Month: February 2026

As most things are closed today in Poland, we had a relaxing day. Gym in the morning, then lunch and a short walk around the city. Since most people have the day off, there were a lot of families walking around the river and on the river, including skaters.

While the ice seems to be pretty solid, there are places where it does look like it’s getting a little thinner. It’s colder, but when the sun comes out it does melt some of the ice and turn it to slush. The police had a car stationed on the bridge playing a recorded announcement that going on the ice was at your own risk. I have no desire to walk on the river, since I’ve walked and skated on a frozen pond before and don’t need to do it again!

We continued along our way and passed by the theater, which is on the place where the synagogue used to be. Now there’s a small memorial to the deported Jews. We also passed by one of the public toilets that is similar to the French ones – only these still cost money, and I am sure that they are freezing inside!

There was a big crowd at the donut shop. “Fat Thursday” is coming up this month – it’s the Thursday before Ash Wednesday, and it’s celebrated here instead of Mardi Gras. Donuts are the traditional thing to eat on this day, but this store has them year-round. I’ve tried to get a Nutella donut from this place multiple times, but it’s never the right day.

We ran across a magpie near our apartment. We greeted it with the traditional English greeting, asking after his “lady wife” – we don’t want any bad luck! There’s at least one fox that lives across the street from us – we’ve seen it running through the snow, but it’s too fast to get a photo. I’m hoping I’ll get lucky enough to catch it on camera sometime before we leave! We did see a fox in London, but sadly it had been hit by a car. It was absolutely gorgeous, though.

It’s nice and COLD today, it should start warming up tomorrow but today is very chilly. Luckily it’s not windy at all, but it’s well below freezing (-20C for the low, -11C for the high, or -3F/14F in freedom units). We’ve been putting our drinks out on the balcony to chill them and it doesn’t take very long for them to freeze completely. It’s cold enough that some schools are closed for the day and the workers at the construction site didn’t start work until after 10 AM. Over 50 people have died across Poland this winter. Luckily, our apartment building is nice and warm and we’ve got food and everything we need to stay inside if we decide to do so.

We decided to be brave (or foolish, or both) today to make a trip to the Basilica and also to Aldi, which isn’t far from the church. I got word that my uncle Ed has passed away, and I wanted to light a candle for him and his wife, who died last year. They were practicing Catholics and I wanted to light candles for both of them.

The Basilica is very beautiful, built in the 1400’s and finished in 1502. It’s one of the largest brick churches in the world. It was damaged in World War 2 and rebuilt after the war and is now again an active church. Since the city has flipped back and forth between Germany and Poland, the church has been both a Lutheran church and a Catholic church. It’s well known for its astronomical clock.

It’s an interesting building because in some ways it’s very similar to other gothic cathedrals – the arches and vaulted ceilings and little chapels to the side. But it’s also quite different – no flying buttresses, no rose windows, and the walls inside are a brilliant white rather than the dark gray that you see in most cathedrals. Some of the paintings are quite interesting – one of them looks as if it absolutely could have been made by AI, but since it was painted long ago, that’s obviously not the case.

The church workers were busy taking down the Christmas trees and decorations. Today is Candelmas/Chandeleur – crêpe day in France, groundhog day in the US, and “thunder candle” day in Poland. It’s not a very common holiday here any more, Zbyszek had no idea what I was talking about when I asked him if there were any special celebrations planned. In Eastern Europe, it’s the end of the Christmas season – so it makes perfect sense that they’d be taking down the trees today.

After the church, we went to Aldi and picked up our food for the next few days. Aldi is doing a special “Trader Joe’s” sale with products that are supposedly from TJ’s. I have to say, I haven’t really seen any of these things at the TJ at home! But they advertised bagels, which I’ve had a hard time finding – despite being invented in Poland! They did have the bagels, but they are more like brioche hamburger buns. More importantly, they had pre-made crêpes – so we will be having these tonight for dessert.

In French tradition, you are supposed to make the crêpes from scratch. You must hold a coin in your dominant hand and flip the crêpe with your non-dominant hand. If you manage to do that, it brings luck and fortune throughout the year. Since the ones be bought are pre-made, we won’t be flipping them. But we will be eating them!

