40 replies to this topic

[voodooqueen126]

Has anyone here been to Gdansk in Poland?
If so what was it like? What does the Baltic smell like? Where do the beggars sleep, especially in winter? Where was the castle (the street that the main railway is on is called Podwale Grodzkie, which I think means Castle Street)? What was on the site where the main railway station is? Where were the castle/town walls from the Middle Ages? if you were entering the city from the south east, which gate would you have gone through?

How many churches and convents/monasteries are there? ( I know about Oliwa, St Mary's and St Nicholas)?
So if anyone has any idea of any of these questions, that would be awesome

I have been able to answer a few of my own questions with the help of Googlemaps

A) Gdansk Shipyard, Gdansk, Poland


Gdansk Shipyard
  
1. Head east on Na Ostrowiu   83m   

2. Slight right towards Na Ostrowiu  280 m   
  
3. Continue straight onto Na Ostrowiu   450 m

4. Turn right onto Doki 1.3 km   

5. Slight right onto Waly Piastowskie 200 m   

6. Slight left onto Rajska    450 m   

7. Continue onto Wielkie Mlyny   77 m   

8. Continue onto Podmlynska 100 m
  
9. Continue onto Panska 130 m
  
10. Turn left onto Swietojanska
Destination will be on the left

20 m
3.1 km –according to google maps it should 38 mins, but I am not sure how long it would take two foreigners, on a winter evening, one of whom is a woman over the age of 50...


Parafia  Sw. Mikolaja Biskupa
Swietojanska 72
Gdansk, Poland

1. Head east on Swietojanska toward Szklary for 86 m

2. Turn right onto Szklary   for 61 m

3. Continue onto Zlotnikow for 110 metres

4. Turn left onto Swietego Ducha for 71 metres

5. Turn right onto Podkramarska Destination will be on the right in 37 metres

Journey is a total of 350 m and should take  about 4 mins


St. Mary's Church
Podkramarska 5


6. Head north on Podkramarska toward Swietego Ducha
for 37 m
7. Turn left onto Swietego Ducha  for 160 m

8. Turn left onto Kozia for 83 m

9. Continue onto Lektykarska for 110 m

10. Continue onto Pocztowa  for 110 m

11. Turn left onto Ogarna Destination will be on the left in 95

600 m – about 7 mins

Refuge House - Kamienica Zacisze
Ogarna 107
I wonder whether it would take longer for a fleet of school girls in winter?
I should be able to use google translate for the street names.

Edited by voodooqueen126, 12 December 2012 - 10:53 PM.

[polishgenius]

1) Yes.
2) Grey.
3) Salt water, I guess... less sewagey than the Med in Athens.
4) Can't help you.
5) No, it means the road ran along the old city walls.
6) Something else. Checking the Polish Wiki, in line with the above, it was built over the old moat I think.
7) At the docks. I don't know, there's a well famous old-school loading crane on the river near the city center, but the modern docks obviously aren't near there.
8) It's in Poland, so I'd guess a lot. Again, Wiki has a clue, though not a very organised one.

Sorry I can't be more help, I only know it through one visit to my semi-estranged Grandfather years ago, so it's not a town I have great knowledge of.

Edited by polishgenius, 12 December 2012 - 10:08 PM.

[Fragile Bird]

Perhaps you should try putting your questions in context.  Why are you asking them?  Are you going there for a visit?  Are you writing a novel?

[Raskolnikov]

But the Gdansk Man scares me.

[Lord of Oop North]

Are you planning an offensive against the city?

[polishgenius]

Adding questions via edit makes my list of numbered answers nonsensical. Cease and desist!

Lord of Oop North, on 12 December 2012 - 10:27 PM, said:

Are you planning an offensive against the city?

Maybe she's a Soviet agent who overslept a touch. Lech Walesa is thataway! ------>

[ROLF]

This is an unusual thread.  I feel as if there should be some sort of Polish joke here, but I'll be arsed if I have one that is applicable here.

[voodooqueen126]

Fragile Bird, on 12 December 2012 - 10:07 PM, said:

Perhaps you should try putting your questions in context.  Why are you asking them?  Are you going there for a visit?  Are you writing a novel?

