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Category: Poland

  • Gdansk – Hotel Novotel Gdańsk Centrum

    Gdansk – Hotel Novotel Gdańsk Centrum

    This is a new Accor hotel to me, the centrally located Novotel Gdansk, which has rooms at relatively low prices at the moment, around £25 per night. Given that Novotel is hardly the budget brand of Accor, that’s a very reasonable price. This is a view of the hotel’s gardens, although some imagination has to be used at the moment.

    The large foyer with its football tables and other distractions for guests, including a number of games consoles. The check-in process was efficient, although I had to wait for a staff member to arrive as if they didn’t expect many guests, although more on that later. All very welcoming though and everything seemed clean and organised.

    A functional and clean room, with a sofa and all the facilities that I would expect. There were no internal or external noise issues at all, so everything was peaceful.

    The welcome gift which I’ve had numerous times before, but I’m always pleased to see it in the room as it’s a handy snack.

    Woooo, a Nespresso machine. OK, I’m easily pleased.

    It felt only appropriate to go for the Żywiec Porter as my welcome drink on my first night back in Poland. It tasted exactly the same as it did a few weeks ago, so all to the good….

    The breakfast buffet arrangement, a very decent selection of cold meats, cheeses and the like. They also asked me if I wanted any eggs cooked and I opted for fried eggs, but I can’t recall being asked this question at an Accor hotel before other than the Sofitel in Warsaw. Which brings me to the situation that I’ve never stayed at an Accor hotel where I haven’t seen another guest, whether at check-in, in the public areas or at breakfast. That did explain the lack of noise issue in the hotel, it all felt a little odd.

    The lack of other guests meant that I had the entire breakfast selection to myself for the 40 minutes that I was there. This usually sounds a lovely thought for convenience and not being annoyed by other guests, but it did feel strange. Anyway, everything was clean and comfortable, so all to the good.

    The reviews aren’t quite as positive as I’d expected and this mostly seems to be down to the rooms being dated. I’m not sure that I understand that from my room, but it’s possible they’re started to renovate and update them and I had a newer decor.

    On a different issue, there was this 1 out of 5 review from a seemingly livid customer:

    “i delivered food to my hotel room ,two days in row,first day it was no problem,the delivery guy comes to my door,second day I order food from wolt again,and the receptionionist calls me and says my food is here,i say ok.do he deliver on my door,then she just hangs up the phone,and i think ok,they will probably come,i wait 5 minutes and still no food on my door,so i go to reception ,and there my food was , and i ask why does he not deliver on door,she say deliverer cannot deliver on room door cause he is not guest,then the whole point of food delivery is wasted.i have never had any problems with having food deliveried to my hotelroom door,and have done it many countries before.”

    On a different matter I was talking to a Deliveroo driver a few weeks ago about this issue and he mentioned that there are a minority of people in hotels who are like this and demand their driver tries to navigate around a hotel through all the security precautions. He has taken to asking everyone ordering at hotels to wait at the front of the building or in reception to collect the food, which seems a very reasonable request to me. It seems very harsh to be so rude to a hotel and attempt to mark them down for trying to keep their hotel secure. But, I’ve digressed again here.

    I had absolutely no complaints about this stay, especially at the low prices that they’re charging, and I’m back at the hotel a couple more times over the next week and perhaps it’ll be a little busier.

  • Gdansk – Just Photos….

    Gdansk – Just Photos….

    Just a few photos (of no great significance) to give an indication of what Gdansk looks like at this time of the year. Incidentally, there appear to be very few tourists about, on my past visits to Gdansk there were lots of British and Germans conversations going on, but all quiet at the moment. I’m not sure it’s ever a packed tourist city in January, but it’s still quieter than I had envisaged.

  • Wizz Air (Luton to Gdansk)

    Wizz Air (Luton to Gdansk)

    This is the delights of Luton airport at 05:45 this morning, after the ten minute walk from the nearby Holiday Inn.

    There’s the Wizz Air flight to Gdansk, with boarding information at 07:35. I didn’t fly with British Airways on this occasion as they have currently dropped the later flight to Warsaw and they’re dropped Krakow entirely. The Wizz Air flight cost a ridiculous £7.50 each way, which was another handy factor in this little arrangement.

