Monthly Archives: October 2019

Gdynia: Joseph Conrad Didn’t Visit, but You Should

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Gdynia is one of Poland’s main ports and worth a side trip from Gdansk or the seaside town of Sopot. It is a relatively new city, developed after WW1 to provide a modern port for the recently re-independent Poland. It has a modernist and art deco feel from it’s largely 1920’s creation, which was critical because neither of the other two Polish ports of today were available at the time – nearby Gdansk was an international city after WW1 and Szczecin was in German territory and called Stettin. Gdynia and its maritime heritage has plenty to keep you busy for a day or two.

Waterfront. Gdynia’s waterfront is nicely set in a large bay that hosts regular sailing events, and the main pier (along Jana Pawla II) is capped with a Soviet-era stainless steel maritime memorial – the Pomnik Zagle (Sails Memorial) – representing masts and sails as a memorial to Polish mariners.

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Pomnik Zagle with the Kepa Redlowska Park Beyond

Joseph Conrad – Mariner and Author. Also see the memorial to the Polish-British author Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), so versatile that he was first an accomplished merchant navy officer, who gained material for his second career in writing. He captained a Congo river steamer for three years, and so we have Heart of Darkness. He was born Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski in Berdichev, located in today’s western Ukraine, which at the time was an ethnically Polish area in the Tsarist Russian Empire. He went to sea in 1874, aged 17, first in the French merchant marine but later for the British, where he spent most of his 19 years at sea and whose citizenship he took in 1886. Net, while it’s unlikely Conrad ever spent much time in Gdynia, a small fishing village until the early 20th century, he would probably have appreciated a memorial set amongst other seafaring icons. Conrad had health issues throughout his life, which in part forced him to retire from seafaring at the age of 36. At which point, he turned to writing in his second language. The pier also hosts the Gdynia Aquarium and science center.

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Polish Warship Lightning. You can experience a slice of Polish naval history by visiting the Polish Warship Blyskawica (Lighting). Built in Britain in 1937, it was a fast and heavily armed destroyer of the time and served throughout WW2 in the Free Polish Navy.

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Sail Training Ships. Equally impressive is the sail training ship Dar Mlodziezy, built in 1981 at the Gdansk Lenin Shipyard. Used for merchant marine training, she is the sister ship to six other vessels built for the Soviet Union at the time. You can also visit her predecessor nearby on the main pier, the Dar Pomorza, built in Hamburg in 1909, acquired by the Polish merchant navy training school in 1929, and operational until her retirement as a museum ship in 1982. (https://en.nmm.pl/dar-pomorza).

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Just south of the main pier is Gdynia’s city beach, and beyond that the Kepa Redlowska nature preserve, which is nice for a hike which gives you both woodlands and the beach.

Film. Gdynia hosts the annual Polish Film Festival in September and film enthusiasts can check out the year-round screening program at the Gdynia Film Centre (Plac Grunwaldzki 2) http://www.gcf.org.pl/kino_studyjne/

Emigration Museum. Further north of the main pier is the Emigration Museum (http://www.polska1.pl/en/ Polska 1), which documents the Polish emigration story in a converted 1930s passenger terminal building from which many emigrants departed. Look out for the monument commemorating deportees after the Nazi occupation of the city in 1940 (plac Gdynian Wysiedlonych 56 – in front of the train station).

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Logistics. Gdynia is a compact city that is quite lively and considered an attractive city to live in, with its proximity to the Baltic beaches and the major resort at Sopot. The train station is right in the center and the main pier about a 15 minute walk east. Some good food options include: Tawerna Gdynia (Jana Pawla II 11), a popular pierside bar/restaurant serving Polish standards; Pierogarnia Pierozek (Kościuszki 15) because Pierogi, F Minga (Bulwar Nadmorski Im. Feliksa Nowowiejskiego) on the waterfront for modern Polish, and finally Moje Miasto (Kosciuszki 15) which is more European.

Polish cities have great craft beer these days and places worth trying include Morze Piwa (Kosciuszki 13), and AleBrowar Gdynia (Starowiejska 40B), which also features its own beer. Further south and beachside is the Browar Port Gdynia brewpub/restaurant (Bulwar Nadmorski im.Feliksa Nowowiejskiego 2 – browarportgdynia.com).

 

 

Paint me a Picture: Vitebsk

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Vitebsk is a pretty town that sits on a bend of the Dvina River in eastern Belarus. Best known as Marc Chagall’s birthplace and an inspiration for his art long after he left in 1922 to never return, it was also the home of the late 19th/early 20th century renaissance in Russian and Jewish painting. The Tsarist-era painter Ilya Repin lived here for a while and a major art school was started after the 1917 revolution. It has great landscape and light, and the compact old town sits on the east bank of the river surrounded by a large city park network.