I am using the Gdansk streetmap in a story.. As it is a coastal city on the Baltic, because  sadly mountainous Switzerland is land locked.
Hence the remarks about "woman over 50 walking from the docks to St Nicholas Church (which was once a Dominican monastery) and school girls walking to the Refuge House (which I presume is a homeless shelter) so that they can give alms...

Edited by voodooqueen126, 12 December 2012 - 11:26 PM.

[Fragile Bird]

Someone should be able to help you, there are a few Polish boarders, but hey may not check in everyday.  I've never been there myself.

[Roose Bolton's Pet Leech]

Am I alone in thinking of the place as Danzig, and associating it with corridors?

[voodooqueen126]

Roose Bolton, on 13 December 2012 - 02:13 AM, said:

Am I alone in thinking of the place as Danzig, and associating it with corridors?

Wasn't Kant from Danzig? He was this incredibly boring philosopher whose life was so boring that the housewives of his town could set their clocks by his daily walks.

[voodooqueen126]

polishgenius, on 12 December 2012 - 10:07 PM, said:

1) Yes.
2) Grey.
3) Salt water, I guess... less sewagey than the Med in Athens.
4) Can't help you.
5) No, it means the road ran along the old city walls.
6) Something else. Checking the Polish Wiki, in line with the above, it was built over the old moat I think.
7) At the docks. I don't know, there's a well famous old-school loading crane on the river near the city center, but the modern docks obviously aren't near there.
8) It's in Poland, so I'd guess a lot. Again, Wiki has a clue, though not a very organised one.

Sorry I can't be more help, I only know it through one visit to my semi-estranged Grandfather years ago, so it's not a town I have great knowledge of.

yeah, for some reason I tend to think of Poland as grey, I thought this was just because every movie I have ever seen set in the place was either about WW2 or about life under the Soviets... and everything looked rather grey, I assumed this was because directors shot it too look that way to suit the depressing subject matter but apparently not...
When we were in the South of France I made the mistake of swimming in the Med, big mistake, really gross, though not as bad as Bali. So it's got a sort of salty clean smell? But it's very gross... I ask because smell is one of those things that really stick in ones memory.
I looked up Gdansk and beggars in google. http://www.tripadvis...ern_Poland.html
According to the person who wasn't a fussy idiot (ie not the initial poster who I suspect is one of those poms tourist who  take sandwiches in tupperware boxes to the beach so that they can avoid 'foreign muck'). The beggars hang out at the central rail way station (which would've been the castle walls in the middle ages), which is to say they are like beggars everywhere (I wonder how beggars survive in places like Russia or Finland)...
Amazing how small medieval cities were aye... So it was a walled city. Also interesting how close St Mary's (which is a big massive church) was to the city walls.
Also would Oliwa Cathedral (the Cistercian convent) have been outside the city walls?
At a stab it seems that there are 9 Catholic ones, though it's possible that the Protestant ones were built in the Middle Ages and taken over during the Reformation.
The modern docks were built on German ones
http://en.wikipedia....dańsk_Shipyard
and that in turn was built on an another one but in
"History of Danzig shipyard started 1844 when some area on both sides of the river Tote Weichsel at Danzig became property of the Royal Prussian Government. Named Marinedepot (1849 – 1854) it was first only used as a depot and anchoring space for the few Prussian warships at the time. End of 1853 it became Königliche Werft Danzig (1854 – 1871), finally then named Kaiserliche Werft Danzig (1871 – 1918) – following named KWD - with the proclamation of the German Empire in 1871."
From google maps it seems like the ship yards are on some sort of island thing...
I wonder if that was always the case?
http://virtualglobet...view/?service=0

[Filippa Eilhart]

I've been to Gdansk but I was never very concerned about where beggars sleep or how many churches there are, sorry.

the sea smells like a sea.

eta:

Quote

At a stab it seems that there are 9 Catholic ones

are you looking for just within medieval city walls or the whole city? Because if the latter, there are definitely plenty more than that.

Edited by Filippa Eilhart, 13 December 2012 - 04:28 AM.

[Datepalm]

I think Kant was from Kaliningrad, which is a bit up the coast.

I feel like I should move this thread into lit and merge it into novel writing or something, but it's adding a touch of color to GC in a way that pleases me.