    The boarding information didn’t ultimately come until 07:50. Incidentally, the security process at the airport was efficient and I was airside within five minutes of entering the terminal building.

    The boarding process was chaotic and ill-tempered, although I just let them get on with it. The boarding gate is on the lower level and so there is a flight of stairs between the corridor upstairs and the boarding gate, with customers waiting to join the queue. What is poor is that there are very few screens or boards to show customers that they’re in the right location as they’re going to their gate, this is in my view shoddy from Luton Airport, which feels a mismanaged set-up in general, as there were numerous confused customers about the place. I’m reminded just how well Heathrow T5 manage this.

    The set-up here is that there’s a short priority queue and so the staff member called up to ask non-priority (people like me…..) customers to come down as there was a separate waiting area. A woman rushed down the steps, barged me out of the way and announced loudly “I’m priority, let me though” to the staff member. The staff member rolled her eyes and said “I called non-priority, I was very clear” which led to lots of muttering from the annoyed customer. There’s no real reason to need to rush to board, there’s plenty of space for bags and seats are already allocated.

    There was an element of just bad planning here though, as we were in the holding area between the aircraft and the passports being checked for around thirty minutes. I found a seat and read a book on my phone, but there were no seats in the priority area, so those customers were all stuck standing up. It just felt muddled and there were three arguments between staff and customers over bags. I do like the drama to a degree, but some customers were getting quite het up. Oddly, the only customers getting het up seemed to be British, even though the vast majority of the customer on the aircraft seemed to be Polish.

    We were finally allowed out to the aircraft, around twenty minutes later than scheduled. The aircraft is HA-LVI, a nearly new Airbus A321 Neo which has been used by Wizz Air since June 2020. The aircraft had a busy day, it came from Warsaw this morning, then went to Trondheim and back after it arrived in Gdansk. It’s off to Oslo tomorrow and I’m sure it’ll have a lovely time there.

    The flight was absolutely fine. I hadn’t paid to reserve a seat and I was automatically given a window seat, but there was no-one in the middle seat as the aircraft was only about 60% occupied. The announcements from the pilots and cabin crew were polite, but broadly inaudible and the safety announcement was given way too fast to be of any use. However, the cabin crew were friendly and their service was efficient and unobtrusive, with the flight being perfectly relaxed and comfortable.

     

    I had forgotten that it was winter in Poland, so this snow and ice everywhere was a slight surprise.

    The disembarkation process was a little sluggish, with everyone taken to the main terminal by coach. I was in no rush and lingered about, which meant that I was one of the last people to get on the coach. So many people rush about and I can’t be doing with all that stress. By chance, it also meant that as I was the last to board, I was the first off the coach and I was the first person to leave the security area which was handy.

    The member of security staff at border control was helpful, although he didn’t want to see my negative test I got yesterday, but he did check my Covid pass and my locator form. Although I could have got away without paying £32 yesterday for an LFT at Luton Airport, there are two reasons that I’m glad I got it. Firstly, I would have worried all day if I didn’t have it, and secondly, it’s just best to do things properly rather than risk being fined or deported.

    And Gdansk airport terminal, safe and sound. I have to say that this was ridiculously good value for £7.50 and Wizz Air felt a safe and secure airline to travel with, with the cabin crew being friendly and the aircraft being clean. The boarding process was unnecessarily stressful for many customers, but I was quite happy with my window seat and bag near to me, all perfectly comfortable. I will no doubt travel with Wizz Air more this year, not least because of their range of destinations, but also because their flights are so often reasonably priced.

  • Warsaw – National Museum in Warsaw (Bed from Saint John of God Hospital)

    Warsaw – National Museum in Warsaw (Bed from Saint John of God Hospital)

    Fortunately, this isn’t the start of one of my little hotel reviews (I would be annoyed if that was the bed), but from when Richard and I meandered along to the National Museum in Warsaw a few weeks ago. I admit that a photo of a bed might not appear to be riveting blog content, but this oak and birch construction has some charm to it I think. It’s from the Saint John of God Hospital in Warsaw and it dates to between 1757 and 1760. It was donated to the museum in 1931 by the hospital itself, when I assume that it ceased to be needed.