We didn’t go out too much today – it’s the last day of the “really cold” temperatures and the authorities have suggested that people not go out unless it’s really necessary. Not that you’d get a citation or anything, but we could use a rest day anyway! We started with a nice workout in the fitness room, we had it all to ourselves again.

After lunch we got dressed and went up on the roof. There is a really nice observation deck up there – or it would be really nice in the other seasons of the year. Since it isn’t a necessity to go up there, there’s no effort to melt the snow or shovel it out of the way. It’s obvious that people are taking their dogs up there for potty breaks as there is quite a bit of yellow snow. It wasn’t too slippery, and we were able to see the river, the old shipyards, and a nice view of things.

We also too a shortish walk around the neighborhood, to check out the local food hall and pick up some drinks from the convenience store. Along the way we passed by some of the old shipyard buildings. They’re abandoned now, but you can go inside them and see all of the things that were left behind. The shipyard here is where the Solidarity movement started, and without that movement, Zbyszek and I wouldn’t have met. His father was a worker at the naval shipyard when he got involved in the strikes. It became too dangerous for him to stay in Poland, so he left suddenly and without telling anyone. He went to Germany, and then to the US. His wife and children stayed behind until he could arrange for them to join him. They had plans to come to the US a year later, but the day before they were to leave, martial law was declared. They were stuck in Poland for another year.

One of the old buildings has been turned into a food hall. It’s full of trendy international restaurants and is a pretty cool place for people to hang out. If you have a bunch of friends who want to have dinner but can’t agree on whether to get Polish, Italian, Mexican, Vietnamese, Chinese or Greek food – well, the food hall is for you!

Our final stop was the convenience store. The most popular store by far in Poland is called Zabka – little frog. They are literally everywhere – you will sometimes see stores right across the street from one another, or even just 2-3 doors apart. They’re like a small Circle K, but some of them have a tiny café area as well. They have all the basics, including churros. People joke about there being Zabka stores inside of zabka stores – sort of like Starbucks in the US. They are a little bit more expensive than the regular grocery stores, but it really is convenient to have them available. Most stores in Poland are closed on Sundays, but not zabka! Because they are owned by franchisees rather than a large company, the owners can choose to be open or not. I have yet to see one that closes on Sundays.

It’s been a pretty sunny day today and some of the ice and snow is melting, then refreezing overnight. The next few days should be a bit warmer, but there is a chance of snow. Lots of people are taking advantage of the frozen river to do some ice skating before it melts.

And I finally got a good view of our neighbor, a pretty large fox who comes out around twilight after the workers have gone home! Now that we know his schedule, we will be sure to watch for him over the next few weeks.

Today was a little bit warmer than yesterday and tomorrow we are supposed to get some more snow, so it was a great day to take a little tram trip over to the neighborhood where Zbyszek grew up. On the way to the tram stop, we passed by the Heweliusz statue. If Americans have heard that name before, it’s probably due to the Netflix documentary about the sinking of the Heweliusz ferry.

The trams are quite convenient, but even the brand new ones with the fancy digital displays still look like old-timey trams. I guess that’s just how they prefer them!

When we got to the old neighborhood, we took a slight detour to see the church where he attended when he was a kid. The church is undergoing renovations right now, so there isn’t much to see. There were a bunch of jackdaws outside in a tree and in the snow. I’ve never seen so many in one place!

After the church, we headed over to the mall (secretly, our real destination all along). Z wanted to get some mittens and there is a really big grocery store in the mall. We went to Decathlon to find the mittens and they had dog things, horse things, and lots of ice skates in case I decide to skate on the river (I won’t).

Outside the store is a sign that says that foxes are sometimes in the area, and you shouldn’t approach them or try to feed them.

On to the grocery store! It’s an E. LeClerc, which is a French store. Z loves these huge supermarkets and wanted to look at EVERYTHING. Here are some of the things we saw.

Zbyszek’s old apartment building is right across the street from the mall. It’s a huge building, the biggest apartment building in the world. It’s not very pretty, it’s Soviet architecture that had the goal of providing housing for the biggest number of people in the shortest amount of time. There are 1792 apartments in the building.

We got back on the tram and headed home. It was colder on the way home than it was this morning, so we’re going to be watching for some snow.

