Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: Poland

Gdansk – Gryf Hotel

[I originally posted this in June 2018 but have reposted it to fix some broken image links]

I booked this hotel at the last-minute, having decided that it was possible to get Gdansk for Friday night. My expectations were rather low, given the relatively cheap price and the fact that they still had several rooms available at a weekend at short notice.

The hotel is situated in what appears to be an assembly of buildings either being demolished, or needing to be demolished. However, the hotel has clearly spent some money on its frontage and the addition of a lift, with a modern signage.

My entry to the hotel was slightly hampered though by a large group of guests trying to get a photo of themselves taken outside of the hotel. I did try and wait, but they were faffing, so I’m probably now in the official photo of some German musicians or something. I blame them, they should have been more efficient with their photography. Although I did appreciate their dithering about, as it meant I got to check-in first and didn’t have to wait for around twenty people to get their rooms allocated before mine.

The location is around a 20-minute walk from the city centre, and opposite the Solidarity Museum, with my room having a rather nice view of the building. My room also had a nice view of the demolition site to the rear of the hotel, but I felt generous and didn’t take a photo of that.

Other than for the slightly old radio set-up in the bedside cabinet, the room was surprisingly modern and well-appointed. It was clean and had teas and coffees, which isn’t always to be expected in Polish hotels. There were no noise disturbances either internally or externally, and the staff all seemed friendly and helpful.

Given the price I paid, which was just under £30, I was rather impressed with the whole set-up.

August 4, 2025
Gdansk – Pijalnia Wódki I Piwa

[I posted this in June 2018 and it related to a visit in November 2015, it’s fair to say that craft beer is now more important to me….. I’ve reposted it to fix some broken image links]

This vodka and beer bar is part of a national Polish chain, known for its cheap prices for alcohol. These photos are from my visit in November 2015 and I remember it being popular with locals, even though it’s situated in a central tourist area.

The interior is simple and is deliberately meant to be a throwback to more austere times.

The menu of vodka shots, all charged at 4zl (around 80p).

Vodka and beer. Very lovely 🙂

The interior of the bar, with the pricing visible on the wall. I recall the service being efficient and polite, and there were a number of seats at the bar and also at the surrounding tables.

The opening hours are long as the bar is open from 09.00 until 05.00 every day of the week, so it hardly seems worth closing….. I didn’t visit late at night, but reviews suggest that there are long queues in the evening. I’m sure that there are more salubrious surroundings in the vicinity, but I can see why the location is so popular.

August 4, 2025
Gdansk – Solidarity Museum

[I originally posted this in 2018 but have reposted it to fix the broken image links]

I visited the Solidarity Museum (officially called the European Solidarity Centre) in November 2016, but since I’m staying at a hotel with a rather pleasant view of the building, I thought I’d find my old photos about my visit. This is part of my long-term plan of trying to work back and post my older photos, but this project might well take me years (or decades).

The building is deliberately industrial in its appearance, with the walls looking like the hull of ships. Since Solidarity was born in the dockyards of Gdansk, this is rather appropriate.

The industrial look continues inside, but there is a real feel of openness to the building.

I normally really dislike audio guides, and I try and turn them down at every opportunity. Unless they’re designed to add further information to what is provided on the displays, which this one was. It would be possible though to tour the museum without an audio guide, but this one does add to the experience.

The old clocking in system which was in use at the shipyards.

These are the wooden boards with the infamous 21 demands which the workers wanted in order to call off their strike. The demands weren’t unreasonable, although they were inevitably entirely unacceptable to the communist authorities at the time. The authorities didn’t want to cede power to the trade unions, which was more of a problem to them than the financial demands that the workers wanted.

A display of helmets from the dockers.

Solidarity and its leader, Lech Wałęsa, became international news and it was reported heavily across the world. With the cold war, this type of internal dissent from the workers posed a substantial threat to the communist Governments in Europe.

The communist authorities were entirely unable to deal with the increasing level of opposition which they were facing, so on 13 December 1981 the country came under martial law. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the General of the Polish army, took control of Poland using the excuse that if law and order wasn’t imposed then the Soviets would march into the country.