    How on earth this bed survived is a mystery to me, given that nearly everything else in Warsaw was destroyed during the Second World War. And there were likely many more items in the collection that the museum would have focused on saving rather than traipsing a bed around the place during the traumatic war years. I’m going with the answer, as I feel I need a supposition here, that they moved it to the cellars of the museum where it avoided damage and didn’t attract the interest of any Nazi plunderers.

    Back to the hospital itself though, which was first built in 1728 next to the church of Saint John on Bonifraterska Street (which is still named after the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God) in Warsaw. It had eight beds, but it was clear that the church could help more patients, so they constructed a new building in 1760 which would support 34 patients. And that’s why they know when this bed was made, as it was made specifically for the new hospital building, all funded by the wealthy August Aleksander Czartoryski.

    The church today, courtesy of Google Street View.

    Like most places in Warsaw, the hospital and church buildings were badly damaged during the Second World War, not least because they were used by the Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 when they were fighting back against the German occupiers. It was decided that the hospital wouldn’t be reconstructed following the end of the conflict, although the church was rebuilt.

    And I think there’s some magic here, that a bed constructed for patients in 1760 has managed to survive and is now tucked away in a corner of the country’s national museum. Although, and not wanting to be negative about the arrangements, it does look like quite a small bed which might not have entirely suited any tall patients. It is though perhaps one of the very few objects that remain of a hospital that helped so many people given that even the building itself has now gone.

  • Warsaw – Royal Castle (Canaletto Hall)

    Warsaw – Royal Castle (Canaletto Hall)

    I’ve just realised that another thing I never got around to doing was writing about the Royal Castle in Warsaw (on the left in the above photo), which I’ve visited a few times before on free admission days. Very thrifty…. I visited with Richard when we were in the city a few weeks ago and we had a meander around, although the downside of visiting on free admission days is that it’s very busy. But more on the building in another post.

    This post is mostly just photos from one particular room that I’ve managed to misunderstand the importance of before. The paintings are all by Bernardo Bellotto (1721-1780) who was the nephew of Canaletto and he also used his name which confuses things a little. These artworks have had a busy time of it since they were painted between the late 1760s and the early 1780s. They were placed in the castle following their commission by King Stanislaus Augustus, a collection of 22 different street scenes of Warsaw and a canvas showing the King’s election.

    The paintings weren’t here for that long, as Napoleon pinched four of them in 1807, made worse by Tsar Nicholas I stealing the whole lot in 1832. They were recovered and put back in the Royal Castle, but then the Germans pinched the whole collection again in 1939. The Nazis then destroyed the entire castle building in 1945, before it was carefully reconstructed between 1971 and 1984. And then the collection of paintings was put back once again in this recreated room in 1984, an amazing tale of survival. And the paintings have also played a crucial part in the rebuilding of Warsaw, as they were used by the post-war architects to restore the Old Town area back to as it looked in the late eighteenth century.

  • Warsaw – Witold Pilecki

    Warsaw – Witold Pilecki

    I wrote about the Polish hero Witold Pilecki a couple of weeks ago, as he was part of the story of the Municipal Tourist House in Warsaw.

    I was pleased and interested to see that the BBC have published this week an episode about his bravery at volunteering to go to Auschwitz and then managing to escape from it.

  • Warsaw – Museum of Warsaw (Early Map of Warsaw)

    Warsaw – Museum of Warsaw (Early Map of Warsaw)

    I’ve decided that I take too many photos, as is apparent when I’m working through my galleries after a visit anywhere, including Poland where I returned back from two weeks ago. But, I doubt I’ll change that little flaw in my character, so I’ll have to just manage the large amount of data I create…..

    Anyway, this is one of the many maps which is available in the Maps Room of the Museum of Warsaw. It’s possible to make the map larger by clicking on the image above, which makes it very evident just how much Warsaw has changed. Although it’s possible to make out the Old Town area and a few of the larger streets, so much of the city has changed that it is quite a challenge to tie everything in (or at least, it was for me). I spent quite a while just gazing at this map, fascinated by just how much Warsaw has evolved over the last two centuries, albeit much of it forced because other countries kept damaging it.

