Gdansk

  text and pictures by Mr. K. (more to come soon)

All three of us got on a 12-hour traIn ride, headed north, to Gdańsk Poland, site of the first battles of WWII, the Solidarity movement.

In the Middle Ages Gdansk accrued capital  as a leading Baltic trading center, in the days of the Hanseatic League.

Many beautiful beautiful buildings we’re told all rebuilt from and with rubble after being bombed flat by the Allied forced in WWII.

Called the Crane (you can barely see the windvane at the top that is a crane). Inside is a kind of ratwheel for humans, who tread wooden cleats that turned a winch from the top of the building, lifting the masts onto new boats built in the Gdansk Shipyard of old….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the Lenin Shipyard/ Solodarity Movement Museum (sic)
You can enter through the shipyard gate…

 

 

 

 

 

Solidarity!’s requirements to end the strike, written on sheets of plywood that were posted at the gate. Requirements included free & independent unions, better helthcare, childcare…. They are now recognized by UNESCO as some sort of world heritage object.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From our boatride on the Visla/Vistula River, from Old Gdansk out almost to the Baltic Sea

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On an early morning walk, we sighted another kind of heritage site. We estimate about 50 years worth of pigeon dropping went into this edifice….