. And Germany – Germany is my parent and my sibling. Germany is family.

What do you think? How many identities do you have? How do they show? And do you strive for more?

Street Art in Polish – Gdańsk Zaspa

Februar 13, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 17 Kommentare

One of the things that I love about Gdańsk is the fact that every time I have been there so far, I have discovered new places and yet more incredible things. I owe this largely to the wonderful people I have met there and that have taken me to see things I wouldn’t have thought of myself. My latest visit gifted me with another hidden gem of the city – the quarter called Zaspa.

I sit in the hostel common room in the morning attending to my blog when next to me someone says: „Przepraszam!“ – which is Polish for „Excuse me“. I look up mechanically, and my friend Karol is standing next to me smiling. I’m up hugging him within split seconds. He is one of the people who, when I leave Gdańsk, ask me not if, but when I will come back. Having made friends that look forward to my returning there – that is a gift that I truly treasure. Karol is off to show a bit of the city to two hostel guests, and I am totally up for joining them. So we’re English Terri, Belgian Dries, Polish Karol and German me as we set off for the discovery of Gdańsk beyond the Old Town.

After having shown us the university and the cathedral and the park of Oliwa (which I have written about before, but in German), Karol parks his car here:

Doesn’t look so spectacular, eh? But Karol is not only passionate about showing people around, he is also knowledgeable about the city’s past. This used to be the landing strip of an airport. Immediately things fall into place in my head. My dad has asked me a few times if the airport in Wrzeszcz still existed. I have also read about that airport in some of the novels that are set in Gdańsk and that I love. I never knew where that airport used to be, I was just sure that it didn’t exist anymore. Now all of a sudden I’m there, on the pavement of a former landing strip. And this is an important moment for me, because when my father, who was born in Eastern Prussia, today’s Mazurian Lake District, was five years old, in 1945, he fled from the Russian front with his mom and his sister, and they fled on an airplane that left from the place that I am right now standing on. Have I mentioned that I am in love with places that are densely filled with history? Gdańsk is paradise for me.

But the airport is not what we came here for. I have passed by Zaspa on the SKM, Gdańsk’s version of a metro, many times before, but I never seem to have made much of looking out the window – I figured this was basically just a residential area with socialist blocks. Seen those. Lived in one in fact. Not a huge fan. Now that we approach those blocks, I can’t understand how I have overlooked their beauty so far – which lies in the murals.

A large part of the residential block buildings are dressed – yes, that is what it feels like, they are dressed up in enormous wall paintings. Socialist block residential areas have always freaked me out a bit – I find it so strange that they are really just residential. No shops. No life, really, at least not nowadays. Just house beyond house beyond house. Now what I see here, with the art surrounding us every step through the area, is very very different from that impression that I had so far.

This must be one of my favorites. I love how it is hard to tell if the fingers are putting thet puzzle piece into the gap or if they are taking it out, and how that central dominant part of the picture is red and white – the colors of the Polish flag.

This surely wouldn’t be Gdańsk if not at least one of the over-dimensional works of art referenced the Solidarność movement, the trade union established in 1980 (notice the number in the mural!) that played a significant role in bringing down socialism in Europe and that originates here. The writing says „Budowa Jednostki“ – „The Building of Unity“. This is not just graffito. These walls ask to be looked it again and again. Karol tells us that their coming about was inspired by street art in the style of Banksy – cheeky, funny, yet deep. I find most of the pictures to be very Polish though, and very original and typical for this country.

This one is dedicated to Chopin, or Szopen, as the Polish spell him. Yes, he was Polish, not French. In fact he was so Polish that even though most of is body was buried in Paris, his heart was taken out and buried in Warsaw, as he had requested before his death. And while we’re at it, just for the record: Marie Curie? Also not French. Polish. Her name is Maria Skłodowska-Curie, as street names in Poland will proudly tell you.

Terri, Dries and Karol go on to do more exploring after Zaspa, I have to be back in the Old Town. Karol drops me off at the SKM stop. As the train moves through Zaspa on its way toward the main station, I pass by a bunch of the murals again. Going through here won’t be the same anymore. Another stop on the SKM route has gained its own specific face. I am getting to know this city better and better, and I am loving it.