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It’s a good base for a few days and regularly hosts cultural events, with the Slavianski Bazaar in July/August being a major one.

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The city area to the south of the old town has a postwar Soviet feel, with the obligatory massive square, Ploscha Pieramohi, and slogan-topped monolithic building blocks.

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Vitebsk was an important medieval commercial center, located about 100 kilometers southeast and upriver from Polotsk (more of which here https://wp.me/p7Jh3P-Jg) and so obtained the obligatory religious center. The Ouspensky Cathedral of the Assumption is relatively recent, constructed in the late 17th century and replacing it’s 14th-century predecessor that had been destroyed. Much of the cathedral was demolished in 1936 by the Communists and only fully restored in 2000. You can easily fill a couple of days here, and some ideas are below.

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City Art Museum. Vitebsk’s art museum (Ulitsa Lenina 32) is worth visiting for it’s comprehensive local collection, which has a mix of pre-revolutionary and socialist art.

The museum has a leading collection of paintings donated to the city by Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, Chagall’s art teacher and one of the founders of the Vitebsk Art School. Pen (1864-1939) was mainly a portrait painter and also painted Chagall in 1915.

The museum is an experience in careful docent supervision, as you will be asked for your ticket in each gallery! It also has an unusual and elaborate wrought iron staircase.

Marc Chagall Museum and the Jewish Quarter.  In 1900, almost half of Vitebsk’s population of about 65,000 was Jewish, with the community located on the west side of the river, traces of which remain to this day.

The museum is in Chagall’s boyhood home between 1897 and 1910 at Ulitsa Pakrouskaya 11, and consists of a recreation of the home’s interior with art and photographs on the walls.

The house is tiny (his family numbered 11 people) so it’s a fairly short but interesting visit. Chagall became the Commissar for Arts in Vitebsk after the revolution, in 1918. He opened the city’s People’s Art School which now houses the Contemporary Art Museum at Ulitsa Krylova.

You should also take time to walk around the neighborhood to the east and south of the house, which was Vitebsk’s Jewish quarter. You can also visit the Dvina Brewery Shop (Ulitsa Ilinskaha 25а) to buy a beer and some traditional Belarusian drinking snacks.

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See the plaque outside the brewery commemorating Lieutenant-General of Artillery Beskin Israel Solomonov, Hero of the Soviet Union (1945) who grew up locally and worked at the brewery in 1910-11. General Solomonov, who returned in 1944 to liberate the city, is also commemorated in the city museum.

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Also stop by the abandoned Zhadzvinni Synagogue at (Ulitsa Revaliucyjnaya 10) (https://34travel.me/gotobelarus/en/post/synagogues). The synagogue closed in the mid-1920s after the revolution but the structure still stands along with an information board.

There is a statue of Chagall with the figure of his first wife hovering above him in the  square that sits where Ulitsas Pakrouskaya and Sovetskoy Armii join. It’s a good place to take a break and admire the redbrick prewar houses.

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Marc Chagall Art Center (Putna 2). The art center contains a collection of prints bequethed by the artist’s granddaughter and other donors, that’s worth a visit. As with many birthplace galleries, the originals are mostly elsewhere but it’s still a good place to get an idea of his work and some context. 

Vitebsk Regional History Museum.  The museum (Lenina 36), run by the local city, is a great grab bag of different exhibit rooms, from medieval artifacts, natural dioramas, through to an extensive WW2 exhibit. Vitebsk stood in the main invasion and recapture routes in 1941 and 1944, and so was heavily pummeled.

The museum has small but interesting art collection, including a self-portrait by Yuri Pen and Ilya Repin’s Madonna with Child (1896).

Frunze Park. Frunze Park, just east of the old town and flanking the Visba River, is worth a detour for its attractive landscaping of the hilly riverbanks of this tributary of the West Dvina River.

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It is also a good place to head further west for a dose of brutalist yet functional Soviet architecture, including the city concert hall. Check out their schedule here http://www.gck.by/afisha to see what’s on.

