The Solidarnosc Museum, Gdansk

At the beginning of March (I know, I know, I am SO behind) Anneke, another volunteer living close by, and I went to the Solidarnosc Museum near the centre of Gdansk. In all truth, I knew nothing about Solidarnosc before setting foot in this museum, but I left with great empathy for all Poles who lived through this time of suppression and scarcity, and a massive respect for those who drove the change and stand for freedom that was at the core of this movement. I also left kind of wanting to have a career in designing museum exhibitions...

Hard hats of shipyard workers from the beginning of the Solidarnosc movement, affixed to the ceiling

The original plywood boards outlining the twenty-one commands of the shipyard strikers

...I mean, this museum was so well designed. It was multimedia, interactive, and - most importantly, it not only presented information by giving you screeds and screeds to read. Each room was unique, interesting, and conveyed its own message through form and aesthetics, and let the artefacts, footage and photographs predominantly speak for themselves - the audio guide also helped. Seriously the best  museum I've been to so far.

A little bit more Gdansk & a Warsaw Weekend

The Gdansk shipyards

Me looking like a red marshmallow in my Antarctica jacket - oh, in front of the Gdansk skyline

On Wednesday after school this week, one of the teachers, with her husband, took me to a few places of historical interest around Gdansk. First was to a fortress or something that you could see across the river, then to a hill up behind the train station in Gdansk. There are some old bunkers in (on??) the hill, well as a sculpture of a wavy red cross erected in 2000 to bless Gdansk throughout the new millennium. 

My favourite part of the Gdansk skyline are the cranes you can see in the shipyards. To me, they're synonymous with Gdansk, and when I see them, they not only embody all that Gdansk is, with it's economic growth, it's ties to the sea, and it's function as Poland's trade gateway to the world, but it also symbolises a bit of Gdansk's past.

First Taste of Gdansk & Sopot

A revolutionary apartment block

Zaspa as the sun goes down

I and another volunteer, Anneke, trained to Gdansk where we were picked up by our first host family. The next day our host mum, Magda, took us to the pier at Zaspa, Gdansk, and along the beach. The craziest thing that I couldn't get over was the fact that there was SNOW on the sand. Those two things just don't go together for me.

Yes, it's snow...