Alongside martial law came the inevitable crackdown on any dissent, and thousands were arrested and imprisoned. There were unspeakable acts of violence and intimidation against those involved with the Solidarity movements, and other political opponents of the regime.

With any military crackdown, there are nearly always brave individuals who take a stand. There was a resistance movement established which printed leaflets and tried to explain the aims of the trade union movement, and their calls for political freedoms.

Lech Wałęsa now became a symbol of freedom and hope, but he was arrested and imprisoned by the military authorities. There was then a rather ridiculous situation of Lech Wałęsa returning to work as an electrician in the Gdansk shipyards in the same year that he won the Nobel Peace Prize, so he became rather untouchable by the authorities.

The photo above is when Lech Wałęsa addressed the United States Congress in 1989 and he later became the President of Poland from 1990 until 1995. He was a controversial figure and his popularity fell, but his importance to Poland remains undiminished. The city’s airport was named after him in 2004 and he still gives speeches around the world.

This exhibit in the museum shows the empty shelves that faced many Poles throughout the 1980s, as the communist system started to fall apart. There were long queues at many shops and this systematic failure proved to be another nail in the coffin of communism in the country.

I felt that this museum was well curated and it took me over two hours to walk around it. It’s a sizeable museum and it’s easy to navigate around, with the audio guide adding to the experience, rather than diminishing it. It also doesn’t take a stance of unquestionably ignoring with the problems that Solidarity had, but it is a firm statement of the importance that the organisation had in the 1980s and beyond.

August 4, 2025
Gdansk – Arrived

It’s a delight to arrive in Gdansk, a city where I spent a couple of weeks in late 2016. My first impressions are that there seems to be more development taking place, and the railway station appears to be being modernised. Well, either that or it’s falling apart, and it does seem to be improvement work rather than random demolition.

Since I’m here for a stag weekend, it might prove inappropriate to take too many photos, but I will inevitably have to take photos of bars and restaurants. I’ll also really excite everyone by uploading photos from my November 2016 visit to add even more content, fully aware that lots of people have already had to trawl them the first time….

June 22, 2025
Warsaw – Metro System : C18 Trocka (Visiting Every Station)

One thing I’ve done with my attempting to visit all of the metro stations in Warsaw is that I’ve started at the ends of the line, generally away from the most interesting areas in the city that the network crosses through. This meant that visiting Trocka was a little bit sub-optimal as there wasn’t a great deal of note to have a look at. So writing this is more for the sake of completion than surprising and delighting my two loyal blog readers.

It’s all residential, which is lovely, but there’s less of a story to tell. Although I’d note that this felt a safe area, I meandered around some of the tower blocks and it seemed a part of the city that it would be pleasant to live in. There’s a bus station here, although I’m not sure if that’s of enormous excitement to write about, but it’s visible in the above photo.

Tadeusz Korzon (1839-1918) was a Polish historian and he also took part in the January uprising that sought to free Poland from its Russian control. Sadly, he died a few months before the creation of the Second Polish Republic, so he didn’t live to see Poland become independent.

As an aside, Warsaw is rather good at putting benches nearly everywhere, something which must encourage people to walk if they know that there’s somewhere to stop. Back to the station, the city gave the contract to Italian firm Astaldi in March 2016 to build this extension and work started in April 2016 and it was completed in May 2019. The station opened on 15 September 2019 to the excited locals and the project was part financed by the European Union.

The Church of St. Mark the Evangelist.

Back to the station, which was designed with the intent of having clean, geometric forms and a feeling of space. The groundwater here was relatively high, which led to some considerable engineering challenges, including apparently diaphragm walls which were sunk up to 60 metres deep, but that will mean more to my civil engineer friend Liam than to me. For a while, this was the end of the line, but in September 2022, another three stations were added to extend the M2.

The decoration is plain, but functional.

The plan of the metro station.

And the next train to Bródno.

