Some other photos from my two days in Mrągowo.
Signage on buildings.
There are parks and water features all over the town.
Sculptures from around the town.
A rather nice floral display, I’m pleased to see it hasn’t been vandalised.
Photos of the main street.
European Union Square, a lovely park next to the lake.
There are numerous bike trails around this area, so this is a useful addition for cyclists.
Street art.
One final photo of the lake…
Located over the road from the town’s railway station (which is closed) is this beautiful bus station. Well, it’s not beautiful, but it does have buses and coaches.
Here are the extensive facilities that are provided to passengers.
I like how professionally the signage has been amended to show that there’s one fewer bus operating. I’m sure Arriva can provide something a little better than this.
A nice coach pulls up, I wonder whether this is my luxury transportation.
No, this is. I irritated myself (which is rare) by struggling with what the coach driver was saying to me, which was simply asking whether I wanted the central bus station in Szczytno or a suburb, and I only realised what he meant as I sat down.
Anyway, the driver was really helpful and everything ran like clockwork in terms of the timing. What really impressed me was that Mobilis, the operating company, had e-ticketing. I was the only passenger using it, but this technological advance is beyond some companies in the UK.
The ticket from Mrągowo to Szczytno took around an hour and cost the equivalent of around £2.50. One of the disadvantages over recent years with the Polish economy growing is that more people can afford cars, which is presenting huge problems for public transport companies in operating their routes. Perhaps the best hope is for an influx of tourists to remoter parts of Poland, as otherwise there’s the risk that both railway and coach stations will be closed down.
This church was built in the 1860s and despite being in Prussia, it was constructed as a Catholic church. The tower is thirty metres tall and is visible from throughout much of the town.
Bright interior, with the church itself being of a neo-Gothic design. The church was extended slightly in the 1890s, but otherwise hasn’t been much changed since then.
The church organ, not sure why that photo came out blurry. I must take my proper camera on my next trip.
The pulpit, which looks original to me.
The altar, which has rather an interesting design.
I decided that I’d extend my stay in Mrągowo by one night, an advantage in staying outside the summer season, as there’s pretty good availability in hotels in September. I changed hotel though, just down the road from the Mercure, to the Hotel Mazuria. I arrived when it was just started to hail, so not the ideal welcome weather-wise.
I had read that the rooms had a lake view, but I assumed that was only some of the rooms and not all of them. However, the hotel has an interesting design, so it’s got a flat front over several floors where all the rooms are located, so they do all have lake views. The reception area and restaurant have been pushed to the back of the building, which is all well thought out. I was very pleased with the view, although it continued to rain for most of the day so sitting out on the balcony wasn’t a viable option.
The receptionist was helpful and, amongst other things, she told me where the lift was. Although I’ve had this before, where I’ve faffed about finding the lift and it has transpired that my room was literally only 15 seconds walk away as it was from reception. But luckily I’m not very important and so the 30 seconds extra it took me to get to the room via the lift didn’t impact negatively on my day.
No tea and coffee facilities in his hotel, the first one of this trip not to have them. Although this isn’t unusual for Poland, and they provided bottled water. The room had everything that I needed, other than plug sockets. It did have them, but they’d hidden them behind all the furniture, which meant that I had to move everything. Again, this didn’t impact negatively on my day, but I’m always worried that I’ll break something.
The room didn’t feel quite as contemporary as some of the other hotels in terms of the design, but it was all well maintained, clean and tidy.
I wasn’t overly impressed with the breakfast, although they’d clearly gone to some trouble to offer a selection of items. The breakfast room was nearly empty, and I understood that the hotel had low occupancy, which must make providing food more of a challenge. The selection of cold meats didn’t look too appetising, I couldn’t find any milk for the cereals and the choice of bread was, well, one type of roll. I also couldn’t work out what the situation with coffee was, and there were no staff around.
Not quite as appealing as the other breakfasts I’ve had this week in the region. But, in any event, this room and breakfast cost £24 for the night, so it would be obtuse to complain too much about anything. The strongest point for me about the hotel was the views that it offered, I can imagine it’s quite relaxing to spend a week here overlooking the lake.
Always keen to visit Accor Hotels, this is one of the few that they operate in this region and it’s part of their Mercure brand. My first impressions were, er, that I couldn’t get into the hotel. This is a flaw in the design for any hotel if I’m being honest, but I put it down to my stupidity. Until over the next two days I helped two other sets of people find their way into the hotel. This made me feel better that I wasn’t alone in understanding the challenges of finding reception.
There are two entrances to the hotel, one is a car park, which pedestrians can’t use (or couldn’t when I was there) because no-one answers the reception bell, and the other is by steps up from the lake. Although they’ve chosen not to sign these very well either, and the steps just go up into the bar rather than the reception area. It’s not really ideal, but it made it more entertaining battling my way in.
The location of the hotel was rather agreeable though, just a short walk from the lake (well, a long walk when trying to find the way in) and around a fifteen-minute walk from the town centre. It felt a peaceful environment and there are some quiet and well marked walks nearby.