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Logistics

Vitebsk’s very grand rail station is just south of the more functional bus station, both about 1.5km west of the old town over the river at Ulitsa Kasmanautau. In general, buses are more frequent and often faster than the train, however you should compare schedules. The Belarusian Railway Company has a good English-accessible website (https://poezd.rw.by/wps/portal/home/rp/schedule) that allows you to buy e-tickets, which is especially useful if you plan to book an overnight sleeper. Connections to the western cities of Brest and Grodno are likely to be via Minsk. The train and bus station schedules are in Cyrillic only, but the staff at the information booth are quite helpful and can write out timings for you.

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I stayed at the Smart Boutique Hotel (Suvurova 11) which was a modern and comfortable small hotel right in the old town and a less than 20 minute walk from the bus station; highly recommended on all fronts.

There are plenty of good food options in town, mostly Belarusian but well-delivered. The Lyamus Restaurant-Brewery (Pobedy Avenue 1) is a slight way out but a good traditional brewpub option – they don’t always have the full selection of draft beer but the food is very good. In the old town, both the Pushkin Times (Tastoga 4) and Vitebskiy Traktir (Suvurova 2) are a bit higher-end and popular. Both offer the cellar experience or outdoor seating. Pelmennya (Janki Kupaly 12/5) is a good lunchtime cafeteria, specializing in soup broth pelmeni. Torvald (Tastoga 1) is a decent and lively bar with a food menu. The Dvinskiy Brovar Bar (Lenina 57) is the main craft beer place, although get a taste of the drafts before you buy or stick to the bottles from the nearby Dvina Brewery.

If you need a good supermarket, try the Euroopt located in the Marko Citi shopping center at Lenina 26A, just south of the old town. You can also check out the more Soviet-style Univermag nearby at Zamkovaya 19.

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Polotsk: The Cathedral in the Forest

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Polotsk was the original capital of the medieval Belarusian state that existed in the 10th-12th centuries, first recorded in the 9th century and developed as a fortified center on the Daugava River, now in now eastern Belarus. It’s a compact town with lots of history, and worth a stop on the way to Vitebsk or the parks of northeast Belarus. The rivers of eastern Belarus formed a political and treading link between the Baltic and Black seas, at a time when the river was the safest and fastest way to go. The Daugava River flows northwest into Latvia through Daugavpils and Riga, on the Baltic, and east to Vitebsk. Southeast of Polotsk, the Dnieper River flows south to Kiev and the Black Sea.

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St. Sophia Cathedral. As a capital city, Polotsk had an orthodox cathedral constructed in the mid-11th century that was comparable to those in other major medieval cities such as Novgorod and Kiev. It was built at the west end of the existing city (1 Ulitsa Zamkavaya) overlooking the river. At first sight it appears to be a typical early 18th-century (restored) Polish baroque cathedral, which it is. However, if you go into the basement you can see the original 11th-century Byzantine style brick and mortar columns, that were excavated in the 1980s.

There is also an original section on the east side of the building. This would have been a huge building for the time, and the seven-towered medieval cathedral stood until its destruction in the Livonian Wars in the early 1700s. A large boulder still stands on the lawn overlooking the river, carved with a 12th-century inscription (Dear Lord, please help Boris, your slave) by King Boris. Also just west of the cathedral, across a footbridge, is the traditional wooden house community of Zapolotye, that is worth a walk round.

After visiting the cathedral, a good route is to walk east along Ulitsa Nizny Pakrouskaya where there are a range of museums, including the local history museum (http://local.polotsk.museum.by/en) and a branch of the national museum (http://polotsk.museum.by/en), and further east, the Epiphany Monastery, originally founded in the late 16th century and like so many buildings in town, burned and later reconstructed in the late 18th century. Polotsk was a major religious center and was the birthplace of Simeon of Polotsk, an important medieval scholar.

WW2 Polotsk. Polotsk was located at a critical river crossing point both in the 1941 German invasion and in the Summer 1944 Russian recapture. At Ulitsa Nizhny Pakrouskaya 39-41, there is a monument dedicated to the last stand made by 23 Soviet soldiers during a German offensive in July 1944. It’s located in a nice park and you can easily access the riverside below.

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The main square contains Polotsk’s WW2 memorial (see the Red Army unit names on the rear side of the memorial to practice your Cyrillic reading), together with the restored early 1800s Tsarist-era Napoleonic War memorial.

Other than that, it’s a pleasant town to take in the river and the surrounding traditional houses.

Logistics. Polotsk has a couple of decent hotel options for an overnight stay. The Hotel Dvina is a good central choice, with clean and simple rooms and a postwar Classical ambiance. The food options in town are mainly cafes serving Belarusian standards or pizza, and some decent ones include Cafe Damian (Nizhny-Pakrouskaya 41b), Gurman (Francyska Skaryny 11) and Lepim Sami ( Francyska Skaryny 23). Quick Coffe (Francyska Skaryny 13) is a good spot for caffeination.

