Travel Notes: Gdańsk - Day 1
2025-03-08 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rodoTitle: Travel Notes: Gdańsk
Author:rodo
Chapter: 1/5
Length: 1460 words
Rating: 6+
Genre: travelogue
A/N: feel free to read; I wrote this mainly for myself, to better remember my time in Gdańsk
Summary: In the summer of 2024, I found myself with time and money to spend, and on short notice, decided to visit Gdańsk, a city I’d never been to, but had always wanted to see. Here, you can read all about my trip – the boring and hopefully not so boring details, illustrated by a couple of photos.
Day 1: Sunday, 28th of July 2024: All is well…
Sometimes, you’ve got to eat your own words. About eighteen years ago, I last wrote a travelogue. At the time, I was quite incensed by the – as I felt – abysmal quality of Italian train travel. I have since learned just how much worse things can get. So naturally, I was quite apprehensive when I decided to travel to Gdańsk by train for my three-day trip – but since it was manageable to do so within a day, I thought booking a flight might be a bit over the top and bad for the environment. Plus, all the buses took longer, so I decided to chance it.
To get why I was worried, you’ve got to understand that German train travel has changed a lot in the last handful of decades. The long and short of it is this: privatisation is bad for things that should be a public good. Infrastructure decays. Trains need people to run. At this point, I’d been commuting via train for a year and a half, and the things I’d witnessed… let’s just say that when I left on the morning of the 28th, I was prepared for the worst.
So naturally, this was one of the ten times a year when the regional train I took five times a week was punctual, which did not lull me into a false sense of security. (I knew better than that.) It did, however, leave me enough time to buy something to eat at the station in Bremen and have a small breakfast before lazily making my way to the platform. Once there I was promptly informed that the train I was waiting for would be a couple of minutes late. Keep in mind that for the entire rest of the trip there would be only about fifteen minutes to get from one train to the next, on average. This time I had a little more time, so I wasn’t too worried… yet.
The train to Hanover arrived ten minutes late. Once on the train, the passengers were informed that due to a technical defect, the train would not be going to Berlin – as planned – but instead to Dortmund, where it would be repaired. A collective sigh went through all the passengers when they heard that. I wouldn’t be the only one who would have to board a different train in Hanover, it seemed. Then, while still on the train, I received an email that the train from Hanover to Berlin would be a little late as well, so there was no chance of me missing it.
That was before the extra delays to come, of course. I made some new friends on the platform in Hanover while we were all griping about the terrible German train system. Nothing fosters a sense of camaraderie quite like suffering at the whims of failing German infrastructure. Calls were made to inform people about changed plans, some people ate a small snack, and I kept checking my DB app to keep track of the delays and ever-changing reasons thereof. In the end, the train to Berlin arrived 35 minutes late (a combination of the following: construction, a faulty track switch, and a police operation). There was no way in hell I would be arriving in time to catch my bus. Neither would the woman who sat across the aisle one row behind me, who was travelling to Poland to visit family, along with her chatty and cute young son and the best-behaved small dog I have ever met. I spent the better part of this leg of the journey working on a poem, which I love to do on trains – lots of idle brain time and the landscape rushing by tends to inspire me.
A bus, you might be wondering? Yes, I had booked trains. So had the other woman. No, we didn’t know why we were supposed to take a bus from Berlin Hauptbahnhof to Frankfurt (Oder). Trains run from the former to the latter as well. All the other travellers were as baffled by the mighty DB Route Planner’s decision as we were, especially the ones who had travelled in that direction before. However, you do not argue with the DB Route Planner, one of the few parts of the German railway system that works. At that time, it told us that we would have to stay in the ICE until Berlin Ostbahnhof and board an S-Bahn to a place called Erkner that I had never heard of before. When the time came and we arrived at the station, I, an older woman, and the woman travelling to Poland all hastily scrambled off the platform and then up to the next one, into the S-Bahn, which looked incredibly grungy and elderly, but at least it was on time. It arrived in Erkner on time too, but since there was hardly any time to board the next train, we needed to run. Again. Luggage, child, tiny dog and all.
The next leg of the journey was a regional train to Frankfurt (Oder), where I would be able to make my train – if all went well. Which I was very keen on, considering it was one of those trains that you needed a reservation for. You couldn’t just catch the next one, not that I even knew which one that was. In Poland, there would be no DB Route Planner to tell me which one to take, and the language barrier would make things twice as hard.