2012 in pictures

Dezember 29, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / 30 Kommentare

2012 has blessed me with beautiful travel experiences. As I look back on them, I feel very lucky. I haven’t left Europe much for travelling – but going through my pictures I don’t regret that. There is so much to discover in close proximity to my home. Join me on a quick recap of the beauty I have experienced in 2012:

This was Chemnitz in Saxony in March. While everyone always claims it to be rather ugly, I was surprised at how much beauty could be found there. It is much more than just its socialist past.

Istanbul – my Place of Desire, my Sehnsucht, my love. The first words I ever wrote about it were: „Istanbul und ich, das ist die ganz große Liebe“ – Istanbul and I, that is love for life. My trip in March, the second one I took there, will be followed by many more.

Wittenberg – the city of Luther and reformation. The church tower holds writing that says: „Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott“, a famous Luther quote translating to „A mighty fortress is our God„. I went there in April on a volunteer gathering.

At the Elbe river in Hamburg on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, there’s Easter bonfires every year. An old tradition, pagan, driving out the evil spirits of winter. Something I grew up with and that always makes me feel like home. Also I love fire. And I love water. And when the flames are reflected in the river, it is divine beauty.

In Szczytno, Poland, my father was born when it was still called Ortelsburg. This is one of the famous Mazurian lakes in early August summer sun. It had a touch of eternity to it.

This is Olsztyn in Poland. I just adore red brick stone…

… and because I love it, I loved this church in Vilnius, Lithuania!!

But the Baltics had more to offer than city life. This is a castle park in Cesis in Gauja national park in Latvia, named after…

… the river Gauja!!

The Latvian capital Riga was possibly my favorite city in the Baltics. It reminds me a lot of my mother’s home town, Bremen – no wonder, since Riga was founded by monks who came from exactly that German city in the middle ages.

Riga was followed by Estonia’s Tallinn in all its medieval beauty. This is a modern site though – the Song Festival Grounds where music festivals are held and just recently before we got there the Red Hot Chili Peppers had a gig too. Imagine all of this filled with a huge choir singing folk songs… one day I will go to the Tallinn Song Festival. High on my bucket list!

On my birthday we went to see the Estonian National Park Lahemaa. Bogs, swamps, forests and relics of Soviet times, a lovely tour guide who explained to us about cultural and social whatabouts in Estonia as well – it was a lovely start into the new year of my life!!

The trip to the Baltics finished in late August with a three day stay on the Curonian Spit in Lithuania. Endless beaches, deep dark forests and the lovely sounds of the Baltic Sea – my heart grows wide even at the thought of it!

In September I discovered a small part of the deep West of Germany – this is a shot of Hambach castle, an important place for the German national movement in the 19th century and one of the birthplaces of our modern democracy.

My finish is my discovery of the year – Gdańsk! I fell for it long and hard. There is much more to discover about Tricity and the whole Kashubian area in the North of Poland. I am nothing but grateful for the fact that 2012 has given me a place that I could love so deeply. I hope you will follow me as I explore it further!

Tricity’s Waterfronts, or My Happiness

Dezember 23, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / 4 Kommentare

Making me happy is not the hardest thing: Let me travel. Show me something – anything! – that is beautiful. Make me sing. Bring me to one of my Places of Desire. Teach me something about the world. Or get me to anywhere where there is water.

Any of these things will put a smile on my face and love into my heart. Being in Gdańsk, or really in Trójmiasto – that is the Tricity area consisting of Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia – has made it possible for all the things on the list to be given to me at once. It can be really overwhelming.

It is cold this time around in Gdańsk – not that it was exactly warm when I came in November. As I walk from Happy Seven Hostel (easily one of my favorite hostels in Europe!) toward the Long Market, I wrap my scarf around my face to keep the cold from gnawing its frosty teeth through my skin. My own warm breath clings onto my scarf in tiny ice crystals. The pavement on Długie Pobrzeże, the waterfront street, is slippery and wet, frosted with a not so thin layer of ice on top of the snow. The sky is blue and shiny. The air is fresh. It feels like the first day in the world. As carefully as I feel I should tread here, my eyes are as though fixated on the outlook I am facing and that I love so much.