Today is a gray and overcast day, with snow forecast for the afternoon. The people in charge of spreading salt and sand were busy preparing for the snow. And the workers at the construction site were busy digging and dumping salt on top of the ground for the newest building project.

We took a walk along the river before the snow was supposed to start. It’s a bit warmer today and the ice is showing some signs of getting thinner. That didn’t keep everyone from going out on it, though. We saw a crazy guy skating all by himself. If he falls in, there’s really nobody to help him get out. We saw some cracks in the ice, but also some “graffiti” – exactly what you would expect. No matter where you go, everyone likes to draw the same thing.

We saw some of the ships in the port, unloading whatever it is that they have. The ice was broken and disturbed near the ship, as it had come through and broken it up. The birds were quite happy and not at all bothered by the cold.

We then continued to the old shipyard. Gdansk has been a shipbuilding city for a long time, and of course some of the most important events in Polish history happened here. The old section is run down, but a few of the buildings have been turned into bars. Right now they aren’t busy (or even open), but in the summer they’re certainly packed. There are sculptures of various things made out of some of the old bits and pieces.

We continued on to the “new” shipyard. Along the way, we found this paper decorating a tree. I’m not sure what the story behind this might be, but here it is:

We reached the shipyard where the Solidarity strikes took place back in the 1980’s. These events had a huge impact on Polish – and world – history, as well as our personal history. Zbyszek’s father was involved in the strikes, and that led to him leaving Poland and ending up in America. Without the strikes, Zbyszek and I wouldn’t have met and our children wouldn’t exist. So they owe their existence to these shipyards!

On a historic level, without these strikes the USSR might have continued to control the eastern European countries, and we might still have that iron curtain in place. Maybe it would have happened anyway, but taken longer than it did. There really isn’t any way to know for sure. Today there is a museum at the shipyard and we saw classes of children on a field trip learning about their past. Other sections of the shipyard are still operating businesses, and you can see the new ships being built in the shadow of Solidarity.

Today was the warmest day so far in Poland – a high of 32 and a low of 29! There was supposed to be snow overnight, but it was minimal. The nice thing is that some of the snow and ice is melting, and when you walk around you can hear the dripping of the melting ice and snow falling from the roofs. The bad thing is that it gets pretty muddy as it melt. The really bad news is that overnight, when it goes back below freezing, the water changes into ice, which isn’t as easy to walk on. But since it was a nice day, we took a tram to one of the malls. Gdansk has more malls than you would expect, I think this is the 4th one and the third one that we’ve visited.

Along the way we passed an abandoned house and saw part of the canal that is not frozen, so the birds were using it for water. The police have officially closed the Motlava river now, because the ice isn’t thick or stable enough to allow people on it. This isn’t a surprise, as we had noticed the cracks in the ice yesterday.

We went into the old research library on our way to the tram. It isn’t really a public library, as it only has historical books about the city of Gdansk. The building itself is somewhat interesting, and they still use a card catalog for some of the older items.

And then, we had a short tram ride to the mall. There were some interesting things to see there, it’s a pretty big mall. I was looking for some jeans since the ones I have are a bit big now. I found two pairs and at the checkout discovered that one of them was marked down to 29 zloty – around $7! So for $35, I got two near pairs of pants.

Some of the things available here are puzzling to me. We saw the Ghana soccer jersey in the other mall – I would be shocked if there are even 10 Ghanaians in Poland, much less in Gdansk. Today they had a selection of Team Mexico jerseys. Again, not too many Mexicans here. There was a vending machine for contact lenses in the mall. If I try to order contacts 1 day after my prescription expires, I’m told I have to come in for an exam – but here, you can just pick them up off the shelf! And we saw a product called “Colon Crunchy” which sounds, frankly, a bit scary. We always joke about buying fiber cereal (Colon Blow!) but I don’t know that anything crunchy should be associated with colons. Or maybe Poles just have some very interesting hobbies.

As in all of the shopping malls in Gdansk, there is a grocery store in the lower level. This one happens to be a Carrefour. That’s good for me because it’s a French grocery chain and my loyalty discount card works here without having a Polish phone number – most places won’t allow it without the phone number. It’s good for Z because it’s a French-style supermarché and he LOVES those places. This one was great – they had so many French products in addition to the Polish basics. They also had hard taco shells, something I’ve not seen before in any of the places we’ve visited. We stocked up for the weekend and shouldn’t need anything until next week.