In terms of what is nearby, there is a large cemetery and some other historic structures of interest, but they’re all closer to another Metro stop. That’s also true of a nearby park, so I haven’t entirely neglected these, I’m just saving them up…..

June 21, 2025
Warsaw – Müllermilch Choco-Coco and Müllermilch Dubai Chocolate

This blog appears to be slowly transforming into a fan site for Müllermilch, so in the spirit of consistency (and mild dairy addiction), here’s another entry in what is rapidly becoming an entirely unplanned series. I bought them from Żabka and I’ve just noticed that they have 11,000 locations across Poland which explains why they seem to be just about everywhere, like a retail version of an over-enthusiastic labrador.

Anyway, back to the drink, I would have liked even more coconut, but this was a refreshing little number. I’m the same with beer when it has these same flavour combinations, I don’t want some wafting past a palm tree, I want a tropical storm.

The Müllermilch Dubai Chocolate (and they’ve got in here quickly given the international craze for it) was smooth, rich and had a rather pleasant chocolate taste to it although I thought that there could be even more pistachio punching through it. But still a very agreeable drink.

And see, I don’t just write about beer, I sometimes veer into chilled dairy beverages as well. Incidentally, they cost 70p each which I was entirely pleased about.

June 21, 2025
Gdansk – Hotel Mercure Gdańsk Stare Miasto

I’ve stayed here before and it’s one of my favourite Accor hotels in Poland, so as there was a relatively low price I thought I’d opt for here for my single night in Gdansk. Here’s the view from my hotel window as I didn’t take another photo of the hotel’s frontage. The welcome at the front desk was immediate, engaging and personable, a very positive first impression.

The rather lovely seating area on every floor. This is one of those little touches that does make a difference. Thinking of my friend Richard, who gets tired easily, having a chair to sit down whilst waiting for the lift is very useful. Incidentally, he’s now a TV star, I’ll excitedly post links when iPlayer has his appearance on.

I booked a cheap single room, but was upgraded to an executive room and I was surprised and delighted at the arrangement. Clean, comfortable and I love that window seat option.

Drinks in the minibar. I didn’t want to be greedy and so I left the lager. I’m very helpful like that.

I wasn’t sure when I stayed last time if the drinks were free, but it was clear this time.

There were also some welcome gifts, a nice postcard, badge, amber soap and some sort of coffee. A really lovely gesture. Richard very much liked my exciting ‘welcome gifts from Accor’ page when I had it, so I must update that at some point.

The view from the window and one of the free drinks from the fridge, the Złote Lwy from Browar Amber. It’s a light, malty and refreshing drink with the view adding to the whole experience.

The Gdansk shipyards are visible here, formerly known as the Lenin Shipyards and where Solidarność was founded.

The view at night and the city’s main railway station is visible on the left-hand side.

Downstairs at the bar, these were the local beers to choose from as a welcome drink. The helpful team member said I could have any and I was tempted by the Baltic Porter but it was rather strong and I didn’t want to overdo it.

I instead went for the Kozlak from Browar Amber, which was sweet with flavours of toffee and caramel. I very much like it when hotels make an effort to support a local brewery, with Browar Amber being located in Bielkówko which is a little to the south west of Gdansk.

I won’t witter on any more as I’ve already written about this hotel, but I was entirely content at this repeat stay, it felt well managed and organised. And giving me free beer is always a way to get me to write lovely things about anything…. Unless it’s Greene King and then I’m more picky.

June 21, 2025
Gdansk to Warsaw Rail Journey – PKP Intercity

I’ve done this rail journey before, but since I was enthused by my trip on Lithuanian trains last week, I thought I’d compare and contrast how the Poles do it. There are two main types of Intercity service in Poland, I went on the cheaper one of the two as I can’t afford to be too decadent, but that is relevant to bear in mind. The two are the Express Intercity Premium (EIP) using Pendolino trains and the more standard Intercity. I started from the rather glorious Gdańsk Główny railway station which has recently gone under a major overhaul. It was built in the early 1900s and has that glorious Neo-Renaissance look, all a bit Prussian with a touch of Hanseatic drama, like it’s trying to impress its then German parents.