Depending on your schedule, there is a good 06:30 departure from Minsk railway station (Belarusian Railways schedules: https://poezd.rw.by/wps/portal/home/rp/schedule), as well as multiple minibuses (marshrutkas). The bus and rail stations are next to each other at Ulitsa Oktyabrskaya, just east of the intersection with Ulitsa Gogolya, from which you can walk for 10 minutes to reach the town center. Travel time to Minsk is almost 4 hours and about 2 hours to Vitebsk.

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The Full Hansa: Lubeck and Rostock

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The Hanseatic League was a medieval and renaissance era alliance of Baltic and North Sea trading ports and merchant guilds whose footprint stretched from the east coast of England to the river city of Novgorod in Russia. Starting from a group of German cities in the 1100s and operating until its decline in the late 1600s, and run for the benefit of their merchant class, the League was instrumental in creating strong city-states that complemented the traditional land-based aristocratic and religious power of the time. They created trading networks based on law and mutual obligation, backed up by regional law courts and periodic league conferences in the port cities. The League negotiated relief from tariffs, fought pirates and attempted to monopolize certain trades.

This way, you could somewhat reliably ship a cargo of goods (a “Hanse” was a protected convoy) from Cologne to Tallinn, and get paid, when for a time Mongol invasions further south and east were live news. Lubeck’s merchants were principal originators of the League, trading from a hub between the German hinterland, Scandinavia and the Kievan Rus (itself a Federation of areas that now comprise parts of western Russia, Belarus and Ukraine).

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You can still see this active society reflected in the buildings and communities in places such as Lubeck, Rostock and Stralsund, which were important Baltic sea ports at the time. It still figures in German culture, from the name of their airline to the local football clubs, and an “H” put before the town letter on car number plates.

Lubeck

Lubeck has a large and well-defined medieval city area, which is an island that the Trave River flows round. It is very walkable and has a neat port area on its northwest side along An der Untertrave with a few historical ships, including a lightship, for your nautical fix. The city’s renaissance-era ceremonial gate, the Holstentor, with its chubby ceremonial towers that appear to lean in to each other, is suitably impressive. You can “almost” not see post-renaissance buildings as you walk towards it.

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The Holstentor

Heading into the central Markt, south of the 13th-century Marienkirche, you find many well-preserved (or restored – Lubeck was bombed in WW2) medieval features, including the medieval city hall.

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Lubeck Market Square

Hansamuseum. Lubeck’s European Hansamuseum (An der Untertrave 1) is well worth a visit to understand how trade developed in the early middle ages and developed today’s Baltic cities into prosperous commercial centers, driven by considerations separate from the Church and aristocracy. (hansemuseum.eu)

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Gunter Grass House. Lubeck was home to Gunter Grass, one of Germany’s most important 20th-century writers, who was born (1928) and raised in Danzig. Danzig, now Gdansk, Poland, was part of East Prussia and mostly ethnic German at the time, and absorbed into the German state in 1939. It was the city in which the novel and film The Tin Drum was set. After wartime service and art school in Dusseldorf, Grass eventually settled in Lubeck, and the Gunter Grass House (Glockengiesserstrasse 21) is well worth a visit. Grass was politically active and attempted to articulate West Germany’s postwar identity in much of his work. Notably, he failed to reveal until 1996 that part of his forced wartime service had been in the SS, which was considered an oversight at the time.

Willy Brandt House.The garden of Gunter’s house adjoins the birthplace of Lubeck’s other famous son, the postwar politician Willy Brandt, who is best known for Ostpolitik – advancing detente between Germany and the Soviet Bloc during the 1960s and 1970s. Brandt was West Germany’s Chancellor between 1969 and 1974 but had worked his way up as Mayor of Berlin (hosting John F. Kennedy’s famous 1961 speech), Foreign Minister and other posts since the 1950s. His tenure as Chancellor was cut short by the revelation that one of his aides was an agent for the East German intelligence service, the Stasi. The Willy Brandt House (Königstrasse 21) is a good place to get an understanding of Germany’s postwar history.

Other things worth seeing as you wander round this pretty town include the Buddenbrookhaus (Mengstrasse 4), which is a museum dedicated to the author Thomas Mann, and the Holstentor Museum, which is a good way to understand Lubeck’s history and to explore the two towers.