As you might expect at this point, the regional train arrived at its destination late as well, but not too late. I got to my train in time, and so did the older woman from the ICE, who had reserved the seat opposite mine, and who was headed to Gdańsk as well – her family was already there on holiday, and she was supposed to join them. At that point, I was pretty happy. I was on the right train, it would take me to Gdańsk Główny and I no longer cared if it was late. What’s a couple of minutes (or hours) when you don’t have a connecting train to worry about?
The next couple of hours were… not as good as I had hoped during my initial relief when boarding the train. The two women who had boarded with us talked incessantly when all I wanted was some peace and quiet. The windows were leaking a bit when it rained and I watched the droplets run down the wall. Then there was another thirty-minute delay in Gniezno – due to another police operation. Two other women had joined us as well at some point, so the compartment was at full capacity. That meant we all had to twist ourselves into uncomfortable shapes because while the seats had been designed with people with butts in mind (which might sound like a given but isn’t on public transport), the compartment most certainly wasn’t designed for people with legs – which all six of us were in possession of.
In the end, the train could not catch up on the delay, even if it had managed to arrive early in Świebodzin beforehand. When I finally arrived, it was past seven o’clock and I’d been on the road, so to speak, for twelve hours. The uncomfortable seats and stress had made my shoulder and neck muscles tense up and all that I wanted was to sleep, so I said goodbye to my fellow traveller from Germany and set out to find my hotel.
At first, I was a bit lost. The underground passageways below the main station in Gdańsk and my tiredness weren’t very conducive to orienting myself. I consulted the map from the guidebook that I’d bought, but it wasn’t much help either. After a couple of minutes of indecision, I went with my gut. I ended up on a wide street opposite the bus terminal, looking for a sign with a street name that might help me find my way. Instead, I spotted the logo of the hotel far in the distance and was immensely relieved. On my way to the hotel I didn’t pay much attention to my surroundings, only vaguely wondering what I was missing as I walked past a blocked-off road guarded by a policewoman. I was just happy that I had finally arrived.
After a couple of confusing interactions with the woman manning the front desk (her English was very fast and accented, there was loud music in the lobby, and my head was throbbing), I trudged up to my room, texted my mother to tell her that I’d arrived safely and more or less fell into bed, hoping that sleep would set me right and that all would be better the next day.
Next chapter: Day 1: Monday, 29th of July 2024: Getting Started
The Chapters
Day 1: Sunday, 28th of July 2024: All is well… | Day 2: Monday, 29th of July 2024: Getting Started | Day 3: Tuesday, 30th of July 2024: Something New(ish) | Day 4: Wednesday, 31st of July 2024: A Walk and Another Museum | Day 5: Thursday, 1st of August 2024: … That Ends Well
Author:
rodoChapter: 1/5
Length: 1460 words
Rating: 6+
Genre: travelogue
A/N: feel free to read; I wrote this mainly for myself, to better remember my time in Gdańsk
Summary: In the summer of 2024, I found myself with time and money to spend, and on short notice, decided to visit Gdańsk, a city I’d never been to, but had always wanted to see. Here, you can read all about my trip – the boring and hopefully not so boring details, illustrated by a couple of photos.
Sometimes, you’ve got to eat your own words. About eighteen years ago, I last wrote a travelogue. At the time, I was quite incensed by the – as I felt – abysmal quality of Italian train travel. I have since learned just how much worse things can get. So naturally, I was quite apprehensive when I decided to travel to Gdańsk by train for my three-day trip – but since it was manageable to do so within a day, I thought booking a flight might be a bit over the top and bad for the environment. Plus, all the buses took longer, so I decided to chance it.
To get why I was worried, you’ve got to understand that German train travel has changed a lot in the last handful of decades. The long and short of it is this: privatisation is bad for things that should be a public good. Infrastructure decays. Trains need people to run. At this point, I’d been commuting via train for a year and a half, and the things I’d witnessed… let’s just say that when I left on the morning of the 28th, I was prepared for the worst.
So naturally, this was one of the ten times a year when the regional train I took five times a week was punctual, which did not lull me into a false sense of security. (I knew better than that.) It did, however, leave me enough time to buy something to eat at the station in Bremen and have a small breakfast before lazily making my way to the platform. Once there I was promptly informed that the train I was waiting for would be a couple of minutes late. Keep in mind that for the entire rest of the trip there would be only about fifteen minutes to get from one train to the next, on average. This time I had a little more time, so I wasn’t too worried… yet.
The train to Hanover arrived ten minutes late. Once on the train, the passengers were informed that due to a technical defect, the train would not be going to Berlin – as planned – but instead to Dortmund, where it would be repaired. A collective sigh went through all the passengers when they heard that. I wouldn’t be the only one who would have to board a different train in Hanover, it seemed. Then, while still on the train, I received an email that the train from Hanover to Berlin would be a little late as well, so there was no chance of me missing it.