The main hall has been faffed about with quite a lot, but it remains an impressive structure and numerous people were taking photos of the interior. Obviously including me.

They’ve put a lot of seating into the railway station and plenty of power points, although these departure boards weren’t working.

The tracks and the city’s coach station is nearly visible in the background. Integrated transport and all that, all very positive, especially as the trams and city buses sweep past the front of the station.

The restoration work doesn’t seem to be complete as two of the large halls are empty and the track is still fenced off at this point. I’m not quite sure what the plans are, but they’ll likely involve some more shops and eating options as there aren’t a great deal in this station as opposed to somewhere like Krakow’s main railway station.

One of the empty grand rooms. There isn’t a luxurious first class lounge here as there was in Vilnius, or at least, not one that I could use.

Also not working, but the yellow posters with all the train times were up, so that’s all that I needed.

And I found a working departure board, my train was the 15:57 to Łódź. They like to advertise the platform numbers in advance in Poland, unlike the UK where they like to keep it a secret (unless you use the third party app which tells you).

I like this system of giving a platform number, a track number and then a sector. Numbering on quite a lot of UK railway stations is confusing, somewhere like Cambridge is a case in point.

And since I’ve gone down that rabbit warren, here’s a map courtesy of Greater Anglia. Platform 1 is the same as platform 4 and the same as platform 4a, but 2 and 3 are up to the left and 4 and 5 to the right. Then platforms 7 and 8 are over the footbridge. The Polish system would be much better here, you’d have Platform 1 as everything from 1 to 6 (which are then individually numbered) and Platform 2 as both 7 and 8. They’d then be split into sectors.

Waiting on the platform, there’s lots of seating around.

Boarding in coach 10 which it stated during the ticket purchasing process would be at the front of the train, so I knew roughly where to stand.

The seats are 2*1, with every set of seats (whether a couple or individual) having its own power outlet and bin. It was all clean and tidy, not least because there were bins everywhere, it was all a delightfully neat setup that gave off strong “organised European” energy.

Settled in for the journey and Poland is another of those countries where the seat reservations just work. I witter on about this, but on nearly every UK train where people are forced to get reservations there are arguments, often quite bad arguments. Many people ignore the seat reservations and there is tension when they’ve asked to move after they’ve settled in. In Poland, everyone sits where they’re supposed to sit. Many UK rail companies have given up with seat reservations entirely, not least Greater Anglia, but they might as well all give up if they’re not going to actually make them reliable. As an aside, as a top tip, I never sit in my reserved seat in the UK, I find the carriage which has no reservations (usually marked on certain third party apps) and sit there, it’s usually nearly empty as other people are trying to sit near their reserved seat.

Crossing the river at Tczew, which I visited in 2022 because I wanted to see the bridge. We also went past the impressive Malbork Castle although no photos of that as it was on the other side.

I had opted for the single seat and it was all sufficiently spacious with plenty of leg room. There was a small victory that my fluent Polish (mainly counting from 1 to 100 so I know when they call out the order number at fast food locations and also knowing the word for Wednesday) seemed to fool the guard that I was Polish. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

And safely into Warszawa Centralna railway station which I’ve written about many times, this photo is of the train whilst I was on the travelator thing. I then discovered it was a Public Holiday (Corpus Christi) and the supermarket I planned to go to was shut. But I went to a Żabka convenience store instead and nearly broke the self-service scanner trying to buy a pistachio mullermilch.

This first class rail journey was around £17, which seems reasonable value to me. UK rail trips of the distance can be this price, but you can routinely get £17 fares on the Polish rail system for this journey even booking on the same day, which don’t require you to book three weeks in advance and go via their equivalent of Crewe (I’m not sure where that would be actually, maybe Kutno) with six split tickets. I do like the Polish network, it wasn’t quite as decadent as the train that took me from Vilnius to Kaunas, but it was still a very positive experience. Also, people on Polish trains don’t seem to feel the need to play music loudly from their phones or put their feet on seats…..