Food & Beverage. Lubeck has a local brewery, Brauburger ze Lubeck (Alfstrasse 36), that is also worth a visit afterwards. Brewed on-site, their traditional zwickelbier is highly regarded, although they have dipped a toe into IPAs.

There are plenty of solid (some literally) food options in town. For a traditional north German effort, Alstadt-Bierhaus Lubeck (Braunstrasse 19) is worth visiting. The Kartoffelkeller (Koberg 8) is a popular cellar restaurant offering plenty of options around the potato. The Junge Die Bäckerei, a regional chain on the south side of the main square, is a good breakfast or cake/coffee stopoff, and the Kaffeehaus Lübeck (Hüxstrasse 35) is a nice out of the way place.

Rostock

In contrast to Lubeck, Rostock has a more modern feel, largely due to it’s role post-WW2 as the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) main sea port and shipbuilding center. Coming from Lubeck, which was in West Germany during the Cold War, Rostock contrasts with postwar reconstruction carried out by the GDR, which existed between 1949 and 1990. It’s a pleasant mid-sized town that doesn’t deal with overtourism and is a good base for the surrounding region.

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Rostock’s city is worth a look to see Soviet-era architecture, such as its postwar Communist parade, Lange Allee, which splits the city north and south. What is left of Rostock’s rebuilt old town, to the north and east of the center, is pleasant and unassuming and you can pass through it on the way to the waterfront on the north side of town.

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Rostock maintains many of the Communist-era street names, so it will be possible to find Karl-Marx Strasse and Rosa Luxemburg Strasse – although this isn’t unusual in former GDR cities.

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Rostock is a good base to see two nearby attractions, the beach town of Warnemunde and the preserved East German merchant ship Typ Frieden, which has a unique exhibit of East German shipbuilding and its merchant marine. Both can be done in the same journey as they are along the same local S-Bahn rail line that runs north to the beach.

Warnemunde. Warnemunde is a rather touristy (receiving cruise ships) but fun German seaside resort which as a fishing village grew from the late 19th century, when working and middle-class Germans – especially from Berlin and other large cities – started to be able to take vacations. It’s not really worth an overnight stay unless you are a beach person. You can either go to Rostock Hauptbahnhof and take the S-Bahn local train up, or if located in central Rostock, take the No. 1 or 5 trams west to the Rostock Holbeinplatz S-Bahn station and take the train north from there.

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From the train station, you can cross west over the Alte Brucke and wander up Am Strom to the beach, and grab a backfisch and a beer along the way. It’s quite pleasant and laid back. There are also some decent places for lunch away from the main crowd if you head south along Am Strom from the Alte Brucke – zur Krim was good and had a nice garden out front.

The Typ Frieden. Rostock’s Shipbuilding and Maritime Museum is located in the cavernous cargo hold of the Typ Frieden, a 1957-vintage merchant ship built in Rostock that operated as the Dresden until 1970. It has a very comprehensive museum of shipbuilding and the merchant marine of the industrially diligent GDR. Now that that the GDR has been gone for 30 years, it’s an insight into a bygone era of communist heavy industry.

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The ship’s large multi-deck cargo hold contains the museum, which has mainly photographic, equipment and model exhibits. If you are interested in heavy post-war industry or how socialist shipping lines served Soviet Bloc routes to Cuba, this is the place to go.

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The bridge, engine room and crew quarters are preserved in all their 1950s glory.

To reach the museum, take the train to the Rostock-Lütten Klein stop and walk east via the conference center and the park (which is a wetlands area) to the riverfront. (www.schifffahrtsmuseum-rostock.de)

Food, Beverage & Accommodation. Rostock has a good range of food options and doesn’t suffer from overtouristed clip joints. The Braugasthaus Zum alten Fritz brewpub, located on the waterfront at Warnowufer 65, has a typical German menu and fresh draught or bottled Störtebeker beer (https://www.alter-fritz.de), brewed in nearby Stralsund. The Altstädter Stuben, in the old town to the east at Altschmiedestrasse 25, is a good neighborhood restaurant. Kaminstube, at Burgwall 17, is another low-key place in the northern old town with a large outdoor veranda to get a beer from the local brewery or a meal. I stayed at the Pentahotel, Schwaansche Strasse 6, which is central and modern, with a good lounge area on the ground level and outside.

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Transport Logistics. Rostock and Lubeck are easily reached from Berlin. I went via Copenhagen to Lubeck, and both bus and rail journeys (about 4 hours) connect via the Rodby-Putthaven ferry link. You can book online (ferry ticket included) through Flixbus (www.flixbus.com) or German Rail (www.diebahn.de).