To Hel and Back

by Tim Grimes

Poland may not be an obvious destination for a family lakeside holiday, but the Masurian Lakes in the north east of the country must be among the best. I have just returned, with my family, from the lakes and cities of the north east, having flown into, and out of, Warsaw by Lot. We booked our hotels, flights and car hire by internet and telephone, as usual.

We arrived at Warsaw airport to be met by our pre-booked car hire rep - and an unfeasibly small Fiat something a couple of sizes smaller than we had intended with almost 1200cc under the bonnet. Disarmed by the red and white cake iced with a personal welcome to Poland, we accepted the Fiat. A mistake. We should have declined the cake and insisted on something more like a car. Acceleration and aircon are a must, driving on rural Polish roads in the Summer.

In north eastern Poland, pretty well all country roads are either avenues of planted trees bounding open fields, in the French style, or bordered by thick woods on both sides. Smart new green direction signs belied the quality of the roads - rarely more than twice the width of a nasty little Fiat - with cobbled or (rarer) asphalted surfaces breaking up along the ragged soft sandy borders. White lines were apparently an optional extra which was not opted. So driving is inevitably dangerous. Frustration leads drivers to overtake slower vehicles - only fractionally faster - and it is common to be faced with two vehicles approaching side-by-side. When approaching opposite traffic, it is usual to drive in the centre of the road until the very last minute, before swerving into the crumbling margin of the road, to pass - gets quite hairy when your opponent is a 40 tonne truck.

From the map, we had expected a 2 hour journey to the Masurian Lakes. But such was the condition of the roads that 2 hours later we were still only half way in our horrid little Fiat. So we stopped to fall in with a local folk festival, including several men in unfeasibly tight jodhpurs - but, curiously, without a horse in sight - where we sampled pickled cucumbers and sausages of an unspecified meat.

To the untrained ear, most Polish words include the sounds of clearing the throat and spitting, often at the same time, most words look alike and sound alike, mainly because of the predominance of the letters k, d and z, usually unpunctuated by vowels. The grammar is incredibly complicated and the forms of words vary, not only according to the sex of the speaker but also, it seemed, according to the sex of those being addressed. We began to wonder whether the time of day also informed modes of address. It is not a surprise that the inventor of Esperanto was a Pole. Whilst we began to remember the written forms of some words, speaking the language is a challenge beyond the average holiday maker, and fluency does not seem to be expected. The alternatives are pidgin German (in the north east - which put me on even terms with the Poles) or pidgin English elsewhere. But sign language and grunts of the few Polish greetings and thanks, which we had mastered, went a long way.

The unobtrusively efficient Hotel Golebiewski, at Mikolajki, deservedly has the reputation as the premier hotel in the Masurian Lakes. With over 500 rooms, it is lively but certainly not overcrowded. Although the accommodation falls short of 5 star, it is comfortable and clean and boasts a fabulous lakeside setting, close to the bustling and charming resort of Mikolajki. Riding (from almost cavalry standard stables), cycling, and helicopter and balloon flights, are offered to guests at 30% below already low prices, together with all kinds of boat hire on the lakes, from dinghies to yachts, and several lake cruises on larger ships. The massive complex of pools, streams and flumes shares the basement with a night club, games room and squash court.

A silent little Polish girl with blonde pigtails approached us in the games room and gestured a challenge on the one-armed bandits. The games worked without inserting any money and she won hands down. The next day, the little spirit girl appeared at the bowling rink. She lifted the floor boards with a screwdriver, to free the return of the bowling balls. We assumed she had lived in the hotel years before, died (probably concussed by a billiard ball) and returned when need summoned her.

The hotel is 5 minutes’ walk from town, and we were wise to resist a lift from a cycle rickshaw. Returning from Mikolajki one evening we watched the rickshaw driver cycling up the slight incline. He seemed to have aged about 40 years since beginning his journey. Halfway up the slight incline he dismounted, and changed places with a corpulent lady passenger. A few yards further on, the ancient contraption ground to a halt and passengers and driver all dismounted to relieve themselves by the roadside.

Mikolajki is situated at the narrow join between Lakes Talty and Sniardwy. Despite being a purpose built resort, the little town is quite charming and very yachty. Its daytime quiet is punctuated by the chink of sail rigging; at night, it buzzes with the sound of Polish rock music.

Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair is within striking distance of Mikolajki. Hitler’s forward command HQ 1941 to 1945 is highly
commercialised (the SS barracks are now a hotel) and consists of overgrown ruins which, taken together, rather deplete the historic atmosphere. In my opinion, not a must but if visiting, be sure to take the longer main roads, rather than the direct dirt track through the forest.

We also visited Kadiszlowo where we followed a guided tour around the collection of Polish animals. This began with a flock of deer from China, and included what our Polish guide described as “uhu”. Everyone else stared, knowingly, into the uhu’s enclosure, but we couldn’t see any. Linguistic challenges prevented us from asking whether the uhu was out for the day, or just exceptionally well camouflaged. The wolves’ enclosure was interesting too containing, as it did, a couple of dachshunds. It was unclear whether they were keeping the wolves company, or fed them.