June 20, 2025
Wizz Air (Warsaw to London Luton)

A quick breakfast in the lounge and I’m always delighted to have a Greek salad. I had two as I was so delighted. This is the Etiuda Lounge which is in the non-Schengen one, although I usually go to the Preludium Lounge which is in the Schengen area. My logic is that I’ve been caught at border control for quite some time on a few occasions and I now prefer to clear that bureaucratic gauntlet first, lest I be detained indefinitely while someone scrutinises my passport like a cursed manuscript. I noticed that the border control agent was being very assiduous with the stamps of the passenger in front, indeed, the English traveller said “I’ve got too many stamps” which didn’t bode well for me. Anyway, the border agent looked through my passport and looked like he didn’t have the energy to deal with it, so just stamped it.

After my starter and main course of Greek salad, along with mochas and Fanta, I had a dessert of chocolate and beer. I think there are some healthy elements to that meal.

Anyway, after a peaceful time in the lounge, it was time to board. Yet again, the process was well managed, clearly signed and efficient. They were doing numerous bag checks but they didn’t look very long at mine, the benefit of having a soft bag. It’s the firmer type bags they stop, with a few customers charged £80 or so for having bags that are too big. The moral of this story really is pack like you’re going on a short hike and not moving house.

I had a middle seat, but when I boarded there was someone in my seat and I queried it in my perfect English. The Polish guy pointed at the lady in the window seat and said “wife here, I sit here, you sit there?” pointing at the aisle seat. This to me was a win, I like an aisle seat. He did proceed to spill slightly into my seat space like an enthusiastic houseplant, but I forgave him. The aisle seat was mine, and that was victory enough. The seating Gods work in a mysterious way.

The aircraft was 9H-WDX, an Airbus A321 which has been in the Wizz Air fleet since December 2023 and yet another aircraft that I don’t think I’ve been on (this exact one, I’ve been on rather too many A321s….).

And back at London Luton. The whole process was efficient again, nothing of note to write about as the crew were friendly, the pilots were informative and the aircraft was clean. The border at Luton Airport was busy, but I was through within twenty minutes. That now means I have two hours in McDonald’s by the railway station before my train back home, but I’m sure it’ll speed on by.

June 20, 2025
Gdansk – Curry Leaves

I’m very partial to Indian food and I think I’ve likely exhausted the main options in Gdansk, but I only noticed this one yesterday and saw it was well-reviewed. Being keen to be thorough, I popped there before catching the train to Warsaw. It’s located at Słony Spichlerz, which is a slightly decadent food court, which I’ve visited a few times before, including the outlets Sexy Bull and Czerwony Piec. There’s usually plenty of space available in the shared seating area, which proved to be true during this visit, even though it was busy in the city with tourists.

The menu is clearly visible and I thought that I’d go for the hottest option, the Guntur, which is made with fresh green chillies, fresh curry leaves, mustard seeds and dried coconut. I also went for the coconut roti and a drink of the mango lassi. The service was polite and efficient, with the venue taking cards and cash. I mean, I write that, but just about everywhere in Poland takes cards. Unlike Germany, but I won’t go on about that. They gave me a buzzer thing for when my food was ready and it was freshly made, taking around ten minutes. The menu isn’t overly broad, but there’s a selection of curry types and numerous meat and vegetable options, with a range of choices in terms of the spice level.

I was suitably impressed with this, with the roti bread being light but the dried coconut gave it extra texture. The chicken in the curry was tender and the sauce did indeed have some spice to it, nicely balanced through. The portion size felt generous and there were a range of flavours and tastes within the curry. The mango lassi was light with the yoghurt element giving creaminess and there was the appropriate amount of sweetness to it. There was an authentic feel to the arrangement, this didn’t feel like some sort of generic franchise, although I understand that this is their second venue in the city. The prices are moderate, but they are centrally located in a touristy area, but I’d merrily recommend the location. I also like the informality of the location and there’s also a couple of bars on site for anyone who wants a wider range of drinks with their food.

June 19, 2025