  • Częstochowa – Random Photos

    Częstochowa – Random Photos

    This is a slightly random post, mostly just photos with very little supporting text. It’s mainly some of my remaining photos from my trip to Częstochowa in Poland a few weeks ago that I didn’t otherwise do much with.

    I’m not sure if there was a specific reason for this being located at ul. Ogrodowa by the bridge over the railway line.

    Street art.

    The Solidarity imagery at a square, Solidarności, named after the important movement which drove Poland towards independence. In the early 1980s it was illegal in Poland to even wear a badge with this on as the authorities desperately tried to repress the country and they placed it under martial law.

    A memorial to honour textile workers.

    More street art and I thought that this made the otherwise bland Soviet-style building look somewhat better.

    There are no shortage of statues of Józef Piłsudski in Poland, and this is the local one.

    It’s certainly revered judging by the floral arrangement in front of it.

    A walk along the river, this stretched for some distance although was rather muddier in some areas.

    The city’s railway station, which doesn’t in my view look much like a railway station. I think there was a hope it would become a slightly decadent shopping centre as well, but it’s all a bit barren at the moment.

    And two photos of the square in front of the station, where the authorities have seemingly spent some money to improve things somewhat. There are some murals on the neighbouring buildings and the square has been opened up and traffic mostly kept out.

    I wrote about the city elsewhere, it’s a welcoming place which is very much dominated by the presence of Jasna Góra. There are many central areas which are derelict and no shortage of empty shops and offices. It seems that Częstochowa needs more residents so that these units can all be redeveloped and turned into housing which can in turn create economic growth. Investment in the city’s infra-structure is clearly being made, not least with the tram system, but they’re going to need a lot more money to reverse the industrial decline which seems to have blighted at least part of this city. At least though they remain a major pilgrimage site, which must help financially.

  • Warsaw – Warsaw Ghetto Fighters Memorial

    Warsaw – Warsaw Ghetto Fighters Memorial

    Situated on ul. Prosta is this impactful memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto fights during the uprising in 1943. It marks where a sewer entrance was located that allowed around fifty fighters to escape the ghetto on 10 May 1943, avoiding detection by the German military. Although the Jewish ghetto had been hastily walled up above ground, the sewer network still connected the entire city.

    Many of those who escaped through the sewer network also took part in the Warsaw Uprising that took place in 1944, including a local Jewish man Marek Edelman. He was one of the leaders of the Ghetto fighting and and he died in Warsaw in 2009, out-lived only amongst the survivors by Szymon “Kazik” Ratajzer who died in Jerusalem in 2018. Edelman became a doctor after the Second World War and was hated by the Soviets, being interned in 1981 when Poland’s economy was collapsing and martial law was introduced. He is now one of the heroes of the Polish nation and was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, the highest award that the country can bestow on an individual.

    Only nine of those who escaped the sewer network survived the Second World War, Roman Bornstein, Tuwia Borzykowski, Marek Edelman, Chaim Frymer, Masza Glajtman-Putermilch, Pnina Grynszpan-Frymer, Chana Kryształ-Frykszdorf, Szymon “Kazik” Ratajzer and Cywia Lubetkin.

  • Warsaw – Museum of Warsaw (Infant’s Identification)

    Warsaw – Museum of Warsaw (Infant’s Identification)

    And another of my posts about things that interested me in the rather lovely Museum of Warsaw.

    This is another remarkable survival, it’s a hand-written note on linen which was placed in a pouch that was put around the neck of a child during the Siege of Warsaw in September 1939. Warsaw was initially able to defend itself during the invasion of Poland by the Germans, but despite the bravery of the Polish military, they were simply out-numbered. Over 18,000 people died in the city between 8 and 28 September 1939 and this tag was so that the young child could be identified if he was separated from his mother.

    The young child was Witold Zenon Gadomski, the son of Tadeusz and Rozalia Czerna of ul. Grochowska 365, who was born on 21 May 1939. He survived the conflict and kept his identification until it was given to the museum in the late 1970s. I can only begin to imagine what his mother must have been thinking when she wrote that during the aerial bombardments of September 1939, no doubt complete terror for the future. Whether or not his parents survived the war, I don’t know….