Gdansk, Day1 (05 Aug 08)

Gdansk, the capital of Pomerania is positioned on the Baltic has one of the most important port in northern Europe. Like most cities in Poland, it was heavily destroyed during WWII. But the remarkable restoration efforts made Gdansk my favourite and most beautiful city I've visited in Poland! But the weather wasn't welcoming, not what we had expected for the summer.

Nevertheless, Gdansk is a must see. We extended our stay to 5 nights instead from the initial 3.

Well, it was a 10 hours train ride up north. We planned our trip going from the north down south. Yeah, don't all of us wanna go down south *grins* So we arrived there early in the morning -hungry, cold and inappropriately attired. Ok, I did put my pants on when we disembarked.

approx 0600: Peeved by a pudgy, freaky, mute old man who bunked in next to him the night before, Cwei was still catching up on sleep. He got woken up a several times by him to close the unit window. This was particularly ascribed to me opening the window from my upper bunk because I was boiling in the unit, ha. At one occasion, I saw the old man extended his leg and kicked the window shut. I stealthily opened the window again momentarily.

We arrived. This is Emanuele our who shared our 6 sleeper unit. A Parisian who just came back from KL and Pangkor. As you have noticed, Jing & I were the only ones without jackets. Damn, it was cold.

So we split from Cwei and Shin Lert to buy jackets. The plan was to rv at St. Mary's church at 1700

And we walked. Everyone had jackets, even Yorkshire terriers (for some reasons which weren't apparent to me were very popular in Poland)

And bumped into a festival of pork knuckles!

Grilled potatoes and some unidentified food in astronomical amounts.

My favourite! sheesh kebabs and grilled kielbasas!

and an old skool pressure stove with some sort of broth or soup in it... groovy

and some old skool tvs

This is stare-miasto (old town) it was very classy, european, gothic? and mixed with some other kinds of archi periods, Romanesque? or sth. sth. which I didn't cared much. I slept through most of my rococo classes (yes, we have that sort of crap in medical school) Nevertheless, at the end of my Polish tour, i did pick up some apt for identifying the periods... that's more like medical school -IDENTIFYING PERIODS.

But anyway, everything you see in Gdansk was mostly reconstructed. 60% of them... or perhaps more... I can't recall... All I remembered was that I was balls freezing... But it was an huge %... maybe 70-90%. Do you give a damn? You will when you see the place. The reconstruction/restoration efforts certainly masked the tragedy which took place.

No, jackets still. It started to rain, and cold got colder. It was so cold till you can see my frozen-hard nips imprinted on my t-shirt.

Despite that, I still gathered the spirit to pose with my lame-ass hair.

The old town was built up of rows of shops/shophouses like this in the pic. BTW mum, I got you a antique shop fridge magnet resembling one of these shops.

The people in Gdansk were the most friendly I've met. I think the chicks were the hottest too. Cwei might differ. He thinks that the ones in Bialystok were better.

Ok, let me check... So i googled ''miss Poland, hometown''...... I ended up viewing things which are not that appropriate for this blog (my parents are reading too)

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Allright, Lets continue, I'm all cleaned up now :p

The old city town hall (the one with the clock tower). It was a museum as well. So we went in to have a look and shelter from the rain. The town hall is definitely worth a visit. Inside, there was an interesting photo exhibit about the Gdansk's history and you can climb the clock tower too.

Long Street

Me - pretending to know where we actually were.

Riverside, the Moltawa River.

I was F&E-ing CBJ! (pardon, inside joke)

We walked towards the famous 'Crane' by the Moltawa.

and walked... with freezing nuts

And finally arrived at St. Mary's 15minutes earlier than the rv time. The sibling couldn't be found anywhere... panicked... checked whether we got the right church... (yes, there were many churches around considering Poland is a roman catholic country)... it was the right church... waited... no siblings still... still pouring outside...

panicked (yeah, u wished! I don't care if I lose u Cwei, ha, kiddin')...

and i said, as always ''Chill dude'' or ''Chill balls''...

so we wandered inside the church. It was real nice inside St. Mary's (no pun intended) -the people i mean (i always primed the locals' hospitality when I rate a city).

Lemme explain.

We didn't get that f*king stares from the people inside the church as we get ever so bloody often here in Ukraine although we were

• wet
• in flip-flops
• wearing bermudas
• being Asians
• taking pictures
• trying to confess about how many upskirts we witnessed due to the strong but friendly winds outside (kiddin')
• and with my retarded friend, i.e. Jingo Fett
  

We eventually met up with the siblings.

This blogging thing is taking up quite some time. But I'm getting used to it. It's bloody 0220 now, gotta go study some drugs for class tomorrow & check whether Anwar took over the country.