We woke up this morning to see that it was snowing, yet again. It was above freezing, so we didn’t expect it. It came down pretty hard for maybe an hour or so, then stopped. There was a light dusting on the ground, but it looked like the sun was going to melt it pretty quickly.
We took a walk to the old town to enjoy the ice-free sidewalks. It’s a completely different experience walking around without having to focus on where each footstep goes. The canal near the WW2 museum is almost entirely thawed and the ducks are able to swim again.
I was able to take some photos of the buildings in old town today as it wasn’t too busy and the sidewalks were clear. Gdansk is a very pretty city, but many of the buildings are not the originals – most of the buildings (about 90%) were destroyed in the war, so everything had to be rebuilt. The original style of the city was kept. It was a mix of German/Prussian/Polish styles, and the roofline is very distinct.
I also took some photos of some of the fun little details – there are a bunch of little statues of lions (“Hevelions”) scattered around the city. The lions are named after famous scientist Hevelius, and the lion is the symbol of Gdansk. There are also some interesting examples of graffiti. And hey, if you’re hungry for pulled pork or beef, you can go to Rednecks!
We needed some bread, so we went to Biedronka. It’s the cheap grocery store, but they have decent bread. I guess if you go to Poland, the two stores you will probably run into are Biedronka and Zabka.
We did see a souvenir shop selling bags with a beaver design on them – the viral YouTube video of “kurwa, bober!” is a thing and this shop was leaning into it. There is a current TV commercial that features a bunch of CGI animals doing different jobs and if you watch carefully, there is a beaver driving the car and his license plate is BOBER. While we have seen a nice variety of animals on our travels, alas we have not seen any beavers. Bummer, since they are one of the coolest and most useful animals around!