There is the Motława River, glistening in the sun. The sillhouette of the Żuraw, the old and mighty city gate, stands still and black and mighty before the sun. As I approach the water, I see that it is frozen over slightly, and covered with half melted snow, and the tracks of swan and seagull feet paint pretty pictures on the surface. I walk towards the sun, and the light tickles in my eyes – the only party of my face that isn’t covered to be kept warm. Eventually I turn back, and I see this:

Sunlight is suffusing the houses with its wintery morning light. It is not actually a warm light, but when it hits the red brickstone, the houses look like they were shone upon by an August summer sun. It is the red brick stone that savours the warmth of yet brighter and warmer days. I love the material more than words can say.

On a different day, I take the SKM to Sopot. I have been here once before. Almost 20 years ago. My memory of it is very faint, but it exists. It was summer, the August of 1993 to be precise, and I remember the beach to be very white, whiter than any I had ever seen. The sky was misty, and there were lots of white birds I suppose must have been seagulls – „No,“, said my mom when I related this memory to her once, „they were swans. Lots of them. I had never seen swans on the Baltic Sea before.“ I remember the Grand Hotel dimly – grey and big and mirroring in its slightly run-down morbidity many tales of former grandeur.

What will it be like to go there now?

Through Sopot’s downtown, I make my way to the pier. In summer it actually costs money to go there. I find this in tune with the very chic, elegant spa-town feel of the main street. I am not saying that it isn’t beautiful. I just tend to feel a bit displaced when I encounter somewhere like this. Everything and everyone looks so gorgeous and tidy, and it makes me very aware of my jeans being torn and my hair being messy, and I’m practically waiting to slip and make a perfect slapstick fall that passers-by will sniffily pretend to have not seen. I’m missing an edge, because Sopot’s picture-book perfection is making me queasy. And then… then I get to the water.

There are swans and seagulls in the water. Fog is all around, but the horizon still marks a fine line between skies and earth, between eternity and the material world. The Grand hotel in the distance is white and shiny and I cannot believe that it is supposed to be the same place my memory held. I know that soon the look of the majestic and wealthy world class hotel will have replaced my old and faded image from the early 1990s that still exists in my head. I grieve upon that knowledge for a moment. I liked the unrestored Grand Hotel. It told a whole life story. This new one has nothing to do with me in all its phenomenal beauty. Incredible that we, a family of five, could afford to stay there 20 years ago. My mom and I found old bills in a photo album, dinner there for the five of us cost some 140,000 Zloty – in today’s currency rate that would be 35,000 Euros. Times change.

My eyes go back to the water. The ocean is the same in an elegant place like this as in any other. My Baltic. Its waters connect so many places I have seen and loved. Skagen in Denmark, where Baltic and North Sea meet. Greifswald, my German college town. The Curonian Spit in Lithuania with its fir tree forrests and white sandy beaches. Latvia’s Riga and Estonia’s Tallinn, the lively and individual Baltic capitols. It calms me to think of these places.

On this weekend, there is also a quick visit to Gdynia’s beach. It is of beauty that is beyond my capacity to describe but in two words: Olbrzymia Cisza. In Polish that means: Gigantic Silence.

SKM-ka, or Gdańsk fast-forwarded

November 23, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / 7 Kommentare

One of my most innate Gdańsk adventures lies yet before me. I am going to ride the SKM, a kind of overground metro that connects all of Tricity – that is Gdynia, Sopot and Gdańsk. SKM stands for Szybka Kolej Miejska, fast city train, and wonderfully the Polish have not only made the company name the name for every vehicle that is part of the service, but also personified the abbreviation in the female so each train is called an „SKM-ka“. It is as though in German you would say SKM-in or in Spanish SKM-ita. It adds a whole different dimension of personality to the old, slightly dodgy-looking yellow, blue and white trains. It makes me think of them as old grumpy fat ladies who, while being harsh and cold to everyone, are truly loveable.

