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Part 2 Leaving Berlin behind we headed for Poland and a town called Szczecin known as “the mother of Pomerania” also pronounced Steten, it is on the Baltic Coast. On the way there I managed to get a blowout on one of my tyres, which annoyed me as I had changed all four tyres and had them filled against punctures before leaving the UK and as this happened on the autobahn it was not fun. It was lucky that I had others travelling with me who helped me change it with the spare, then it was over the border into Poland. There is not a lot to say about Steten, it was what I expected of a town in a country that had been ruled by the communist state to be like, very grey and run down, but work was under way making improvements with the help of EU money. During the war it was almost demolished because of its importance as an industrial centre; up to 90% of the port and 60% of the residential areas were destroyed. Another thing that I remember was that my friends and I decided to have a meal in a restaurant on the river front, I ordered hand of pork cooked in the Polish way expecting to get a few slices of it, no! I got the whole joint plus veg. My friends and I just looked at it in amazement, the price including ice cream and a pint of Polish beer was £5 and it was delicious. After all that food we decided no more walking and took a boat trip down the river. It was then on to Lieba also on the Baltic coast, here we visited a wartime V1/2 rocket base in an area known for its shifting sands. I gather some of the base had been covered before being cleared away; we were able to see rusty launch pads, railway tracks etc, although they did not have one of the original V1/2s on display there which was a pity. I remember hearing the Doodle Bugs going over during the war and had one explode only about 150yds from my grandparents’ cottage at Exbury in the New Forest where I was living at the time. It blew our front porch off, “we were all in the Anderson shelter at the time”. I remember the next morning, standing with my Mum and grandparents looking down into the huge crater it had made. So it would have been very interesting for me to see one in the flesh so to speak. Lieba itself was a seaside resort which reminded me of what our seaside towns must have looked like in the 30s and 40s before everyone started going abroad for their holidays; the beach road was lined with hundreds of stalls selling everything you would expect at the seaside and more. Most Polish people still go to their own beach towns for their holidays as they had while under communist rule. On the seafront a short distance from the attractions were the fish smoking houses where you could buy smoked fish of all kinds including eels so of course I had to buy a whole one to share with my friend Jill who also likes it, having acquired the taste for it while in Sweden.
From Lieba it was on to Gdansk, it has been a trading port since the early Middle Ages; early records show it as called Gyddanyzc. It was also here that the first shots of WW2 were fired on 1st September 1939 when the Third Reich decided to provoke military action. This was another city that I found interesting, not only for the recent history of the uprising but also the huge dockyard where it all took place and was the birth place of the Freedom “Solidarity” movement, the monument to the martyrs of the freedom movement is just outside the dockyard gates. These were all people who were shot during Poland’s struggle for freedom. One of their leaders Lech Wałesa went on to become the country’s President once Poland had achieved its Independence. Gdansk is also famous for its amber as are many of the Baltic Capital Cities; the shops in the main street and the stalls in the old port area are full of it in various colours, green and white grey as well as the orangey colour we are all used to, even that had light and dark shades, it was made up into all sorts of jewellery, some still had the small insects which had been trapped inside millions of years ago. As you know amber is resin from the coniferous forests of pre historic times and is some times found floating in the Baltic, but it is also mined in the area as well. On leaving Gdansk we went inland keeping the Russian enclave to our left as we headed for Hitler’s former headquarters known as the “Wolf’s Lair”, before going over the border into Lithuania. But all of that will have to wait for the next instalment. Christine L Culley |
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