The one thing we are both disappointed about is the bakery/pastry situation. We’ve tried buying Polish viennoiserie and they’ve been underwhelming – basically just bread with a tiny bit of fruit and/or sugar. Most places don’t have anything like tartes or cakes or any sort of truly dessert pastry. The bread has been OK, but not quite as good as in France. The one thing they do really well is fresh donuts. The Polish ones (pączki) are amazing, especially warm. This coming Thursday is “fat Thursday” when everyone will be eating donuts before lent begins. They have really nice looking donuts in most stores – they are all perfectly iced and sprinkled and come in interesting flavors. But those are deceptive – they tend to be dry and fake-tasting.

One good thing is that I’ve found REAL bagels at both LeClerc and Carrefour. The ones I bought at Aldi were advertised as “Trader Joe’s American brioche bagels” but they really weren’t bagels at all. They taste like brioche hamburger buns, but shaped like a bagel. I bought hamburger patties and we’re going to use those with the “bagels” sometime this next week. Today I found cream cheese, so I can have a typical American breakfast when I feel like it.

It’s not all that cold right now, but there is snow in the forecast. It was snowing when we woke up and there was a fresh dusting on the streets. It’s just around freezing, so some of the snow is sticking while in some places it is melting and just making slushy mud. There was a break in the snow from around 10 to 2, so we used the time to take a walk along the river where it had been too icy last week.

The ice is melting in more places on the river, and the police have been stationed at the entry ways to the water level to keep people from going out on the ice. Last Saturday was packed in the area we are staying because everyone wanted the chance to walk on the ice, but this week it is much less crowded.

Z wanted to go to Aldi for a few things so we took a little walk. The store was packed, and only one cashier. The line was crazy, all the way to the back of the store.

Next to the Aldi is this building, which reminds me of the scene with Borat learning about “…NOT!” jokes. The ground floor of the building is a Biedronka, a cheap grocery store that isn’t known for the highest-quality foods. It’s OK but pretty basic. The rest of the building is a tech school…NOT!

It started snowing on our walk home and now we’re spending a quiet afternoon staying warm and comfortable in our apartment and watching the snow come down.

It started snowing yesterday evening and kept snowing all night and up until mid-morning. When we woke up, everything was covered in a fresh white blanket of snow. It’s not all that cold, but it was really pretty to see the snow.

The fresh snow is much easier to walk on than the older stuff that turns to mud or ice. Zbyszek went on an early morning walk to visit the shipyards again while I stayed home and used the gym.

After lunch we took a walk to the old town. Sundays are full of people strolling around without a particular destination in mind. Since the stores are closed, you can’t really go shopping. Going to a bar or restaurant costs money, so walking around is the cheapest way to entertain yourself. It was pretty busy, mostly Polish people – in the summer it’s almost all foreign tourists. It reminds me of the Covid lockdowns when everything was closed and people took walks with their families for entertainment. The police were on the bridges making sure nobody was stupid enough to get down on the river.

We passed by the donut shop. The line is just getting longer and longer as we get closer to “fat Thursday.” I am sure that we will buy some donuts for the day, it’s bad luck to only eat one.

We’ve been sitting at home watching the Olympics, but the real show today is outside of our balcony. The construction site is closed for the day and the foxes have been very active. It turns out that there is a pair of them, and then have a den near a tree. They have been running around in the fresh snow and we are enjoying watching them explore.

So someone made stupid decisions last night and decided to eat a whole bunch of canned beans with tomato sauce, drink some beer, and then eat a bunch of chocolate, cookies and ice cream. That someone (who obviously wasn’t me) wasn’t feeling so great today, and we decided to hang out at the apartment instead of going out. We have to go to the grocery store tomorrow anyway, and it’s good to have a little bit of a rest day.

