Day 4

Day four of my adventure Poland started like so many other of the days….with breakfast, called śniadanie. And once again, it was very good. This morning I had some bigos two ways, one just baked, and one fried. Both are very good. Also some Polish ham (synka) a roll (butelka), and more galaretka. And some herbata. Another good break fast, for sure.

Then, the day’s adventures began. Adventurers today, besides myself, were Alicja and Filip, and we were joined by Patrycja and her son Victor.

There were two main parts to our adventures this day, after a stop for some business in Pruszcz-Gdańska, the nearby “big city” of about 25,000 people. Once we were done there, we headed to the tiny town of Będomin and a museum dedicated to the Polish national anthem, Jeszcze Polska Nie Zginęła. It was very interesting, with lots of history about the anthem and it’s writing by the author, Józef Wybicki in about 1797, just two years before the third partition of Poland. [For those who did not know it, Poland was once a huge and powerful country, but in part it’s desire to “get along” with its neighbors and be friendlier to its citizens led it’s “friendly” neighbors–Germany, Russian, and Austria-Hungary–to divide it up amongst themselves in the 1790s.] It is a song that tells the story of the heart of a strong and proud people, and a determination that they will never perish as a nation. The song became a rallying point for many over the course of the next century, and became the national anthem of Poland when it again emerged as a free nation following World War I. The museum is a small and old building set in the hills and valleys of the Kashubian region southwest of Gdaṅsk. The setting was beautiful, and the museum interesting, and a tribute to a proud nation.

After that we took off for a local attraction, built by a gentleman who builds log homes. But this is really a conglomeration of several things. First, there are some log homes there, and even a sales office, just in case you’re interested in buying a log home. But the main attraction of the place is an upside down home. Yes, really. It’s build totally upside down, and when you go in it (and there was about an hour wait to get in), the floors are all built at angles to the rest of the house, so you kind of stumble around as if you’ve had way to much to drink. That was a lot of fun as it was very hard to navigate and the angles all played tricks with your sense of balance. As you can imagine, the two kids really enjoyed it.

But there were a number of other things there as well that were interesting. We took a tour (in Polish) and Patrycja was able to summarize or give me the highlights. About the first thing we saw was a table that is in the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest table from one continuous log. It was sawed some years ago and even Lech Wałęsa and other dignitaries took part. It was indeed very long!

Then there was a house that had been transported from Siberia. All made out of wood, And a section where Stalin’s prisoners would have been kept, with flat platforms on either side of a central walkway–the beds. It’s said that often if one was unfortunate enough to sleep by the wall, they’d freeze to death in the night.

Also there was a train like what was used by the Communists to transport people to the prison camps. Many hundreds of thousands of Poles and others disappeared in the Soviet prison camps, never to be heard from again.

And there was a recreation of a partisan camp from World War II. Built undergound, it was typical of what was constructed during that time. Very small, dark, and underground. Not a fun place, for sure.

There was a church that had various artifacts in it as well, including prison (concentration) camp uniforms from Stutthoff a German concentration camp near Gdansk–yesterday when we took the ferry over the Wisła river, that was the same point from where those prisoners were “liberated” by the Soviets in 1945.

And they have a brewery and brew their own beer there. It is not available anywhere else. While some of the other waited in line, I had a chance to look around a bit, and I did stop in there for a quick piwo. It was good!

Since the area and the owner are Kashubian, the place was also dedicated to preserving and explaining a bit about Kashubian heritage, as well as a section devoted to the Kashubs who many years ago emigrated to Canada.

They have other things there, like a few animals, and a zipline. It was a very busy place and seems to be a nice local tourism destination, though I did hear some German being spoken there, and saw a few tour busses there are well. It was a very good time.

The area we were in today is Kasubian. It reminds me a lot of Wisconsin, with maybe bigger and more dramatic hills, but still a very lot like Wisconsin. There were lots of farmers working–I saw quite a few huge combines in the field combining grain. Much of it appeared to be wheat, and other similar grains, but some I could not identify. There were also corn fields, big corn fields, nice and tall with all the rain they’ve had this year. It was very scenic and would be a great place to live, I think.

Here in Grabiny-Zameczek where the Grabowscy live, it is flat. This area is called the Żuławy, and is the former floodplain of the Wisła river. So the soil here is very fertile, but it is also quite flat and the field are drained by ditches that feed into central canals. Some of the area here is actually below sea level!

On the way back, I learned a lot more about family history from Alicja, by way of Patrycja. I learned a lot about the ethnic cleansing done by the Ukrainians in 1943-1944 during World War II when tens of thousands (and possibly 100,000 or more) of Polish people were massacred by the UPA, a Ukrainian National Organization. I also learned a lot about why my Polish family left the Ukraine at the end of World War II, because of the persecution. And I learned how one of our great-great uncles was killed by the UPA, just because he was Polish. It is a rather sad page in history and there is a lot about it that is not resolved to this day. So there was a sad note to the day as well, but sad as in it’s sad to hear what people can do to each other in the name of religion or culture or some other manufactured reason. And those “ethnic cleansings” were particularly gruesome in some cases, meant to torture and intimidate. Truly another sad page in history, and one that directly affects our family as well.

But the day is ending on a more happy note as Wojtek and I are about to enjoy just a little bit of Żubrówka . Any day ending with Żubrówka is a good day. And so this day and my story about it, though filled with some somber reality in the middle of it, will end on a happy note!