The Polish tour continues

We decided to break the journey from Warsaw to Gdansk at Torun, a medieval university town famous for gingerbread and Copernicus. In fact you can buy a gingerbread Copernicus there, which admittedly was chiefly what we went to Torun to do. It's a beautiful town with the characteristic main square with a magnificent town hall in the middle and lots of places to sit out in the sunshine and drink beer. We chose a cafe next to a statue of a violinist surrounded by frogs (the Polish version of the Pied Piper story) and whiled away a couple of hours until our connection to Gdansk very happily.

The train (approved by Helena for its Poirot-esque compartment carriages) got us into Gdansk at 9pm and we took a rackety taxi to the hostel which looked like a ruin from the outside but inside was very cosy and clean, and a great base to explore the city centre, as it was just a ten minute walk away. I think we were all pleasantly surprised by Gdansk the next morning. I for one had been thinking of heavy industry, shipyards, revolutions....all of which are certainly important in Gdansk, but it is also remodelling itself into a very attractive tourist town to rival Krakow with a completely restored main street and square and a lovely river front lined with restaurants and amber shops. But it manages to keep its own unique character and is fiercely proud of its recent history. However, it has to be said that it was something of a disappointment to Sarah as it is not in fact on the sea, despite the deceptive appearance on maps. Helena had been gently hinting as much for the last three days but to no avail. So the dreams of fish and chips on the beach will have to wait for the time being.

We spent the morning mainly wandering through the Old Town and buying amber, at which Helena proved herself to be remarkably decisive, and I to be quite the opposite. After a beer and a highly dodgy hot dog, we headed for the Roads to Freedom Exhibition which is about Solidarity and the end of the communist regime in Poland. It's an excellent exhibition, very inspiring, and it made our subsequent visit to the shipyards much more meaningful. Seeing the soaring monument to the fallen shipyard workers was very moving when you realise just how much it meant to have successfully erected it. The famous gates of the shipyard, where many of the demonstrations were staged, are still covered in Solidarity posters, crosses and pictures of John Paul II (as well as one of the current pope). But it is also very much still a functioning place; as we arrived the workers were leaving for the day and casting curious looks at the girls taking pictures through the gates. What struck us all was how incredibly recent all of this is - we seem to be catching up with ourselves time-wise as this trip goes on.

The day finished with a fish supper sitting on the waterfront and surveying the mix of tourist and industrial boats that line the river: quite indicative I suppose of the point that Gdansk is at. It was sad to realise that this was our last night in Poland. Or so we thought......