A Re-visit to Hanseatic Gdansk

On April 3rd, at eight thirty in the morning, my wife and I loaded up the car, put our two cats (in pet transporters) on the back seat and headed for Gdansk, where we are going to spend the next six months. We arrived at our apartment building safely at around one o’çlock in the afternoon.

Until last year we had a panoramic view of Gdansk Bay from the sixteenth story, but a developer bought the lot next to us and had built three high-rises, cutting our view in half. Mindful of the philosophy of Epictetus that the only thing we can control is our attitude towards things, I have ceased to fret about this loss. Another sage (maybe Lao-Tsu) said that happiness is being contented with what you have. Diogenes apparently was of the same mind. When Alexander the Great asked him what he could do for him, Diogenes asked him not to block the sun.

After a short stay in Florida and a more extended sojurn in Cyprus in retirement, we settled in Warsaw and Gdansk. International Living recommends such places for retirement as Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, and Ecuador, but we chose Gdansk. Why?

The first reason is that Gdansk is in our European cultural sphere. One doesn’t have to learn a new repertoire of does and don’ts before one can function in a place, where one nevertheless will always be a stranger. The second reason is convenience. Nowhere would we have everything within hand’s reach like here.

Five minutes walk from us is a large shopping mall with a petrol station.. There is a mini-clinic and dentist’s office in the building. A library and post office are across the street. The bus stops right opposite and not far away is the tram stop. During inclement weather, we can get in the car in the underground garage and drive to the supermarket underground parking without getting wet.

The most attractive feature of Gdansk for us is the fresh air and proximity (700 meters) to beautiful, spacious (40 hectares) Reagan Park and the pier (1500 meters). If a person feels up to it, the resort city of Sopot is within walking distance (7000 meters).The park is always full of cyclists and hikers, some of whom come from far away, but it is on our doorstep.

Anyone who travels to Poland should visit historic and lovely Gdansk, which is a part of the so-called Tri-City (Gdynia, Sopot, Gdansk), three cities with a total population of about 900,000 on the Baltic Sea (Gdansk abot 463,000)..

The name Gdansk (gø = Dansk) first appeared in the chronicles of St. Adalbert (Wojciech), who gave this name to the settlement (urbs Gyddanyze). He was Bishop of Prague (patron saint of Poland) and was martyred in 997 in his effort to convert the Baltic Prussians to Christianity.

The Germans and Poles for centuries fought for control of Gdansk. From 1294 to 1368 it was in Polish hands (i.e., under King Wladyslaw I the Elbow-High), but in 1368 the Teutonic Knights massacred the Polish inhabitants (why is it hard to like those folks?).. In 1454 the city became a vassal of Casimir IV the Jagiellon, whose successful reign ended with the final destruction of the Teutonic Knights. That king granted the city special privileges, thanks to which it developed rapidly.

Danzig (Gdansk) rose to become the largest city of the Hanseatic League, a confederation of merchant cities that dominated trade in the Baltic region in the Middle Ages. The wealthy merchants spent lavishly on the arts. Beautiful buildings, some of them UNESCO cultural sites, line the Baltic. There are many such monuments in Gdansk, among them St. Mary’s Church, the largest brick church in Europe with its famous fifteenth-century astronomical clock.

Gdansk passed to Prussian control in 1793 when Poland was partitioned. It remained under German sovereignty until it was established as a semi-autonomous city-state under the Versailles Treaty.

World war II started here. Danzig was separated from the Reich by the so-called Polish Corridor, a narrow strip of land that gave Poland access to the sea under the Versailles Treaty. Hitler demanded an extra-territorial highway through Polish territory to link up Danzig with the Fatherland.

Poland refused Hitler's demand, so he concluded a pact with Stalin to partition Poland. On September 1st, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig Holstein fired the first shots of the war on the Polish garrison of 180 men at Westerplatte. The garrison held out for seven days against overwhelming force and wrote a page of heroism in Polish arms.

When the war ended in 1945, Danzig was a heap of ruins. After an animated debate, the communist authorities decided to restore Old Town to its former glory, a problemati and expensive undertaking. We owe them thanks..

Gdansk has produced many famous sons, including the astronomer JJohannes Hevelius (1611-1687), the founder of lunar topography, Daniel Fahrenheit (1686-1736), inventor of the temperature scale that Americans still use, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), the great philosopher of pessimism, Gunther Grass (1927-2015), author of The Tin Drum, Nobel Prize for Literature, , Lech Walesa (b.1943), leader of Solidarity and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

The city is the venue of many outdoor cultural events and festivities, including the Dominican Fair, Mozart Festival, Shakespeare Festival, organ concerts in old churches, Baltic Opera company, and symphony concerts, and the Forest Opera (musicals and popular music).

The environs of Gdansk afford many opportunities for excursions into the beautiful countryside, including to the Kashubian Lake District, known as Little Switzerland and home of the West Slavic ethnic group of Kashubs, to Malbork Castle (which was never taken) on the River Nogat (seat of the Teutonic Knights), and by pirate ship (see photo) to the Hel peninsula.

Polferries runs excursions to Scandinavia, and major airlines have connections to most parts of the world from Lech Walesa International Airport.

On September 1st the city celebrates the 78th anniversary of the outbreak of World war II, when the German heavy cruiser Schleswig Holsteain at 4.30 a.m. opened fire at the Polish base at Westerplatte. A controversy sorrounds this year’s celebrations because the Law and justice Party wants a rollcall to be read of the passengers of the Polish president’s plane that crashed on April 10. 2010.