Gdansk is just dripping in Flemish-inspired architecture, dating from the Hanseatic times. Although, sadly, the city was largely recreated in the 1950s and 1960s from wartime damage, it is not without an element of authenticity, and is extremely attractive. Before joining Poland in the fifteenth century, Gdansk had been an independent city state, and the most important in the Hanseatic League. It became part of Prussia - and subsequently Germany - in the eighteenth century during the Prussian/Austrian, Russian partition of Poland and remained so (except for a Napoleonic interlude as a city state) until 1919 when Poland re-emerged as a nation and the Danzig Free State was born. The Prussian period saw development of the dockyards - later made world famous by the Solidarity movement (see the poignant memorial at Solidarity Square) - and the railways. The main station has a fabulous neo-renaissance exterior but is uninteresting inside, the original interior having been hidden by modern rebuilding.

The Fascist dominated senate annexed Gdansk to the Third Reich at the beginning of WWII, after a fire fight between German forces and Polish administrators at the old Post Office, where there is a museum. But it was not until the defence of the City, against the Russians, that so much damage was done with, apparently, over 90% of buildings, were destroyed.

We moved to the excellent Holiday Inn right opposite the station on the edge of the Old Town, abandoning the Novotel Marina, with its small rooms and remote location. Dinner was served at the adjacent TGI Friday’s - and so was breakfast. Although we had foreseen Mexican chicken wings with nachos, served by waiters dressed as clowns, breakfast transpired to be a buffet of the quality and diversity which we had come to expect throughout Poland

We had planned to spend 3 days on the Hel Peninsula, attracted by the guide book's description of quaint fishing villages and the extraordinary and enchanting Pekin Hotel at Wladislowow. On our first day, it was clear that the 3 days which we had booked, was too long - not because I was stopped by the Polish police there, for the second time in the holiday - but because the whole place is unspeakably naff, crowded with vested campers riding wally trolleys between street stalls selling tacky souvenirs. Had the peninsula’s name been spelled with an additional l, it could not have been more apt. There may be a reason why travel writers often enthuse about the place, but I have no idea what it is.

Despite the fine, exotic (and out of place) Pekin Hotel, we cut our losses, paid up and headed south to Gniew where we stayed in the Palace of Gniew, in the shadow of the ancient, ruined and extremely spooky, red-brick castle of Gniew. The nearby town of Gniew had plainly not changed from the nineteenth century, except for a few modern shop signs and progressive decrepitude. We overlooked the jousting fields where we imagined the knights of Gniew (which we understood to be pronounced like the Polish for “no” - nye) challenged the nearby knights of Tsciew (which we assumed to be pronounced like a sneeze). In fact we wondered whether this had been the inspiration for a Monty Python sketch. Although the present owners (of only 5 months’ standing) have ambitious plans for the hotel, it is currently more attractive to youth hostellers

We set off for Torun, passing through Chelmno, which is quite a delightful little town - maybe what Gniew aspires to be. Whilst still primitive enough to be the genuine article, it is far better restored than Gniew, with a very fine old town hall, gates and walls - an especially good pizzeria in the large town square. Malbork, on the Nogat river, has the largest of the several Teutonic castles in the area. A magnificent red brick castle, with a commanding tower. We would have spent some time viewing the castle, had the mandatory guided tour not been for 3 hours - in Polish.

Torun is a small walled city full of medieval and later (Flemish inspired) architecture befitting a UNESCO World
Heritage site. Unlike Gdansk and Warsaw, the architecture is original, having come through WWII almost unscathed. The city is encircled by a series of massive brick-built Prussian forts, from the 1870s. Built as a defence of the town, and the then Prussian borders, these forts also saw service in WWI and WWII, first as POW camps, and later as defences against the Russians. Fort 4, now a youth hostel and restaurant, can be visited; others are hidden in deep woodland and, in some cases, military units. The city was home to Copernicus and enjoys the vibrancy of a university town, with several stylish bars and clubs, especially the Sphinx Bar, close to the excellent Gromada Staropolski Hotel where we stayed. It is remarkably free of souvenirs - in fact it is quite difficult even to find postcards.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of all parts of the “Old Town” of Warsaw. Here where the dignity of painstaking rebuilding, after complete destruction by the Germans in 1944, is diminished in parts by an over supply of tacky souvenir stalls, street acts and low grade cafes (which plainly don’t plan for repeat business). Other parts of the Old Town, including the rebuilt royal palace, are still attractive.

Elsewhere, Warsaw has the air of a typical European capital creating, around the Palace of Culture and Science, a modern financial district of skyscrapers consciously diminishing and secluding Warsaw’s version of Stalin’s birthday cake - those oppressive 1950s sovietesque architectural symbols in the gift of the Soviet Union, which dominated the capital cities of many of the former communist bloc satellites. At the risk of political incorrectness, I think the Warsaw example is rather fine. Warsaw’s shops are centred on Marschalkowska Street, with its department stores, and Nowy Swiat full of boutiques, which lead, parallel, to the Old Town.

In Warsaw, we stayed at the massive and modern Holiday Inn (tel. 48 22 697 3999; holiday@orbis.pl), which is very close to the Station and the Palace of Science and Culture, and convenient to tour the city on foot.

Restaurant and hotel prices are generally quite low, but visitors should expect a fee for overnight secure parking. This is recommended as car theft is a threat. Speeding (detected by radars, guns, etc), and other motoring offences very often lead to a police car chase. Speaking no Polish, and playing really dumb, seem to bore the police into driving away without taking any action. An interesting counter-speeding initiative is the presence of cardboard cut-outs of police cars placed at bends in the road!

First published in VISA issue 54 (Jan 2004)