For Richard, this Mercure is quite precise on who is entitled to what drinks. The member of bar staff didn’t actually know what drinks I could have, but I asked for beer, and he went with that as a suitable option. All the staff were helpful at the hotel, but I got the impression that they mostly spoke German and Polish, as this is a popular destination for Germans.
The free beer, which as far as Żywiec goes was perfectly acceptable.
I noted that a fair few of the reviews of this hotel commented on how out of date the rooms looked. I imagine this was a renovated room, as it looked fine to me.
This is also one of the few Accor hotels that I can remember who decided not to provide an information folder in the room. I had no idea what time the restaurant was open, what it served, or what facilities the hotel had. I could have gone and asked, but providing details about breakfast times, check-out times and the like would have been useful in the room.
My room had a balcony, which overlooked the woods.
How lovely.
It’s the first time in quite a while that there has been an umbrella in the room.
The bar, which certainly made an impact with its design as I felt that I was in Las Vegas again. I exaggerate slightly, as there were no roulette tables, free drinks or smokers, but it was quite definitely rather bright.
You could get a drink from the bar and then come and sit in the neighbouring seating area. Which was rather more conservatively decorated.
The breakfast counters, with an extensive amount of bread, cheeses, cold meats, yoghurts and juices. There was a hot food section of sausages, eggs and vegetables.
Breakfast (the photos are from different days, not the same day).
The hotel had a decent terrace area overlooking the lake, although it was quite cold on my visit and I was the only one sitting on it. I can imagine in summer that it’s much harder to find a table here. They also have numerous functions which take place here, so combined with coach parties, I can imagine how busy the whole hotel gets. But it is a large site, there are rows of rooms with balconies, some chalets for those who need more space and numerous areas for children to play.
The cost of this hotel was more expensive than my other accommodation during this trip, coming in at around £42 including breakfast per night. It is a resort hotel though, which explains the extra cost, and there were extensive facilities such as tennis courts, a swimming pool and an antiques room (I never worked that one out). I booked it though as I had a €40 off loyalty voucher, which made the price much more reasonable.
I initially thought that this was just a bakery, but the interior is rather more comfortable than the exterior might suggest.
I managed to refrain from the selection of cakes, although one local did come in and buy an entire cake at one stage (as in the whole lot, not just one slice).
I couldn’t though refrain from the toffee coated roll, which had a fluffy and light interior. That, along with the latte, cost the equivalent of around £2 and the service was warm and friendly.
This is the reason that I had to get a bus from Olsztyn to Mrągowo, they closed the railway station down a few years ago. The railway station is in a bloody awful state now, and it’s one of those horrible communist period buildings which was probably never really fit for purpose anyway.
I can see why there is some irritation about the situation, as the buses to and from the town seem really busy and so I’m not sure why they wouldn’t want a train to a tourist destination. But, the line is still open for freight and so the whole network can be brought back into use again relatively quickly if necessary. The railway station is also over the road from the town’s bus station, so an integrated transport policy wouldn’t be hard to deliver.
The whole site could do with a little bit of modernisation, and hopefully the investment in the Polish railway network will reach these branch lines.
The town’s museum is currently undergoing some renovation, so I knew in advance that some parts of it were closed. Unfortunately, that included the collection of dead animals, so no photos for Dylan to look at……
They had hundreds of postcards on the wall, something which seems quite common to Polish museums. Given that this was a German town until 1945, it also shows a different dimension to the history of Mrągowo because of the people who used to visit and who they would write to. The town was known as Sensburg during the period in which it was part of Prussia, which is still the name that Germans refer to the town as today.
This is part of history that very nearly got destroyed, it’s a tombstone from the Jewish cemetery which was once in the town. Many of the graves were badly damaged in the 1930s when the hate of the Nazis against the Jews started to worsen. However, much of the cemetery survived after the war, and it was only finally destroyed by the Poles in the late 1940s. The tombstones were destroyed or used in the foundations of houses. Very few tombstones survived, this one belonged to Mathilde Scheurmann who lived from 1846 until 1886.
A handy chart of what cities that are now in Poland were once called when they had German names.
The town church.
During the plebiscite after the First World War (which saw the area remain as part of East Prussia, rather than become Polish) the local stamps were over-printed to advertise the vote.
The museum isn’t sure when this was created, but they think in the mid-1930s. It has the town’s symbol on which is a bear’s paw, as legend has that a bear once threatened the town and so the locals cut its paw off. What a lovely reminder for the town to have….
An interesting exhibit, which seems to relate to the country music festivals that are held in the area (judging by the exhibits around them).
This is what happens with hyper-inflation, bank-notes of a huge denomination.
This was a relatively small museum, but I’m pleased that I visited it as the collection of postcards did show the history of the town. There was also a large map on the wall dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Mrągowo was a much smaller location.
There was a back room which one of the staff members kindly opened up for me, so even with some of the museum closed there was still a reasonable amount to see. The cost was around £1 in the UK money, although there were no English translations on the exhibits (although there were German translations in some places).
I didn’t try this, but it’s a rather lovely idea, you can sit on the bench in the above photo and then send friends a link to a live web-cam. I doubted at the time that the web-cam was actually working, but I’ve just checked and it is.
The instructions.
Some photos of swans, just for Clive 🙂
