Saturday night we go for a bus tour (route 100 which is supposed to go around all the major attractions). We board the bus about 6 pm and at exactly 6:01 pm nature lets all hell loose in the form of thunderstorms. The windows on the bus fog up in seconds and we're stuck for the next 30 minutes on a bus that we can't see a thing from. Then we get to the end of the route----last stop----please leave the bus---(and go out to the rain and drown). We reboard around the corner heading back to where we started, on a bus that has foggier windows than the one we left. Lesson learned, We get off on Potsdamer place and start walking back towards Checkpoint Charlie, towards our hotel. We're heading to a Chinese restaraunt that has really good reviews, and prices to match. So we cross the street and go to an Irish pub. The waiter is Scottish, went to U of Glasgow, a tour guide in Berlin and a parttime bartender. Decent food---filling---but nothing to write home about.
Back to the hotel, where I notice that the instant coffee in the room hasn't been replaced. So I call the front desk and ask if I could come down and get some............"that's a welcome gift and we don't re place that". OK...............I go down to the front desk with the two teabags they have left us and suggest that I don't want these "welcome gifts" and really want to change them into coffee. I can see the woman who suggested that they don't replace them cringing, as the other woman grabs me coffees as quick as she can.............Thank you.
Leave the hotel @8:30 today heading for Poland. Emily's having a bad day and decides to take us to Gdansk, via Denmark. After making a couple of adjustments to her attitude, she decides that instead of eleven hours to gdansk, it's going to be forty two. Apparently Emily doesn't speak or understand Polish...........So we finally get on the right road, and head northeast to Poland, glad that we still have an actual map that we both know how to read. Being dependent on a GPS can prove a problem. Autobahn to the north, and then we hit the roads in Poland. Just before the border is a stretch of German roads that compare to some of the worst I've ever been on. More bumps and potholes than you can imagine for aobut a five mile stretch. Hit the border and gas up. At the stop area we are bombarded with many men trying to sell us chainsaws, of all the wierd things you might want to buy at a service station. Let's see....".I'll have a chocolate bar, a bottle of water, a coissant, a sandwich, and yeah, throw in that chainsaw!!!!!!!!!!!!! Been thinking about that since I last got gas. Do you have any with the 20 inch blade?"
The countryside is beautiful. Fertile fields, gorgeous brown fields that look like you could grow anything in them. Fields of potatoes, corn, and cattle. Not at all what we were expecting, but so calm. The roads weren't anything to write home about, most highways in the states are so much better, but you drive through all these small towns, where you have to slow down to 35 mph, and really get to see life there. Old communist high rises, with the occasional smattering of new. Abandoned buildings, and down the road, new distribution centers, amazing contrasts. This is what we love.
I remember when I was a kid, Sunday morning would come around and my dad would say "who wants to go for a ride?" One time, we took off from Anaheim, Ca, drove to Death Valley, through Death Valley, over to Bakersfield, via Borax, and we're home in time for dinner. I'm sure i get my love of touring from him. It's in my blood.
Get to Gdansk at 4pm. Find the hotel easily, just inside the walls of the old town. Forty four steps to our room on the third floor (really the fourth). The apartment is spacious, large kitchen, huge living room/bedroom, and great foyer. Anna, the owner is gracious, reccomends a restaraunt that is "more price friendly than most" and we head there for dinner. Smoked fish, onion soup, borscht, steak tartare, bottle of wine and two drinks, for sixty bucks. Gdank is surprising.......in the dark, more beautiful than you can imagine. All the spy novels I've read have me ready to enter a dark city, with a seedy soul. That is not this Gdansk....one of the most surprising cities we've ever visited. Glad we changed our minds and came here.
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