It wasn’t entirely a rest day, though – we did make it up to the 6th floor gym. We’ve only seen one other person use it the entire time we’ve been here, so it’s like having a private gym to ourselves. I also went up on the observation deck to check out the fresh snow. The first time we went up there it was very icy and slippery and I didn’t feel safe walking around too much. Today it was soft and fluffy and easy to walk around. It’s a very nice deck with places to sit and quite a nice view, but it’s too cold to really enjoy it. I’m sure it’s packed in the summer.

I saw a bike delivery person on his way to get some food to some hungry soul who doesn’t want to brave the slush and snow. It is a bit colder today, so I don’t blame them. These delivery guys are EVERYWHERE and I will say that there is a lot of food being ordered. Each time we walk around the town we are passed by at least 3-4 guys on bikes with food on their backs. We’ve debated ordering something to be delivered because if we do take-out, by the time we get back to the apartment it will be cold. The picture isn’t great because it’s from far away, but you get the idea. These guys are crazy, and I hope they’re making good tips because it’s dangerous and cold out there.

One thing I haven’t shared yet is photos of our apartment. It’s really big for two people, much bigger than a hotel would have been. The building is new and everything is modern. There’s 24-hour security down in the lobby and a cleaning crew that mops the floors frequently to get rid of the salt, sand and snow everyone tracks in. We aren’t smack dab in the middle of the old town, but everything we need is within walking distance. If we walk 5 minutes, we’re at the WW2 museum. 5 more minutes, we’re at the old town where all of the tourist stuff is. 10 minutes more and we’re at the shopping mall and tram/train station if we want to go anywhere further away.

We have a kitchen, a living area, a bedroom and a bathroom. The balcony is nice but we can’t really sit outside due to the weather. We have been putting our soda outside, and it gets nice and cold, if not completely frozen.

We have live TV, so Zbyszek is able to watch the news, sports, and whatever happens to be on. The Olympics are being shown here and even the Super Bowl was broadcast. It started at midnight, so we didn’t watch it – but we could have. The Internet connection is pretty good, although from time to time it gets weird.

The kitchen is nice and has everything we need, except for an oven. We can’t get frozen pizza or anything like that, but there are pizza places nearby if we want one. We have our own washing machine which is great for cutting down on how much you have to bring with you, clothes-wise. It’s pretty dry here, so everything dries within a few hours on the rack. In London, things took over 24 hours to dry, so this is much better!

The bed is really comfortable, which is wonderful. Our bed in Confolens was comfortable once we were in it for a while, but it was always FREEZING at first. We have a nice view of the construction site from both the living room and the bedroom and there’s quite a bit of storage space. The only annoying thing is that they’ve been using the construction equipment and the jackhammer starting pretty early in the morning the past few days – before the sun even comes up!

The bathroom is also quite roomy and has a lot of storage as well. The water temperature is good, pressure is great, but it’s super easy to bump the control and change the temperature to either cold or burning hot. All in all, our apartment is comfortable and (mostly) quiet so we’re able to exist here quite happily. And it includes the free entertainment of watching the foxes come out every evening after the construction workers are done for the night!

We didn’t do much exciting today. We’ve been watching the Olympics a little bit and the commercials are kind of fun. There was just an ad for Fat Thursday – buy a dozen donuts, get a dozen free! I don’t think we need a dozen, but you never know…

Last night we had soup for dinner. Very exciting, I know. But for Zbyszek, it is the best part of his life. No kidding – he likes to complain about lots of things and there’s always something that could be better, but the one thing that always makes him happy and he never complains about is soup. So we’ve had a LOT of soup here in Europe. A nice thing is that in the grocery stores they sell little starter kits of veggies that can become a delicious soup. Technically, the French one is to make “pot au feu” – but it’s the same concept. The veggies are slightly different between countries, but they both do make a nice soup if you add some broth and a little bit of sausage.

While I’ve been in Europe – France and Poland in particular – I’ve taken photos of signs. It’s always interesting to see if you can figure out what they mean. Sometimes they’re professionally printed, other times handwritten. Sometimes they’re correctly written, but they often have errors. Here are some of the signs from our adventures in Poland – can you figure out what they mean?

Zbyszek went out on a walk by the shipyards (again) today. The ice is breaking up a little more each day. He ran into one of the foxes and was surprised at how close he got. He also saw a cat – I noticed we haven’t seen ANY cats here, and very few in France. Hopefully they are all inside and warm.