Gdansk

On Saturday, the whole school here loaded into buses to drive up to Gdansk, which is a port city on a river right off the Baltic Sea. I found it really beautiful and full of cool history. I didn't get to take as many pictures as I wanted to because it was raining for part of the time and my camera was running out of batteries but I did take some:

Here you can see some buildings that are remnants of the city being destroyed in WWII. It was weird to think about how all the beautiful old-looking buildings around me had to be rebuilt because Gdansk was basically leveled by the Russian army.

When we first heard we were going to Gdansk, they described it as a coast town, but you actually have to travel a little bit to get to the sea. I didn't get to do that -- we just saw the river.

This gate/palace type thing was built for the King of Poland. Gdansk used to be a Teutonic city, but apparently the Teutonic knights were not very nice to the citizens and after the city was taken over by the King of Poland, the citizens wanted to thank him by building him a palace (and I think this was one of the conditions of the King as well). So they built him this building, but he was not pleased with it and never stayed in it.

Here you can see the ship SS Soldek, which was the first ocean liner to be built in Poland. Now they leave it anchored in the river and it has a museum inside. In front of the Soldek is a piratey-looking ship that I saw cruising around the river.

Cool buildings. Pizza.

Me standing in front of the Soldek.

This was above the door on a house in the old part of town. I guess the story behind the three boar's heads on the top there is that the richest family in town used to live in that house, and once when the city was being attacked (I forget by whom) the people were starving and the family slaughtered three boars to feed the hungry people, but the head of the family told the people to leave the heads and not to eat them. He then put the heads on stakes or something and when the attacking people saw that they had pigs' heads on stakes they decided that the town must be really well-stocked and prepared if the people could afford to leave the heads, so they didn't attack.

Some cool Renaissance architecture.

The lion on the left made me laugh, so I took a picture of it.

And here's me again! I was told that there should be more pictures with me in them, but it's hard because my camera is really weird and turns off unexpectedly unless you handle it in the exact right way, which I know how to do but it's hard to explain to other people.

Here was a really cool fountain with a statue of Neptune who represents the city and its seafaring ways.

Some more cool architecture.


And finally at the end of our tour we could sit down and have some coffee and cake.