Boxing Day in Gdansk

Is it just me, or does it get increasingly difficult to enjoy yourself on Christmas Day as you get older? And, as you get older do you find yourself looking forward more to Boxing Day than to the day before? One thing I can say about this Christmas in Poland, it may have been my first year away from Blighty during the festive season but at least in Poland I was in for no surprises. And as Boxing Day is an improvement on Christmas Day in England, so it came to pass that the same step up was replicated here.

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It was Olga’s idea that we should redress our sedentary yesterday with a leg-stretching stroll along the sea front. Another similarity between Christmas rituals in England and those in Poland was, apparently, that after overdoing it in the grub department folk assuaged their conscience with a morning constitutional before returning to the table and overdoing it again.

Boxing Day in Gdansk

Olga must have had an informed knowledge of Polish people’s Christmas habits since she correctly predicted that we would not be alone on the beach this morning. The sight was most unusual.  The sand was frozen solid, the pools of water where the sea met the sand had iced over and some were coated with a fresh sprinkling of snow, and yet, as far as the eye could see, a line of people, a well-dressed procession of folk of all ages, were promenading along the edge of the seafront. I remember thinking to myself that I had never seen such an outstanding display of real fur hats and coats. The women’s coats were long, opulent and luxuriously trimmed; they shone magnificently in the luminous air, the darker and lighter shades of pelts both in the coats and matching hats catching the sunlight, holding it for a moment and then reflecting the nuanced patterns beautifully. Looking back, this was possibly my first introduction to the futility of political correctness.

A little further along the coastline my eyes alighted on a quite different scene. Shivering on a low wooden jetty stood three red lobsters laughing. One, who had just taken a meaningful swig from a vodka bottle, was about to dive back into the icy cold sea. I was not ignorant of such peculiar goings-on in country’s such as these, but what a carry on; you certainly would not catch us Brits doing this in the middle of winter in Heacham or Hunstanton ~ in fact, come to think of it, we wouldn’t most likely be doing this in Heacham or Hunstanton in the middle of summer!

The site of lobsters in trunks and a fresh flurry of snow gave us just the excuse we’d been waiting for to investigate the probability that the impressively large red-brick hotel in front of us might be concealing a bar. I cannot remember the name of this place and I never entered it into my 2000 Diary, but after a bit of research on the internet I am of the opinion that it was more than likely The Grand.

I did write in my diary that the lounge bar was a tad disappointing, a little bit run of the mill, but compensation comes in the most unusual of places ~ the toilet. Yes, the bog was magnificent! It was tiled from top to bottom in contrasting hues of green marble and had urinals that dated back to Edwardian times. They were ~ if you know your urinals ~ deliberately contrived with modesty in mind. Big, tall, impressive curves of sparkling white vitreous enamel built into brickwork pillars, more than enough to ensure the absolute privacy expected by the widdling Edwardian gentleman, who could have virtually stood inside them, tuxedo, tailcoat and all. What was most thrilling, however, was the fact that they were British made, each urinal inscribed in blue with the name of Armitage Shanks! 

It had been so edifying, this discovery of a real Edwardian rest room, English designed and so far from home, that no sooner had we returned to the bar than we ordered another round of vodkas.

No doubt seeing where this was going, too much drink too early, Olga interrupted our celebrations suggesting that we should visit some place cultural, somewhere on the edge of town. The proposed destination was a small museum. We bowed to her better judgement, finished our vodkas, vacated the hotel and were whisked off by taxi to the place that she prescribed. Sadly, however, her culture-verses-drinking gamble didn’t pay off. We ended up, having left the taxi, in a rather drab and sorry-looking urban backwater, with nothing much to see but row upon row of lack-lustre flats. The museum, or any museum, was never located and stranded as we were we had the miserable misfortune of having to take refuge in yet another bar.

A railway platform somewhere in Gdansk

This place was not a haven. It was a modern glass and metal-framed structure parked in the intersection of a busy road; it was pokey, with a small Coca-Cola dispensing machine which, given the size of the room, was the inverse ratio of Dr Who’s TARDIS. We only stayed for one gassy pint of Polish beer, having learnt that the railway station was just around the corner. This turned out to be a rewarding ~ as in different ~ experience in itself. I don’t believe that I had ever stood on such a cold, miserable, basic railway station in my life, and I certainly haven’t since! It was simply a low slab of crumbling, decaying concrete, with three buckled metal seats, six poles ~ which once belonged to a canopy since gone ~ and three dented and weather-stained signs. Poland may well be fighting for cultural survival since joining the EU, but surely by now someone, someone like George Soros, for example, must have donated benevolent money to make Polish railways better?

How good or bad Polish railways were, we would soon find out, as early next morning, at the crack of dawn, we’d be leaving Poland by train and crossing over the border into Russia.

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