Never been to Gdansk, but I hitched a ride with a marine biologist in Sweden once, and apparently it's a very dead sea. It's very grey looking, at least it is in Denmark.

[Lyanna Stark]

The Baltic sea doesn't have the salt content of say, the Atlantic, but it's still fairly briny.

And yeah, due to being not really sea and not really fresh water, it's often kinda dead. Plus the amount of "new" water from the oceans often gets blocked by the Öresund strait, so whatever pollution and stuff get in tends to be moer persistent.

That said, people still bathe in it and eat fish from it, so it's not like it's a fementing piece of hell or anything. Probably pretty cold this time of year though.

[Lothar Imbel]

voodooqueen126, on 13 December 2012 - 02:37 AM, said:

Wasn't Kant from Danzig? He was this incredibly boring philosopher whose life was so boring that the housewives of his town could set their clocks by his daily walks.

That was Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) wasn't it?  Guess you Kant stop those name changes.

[3CityApache]

voodooqueen126, on 12 December 2012 - 09:51 PM, said:

Has anyone here been to Gdansk in Poland?

Well, I was BORN about 30 kilometers from Gdansk, in the great city of Gdynia (both of them, as well as the smallest one - Sopot - form an organism called Trojmiasto, meaning 3City from my nick). And I used to live there for the first nineteen years of my life

Gdansk is one of the most beautiful cities in Poland, behind Krakow and maybe Torun or Wroclaw. And I'm not saying that out of fondness only.

Baltic smells different in every season. Different when the sun shines, and different when the snow falls. But generally it smells of childhood for me.

Beggars indeed tend to concentrate around Central Railway Station, but I believe there are a couple of night shelters for them as well around the city.

The castle was here: http://www.zamki.pl/?idzamku=gdansk but not only the castle itself hasn't remained till today, but there is also no plans or pictures of it that remained.

And someone up was right, Podwale Grodzkie means more or less a road along the city walls.

I have no idea what was on the site where the main railway station is. As for the city walls location, maybe this will help: http://upload.wikime...ańska_1687.jpg , though it's from 17th century.

Not sure about the number of churches and monasteries in medieval times, but now in the whole city there would be probably much more than a hundred of them. And yeah, Oliwa was definitely outside the city walls, Oliwa was a different town back then.

Please feel free to pm me if you have any additional questions.

By the way, Gdansk (and the whole Poland for that matter) was grey and glumy some 30 years ago. After '89 it changed rapidly. Now it looks like this: https://www.google.c...iw=1255&bih=797

Edited by 3CityApache, 13 December 2012 - 09:20 AM.

[Kouran]

Roose Bolton, on 13 December 2012 - 02:13 AM, said:

Am I alone in thinking of the place as Danzig, and associating it with corridors?

Nope. I always think of it as Danzig, west Prussia.

[Fragile Bird]

Voodoo Queen, I was in Polnd in 1968 and believe me, it's not a grey country.  Cities everywhere can be grey and ugly, especially port cities, but my memory of southern Poland and straight up the centre all the way to Elblag, just down the road from Gdynia and Gdansk, is Poland as a beautiful, well-kept garden.  Especially since back in 1968 there were no superhighways, so driving through the countryside was very similar to driving through many places in Canada.  I've been to a number of port cities in Canada, and the things is the sea air can smell very different to the person who grew up by the sea and the person from the interior.  I always think of rotting fish, put coastal dwellers smell all kinds of things in the sea air, because they are familiar with it.

Gdansk, to the others, was a part of Poland for centuries.  Poland was a medieval power, the country that saved Europe from the mongol hordes by defeating their forces at Vienna.  But as the monarchy went downhill for various reasons, including the rising strength of neighbours, it got batterred by war and it's lands were taken away by conquest, eventually getting partitioned  in various wars until it actually vanished off the map.  Danzig is the German version of Gdansk, but Poles consider it a true part of Poland.

[The Iceman of the North]

voodooqueen126, on 13 December 2012 - 02:58 AM, said:

yeah, for some reason I tend to think of Poland as grey, I thought this was just because every movie I have ever seen set in the place was either about WW2 or about life under the Soviets... and everything looked rather grey, I assumed this was because directors shot it too look that way to suit the depressing subject matter but apparently not...

Time to bring this up?