That was before the extra delays to come, of course. I made some new friends on the platform in Hanover while we were all griping about the terrible German train system. Nothing fosters a sense of camaraderie quite like suffering at the whims of failing German infrastructure. Calls were made to inform people about changed plans, some people ate a small snack, and I kept checking my DB app to keep track of the delays and ever-changing reasons thereof. In the end, the train to Berlin arrived 35 minutes late (a combination of the following: construction, a faulty track switch, and a police operation). There was no way in hell I would be arriving in time to catch my bus. Neither would the woman who sat across the aisle one row behind me, who was travelling to Poland to visit family, along with her chatty and cute young son and the best-behaved small dog I have ever met. I spent the better part of this leg of the journey working on a poem, which I love to do on trains – lots of idle brain time and the landscape rushing by tends to inspire me.
A bus, you might be wondering? Yes, I had booked trains. So had the other woman. No, we didn’t know why we were supposed to take a bus from Berlin Hauptbahnhof to Frankfurt (Oder). Trains run from the former to the latter as well. All the other travellers were as baffled by the mighty DB Route Planner’s decision as we were, especially the ones who had travelled in that direction before. However, you do not argue with the DB Route Planner, one of the few parts of the German railway system that works. At that time, it told us that we would have to stay in the ICE until Berlin Ostbahnhof and board an S-Bahn to a place called Erkner that I had never heard of before. When the time came and we arrived at the station, I, an older woman, and the woman travelling to Poland all hastily scrambled off the platform and then up to the next one, into the S-Bahn, which looked incredibly grungy and elderly, but at least it was on time. It arrived in Erkner on time too, but since there was hardly any time to board the next train, we needed to run. Again. Luggage, child, tiny dog and all.
The next leg of the journey was a regional train to Frankfurt (Oder), where I would be able to make my train – if all went well. Which I was very keen on, considering it was one of those trains that you needed a reservation for. You couldn’t just catch the next one, not that I even knew which one that was. In Poland, there would be no DB Route Planner to tell me which one to take, and the language barrier would make things twice as hard.
As you might expect at this point, the regional train arrived at its destination late as well, but not too late. I got to my train in time, and so did the older woman from the ICE, who had reserved the seat opposite mine, and who was headed to Gdańsk as well – her family was already there on holiday, and she was supposed to join them. At that point, I was pretty happy. I was on the right train, it would take me to Gdańsk Główny and I no longer cared if it was late. What’s a couple of minutes (or hours) when you don’t have a connecting train to worry about?
The next couple of hours were… not as good as I had hoped during my initial relief when boarding the train. The two women who had boarded with us talked incessantly when all I wanted was some peace and quiet. The windows were leaking a bit when it rained and I watched the droplets run down the wall. Then there was another thirty-minute delay in Gniezno – due to another police operation. Two other women had joined us as well at some point, so the compartment was at full capacity. That meant we all had to twist ourselves into uncomfortable shapes because while the seats had been designed with people with butts in mind (which might sound like a given but isn’t on public transport), the compartment most certainly wasn’t designed for people with legs – which all six of us were in possession of.
In the end, the train could not catch up on the delay, even if it had managed to arrive early in Świebodzin beforehand. When I finally arrived, it was past seven o’clock and I’d been on the road, so to speak, for twelve hours. The uncomfortable seats and stress had made my shoulder and neck muscles tense up and all that I wanted was to sleep, so I said goodbye to my fellow traveller from Germany and set out to find my hotel.
At first, I was a bit lost. The underground passageways below the main station in Gdańsk and my tiredness weren’t very conducive to orienting myself. I consulted the map from the guidebook that I’d bought, but it wasn’t much help either. After a couple of minutes of indecision, I went with my gut. I ended up on a wide street opposite the bus terminal, looking for a sign with a street name that might help me find my way. Instead, I spotted the logo of the hotel far in the distance and was immensely relieved. On my way to the hotel I didn’t pay much attention to my surroundings, only vaguely wondering what I was missing as I walked past a blocked-off road guarded by a policewoman. I was just happy that I had finally arrived.
After a couple of confusing interactions with the woman manning the front desk (her English was very fast and accented, there was loud music in the lobby, and my head was throbbing), I trudged up to my room, texted my mother to tell her that I’d arrived safely and more or less fell into bed, hoping that sleep would set me right and that all would be better the next day.