The 15 minute train ride is uneventful – but it leaves me with time to reflect, like on countless other occasions, on this city. While a long-distance train seems a slow way of transport compared to, say, flying, this SKM-ride makes me feel like everything I connect with the city is rushing by, like someone fast-forwarded my thoughts.

First stop: Gdańsk Stocznia. The shipyards. This is where the Solidarność movement came about, where people went on strike to fight an unjust regime – one of the places where the end of the Cold War began. Another stop: Gdańsk Wrzeszcz. This is where my grandfather was born almost 100 years ago when it was called Danzig-Langfuhr. Yet another stop: Gdańsk Przymorze – Uniwersytet. Przymorze means „by the sea”, I love how the name is so poetic, although the area between Wrzeszcz and Oliwa is actually not exactly pretty but quite industrial. Finally Gdańsk Oliwa, where I get off. This, like Wrzeszcz, is a place that is familiar to me from literary depictions of Gdańsk. Grass’s Tin Drum, Chwin’s Death in Danzig, Huelle’s Who was David Weiser? – all their heroes have walked these streets, like I do now. Maybe my love for Gdańsk partly originates on the pages of books. I wouldn’t be surprised.

And with all these thoughts that revolve around Gdańsk throughout history and in literature, the thing I love the most about this moment is what I’m here for: I’m going to visit a friend. I’m not on a huge mission, not sightseeing or researching. I’m here just to hang out with someone, like any other person in this city might do on a Saturday afternoon. In this moment I’m not a tourist on a journey, I’m not an academic at work. I’m just me in a city that I love.

When I get back to Oliwa’s train station later that afternoon, the electronic board says that the SKM-ka to Gdańsk will be there in 5 minutes. I’m overjoyed with my good timing. Little do I know. I take out my headphones and turn on my music, sitting and waiting for the train, but it doesn’t get in. On the other side of the platform the board says that the train to Wejherowo will be there soon too. When it arrives, I wonder why it is going in the direction that I thought Gdańsk Główny to be in. Well, I must have lost orientaion. A few minutes later the board changes. It now says my SKM-ka will be there in half an hour. Shortly after this, another train going in the other direction is arriving on the platform’s second track. It is only then that I realize that I just let my SKM-ka pass by.

SKM station Sopot

And that when I already have a history with this! As I now have half an hour in the cold, there is lots of time to remember at least one previous unfortunate incident with track numbers. A few years ago when I was living in Poland as a volunteer, I needed to go back to my home base in Lower Silesia from Toruń. My friend and I got to the platform, the rusty old board said that our train to Poznań would leave on the left track. We got on, chatting away, but after about 45 minutes we really started to ask ourselves why the train hadn’t left the station yet. After quite a bit of a hassle we found out that this was a regional train, when we should have taken the fast train from the opposite track that had left about 30 minutes ago. Not only did the train we were on leave later, it was also slower, so that we missed our connection in Poznań by way more than an hour. We did catch another train to Wrocław, and my friend made it home to her village by bus. I couldn’t get to my tiny town that day and, bound for a friend’s place, had an odyssey on Wrocław’s city busses to the outskirts of town and got lost in a jungle of the highest socialist concrete skyscrapers i had seen to date in the middle of the night. It all pretty much scared the life out of me and I wasn’t so hot for Wrocław for a while after that.

What do I learn from this about Polish trains of any kind, be it SKM or PKP?

Never trust electronic boards on the platform.
Always check both sides of the platform for your train and if in doubt, when a train is coming, ask a local if it’s yours.
Always bring an extra sweater when you go to Gdańsk in winter. And wear it whenever there is even the slightest chance that you are going to be taking public transport. You may have to wait. And it will be cold. I at least am going back to Berlin with a runny nose.

… and with a smile on my face. Because when it comes down to it, this entire post just makes me realize how German I am and I really enjoy the fact that Poland, however well I may know it already, can still confront me with my own cultural imprint that I will most likely never get rid of.

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