Zakopane: Tatras high, valley low

I remember stepping nervously off the bus from Krakow at the Zakopane station nearly nine years ago. It was my first solo travel experience, after having started the journey with Ivan who then was Budapest-bound. September at summer's end that year showed still naked rock on most summits in the Tatra Mountains. These were snow-capped when we arrived, though it would be morning before we saw them.

Below: Snow-capped - frolicking on the Kasprowy Wierch ridge.

Highlander

The Tatra Mountains straddle Poland and Slovakia (its highest ridges forming part of the border between the two countries) and are the loftiest parts of the Carpathian Range. This stretches in a wide northwest-southeast crescent from the eastern Czech Republic to southeastern Romania. Mary and I have fond memories of our first Carpathian sojourn in Yaremche, in Ukraine, and she still misses the cottage we spent three nights in. The mountains would continue to loom large over our journey after Zakopane, as we travel across and along them through Slovakia before swinging back east towards Transylvania. But we would write again of them when we come to it.

Zakopane nestled in a valley amongst the northern foothills of the Tatras. Its billing as Poland's Winter Capital is entirely deserved. Staying in an apartment on the main street, we observed the ceaseless traffic of tourists - even at midday under clear blue skies which would have been perfect for skiing or winter walking in the mountains. Tourism is more than a century old here. Their natural beauty aside, the isolation of the Tatras in the nineteenth century meant the region was promoted in a partitioned Poland as a last, untouched bastion of Polishness.

Yet for centuries before that, the town's Goral (highlander in Polish) inhabitants followed a way of life that defied national classification. Found all along the northern Carpathian arc in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine, perhaps the most famous Goral was Pope John Paul II, who as a young student in Krakow Seminary spent many days walking in the Tatras. Goral culture is Zakopane's other major draw. This is most visible in the horse carriages which line the pavements, driven by men dressed in Goral folk costumes. Elsewhere in town, the culture is loudly proclaimed in souvenir shops, restaurants and an abundance of wooden architecture.

Below: the view from Kasprowy Wierch - somewhere in the thin clouds below lies Zakopane.

Up...

It being winter, a good number of hikes were ruled out through lack of expertise, experience and equipment. There were still walks enough to slake the thirsty eyes of adventurers with nothing more than regular crampons and walking poles (us). Mary's antipathy towards gravity meant we relied on cable-cars and funiculars for headstarts as much as possible. It became clear she took a lot more to walking uphill only after we cleared the tree line, when the views justified the exertion. Two day-trips relied on just such a strategy, bookending one in which we relied solely on our feet (this exception led to a very different outcome - suffice to say footsore wives aren't the most cheerful).

Kasprowy Wierch offered the most economical scenery-to-effort ratio anywhere in the Polish Tatras, as we were whisked by cable-car to, at 1,987 metres above sea level, nearly eye-level with the peaks that surrounded us. We made an effort to arrive very early, and were rewarded with empty paths (shown to be clearly frequented by the compressed snow on its surface) and quiet viewpoints. The highest summits extended majestically to both east and west, unhindered by cloud. A prancing shadow in the distance revealed the presence of a chamois crossing the snowy slopes. We pranced around ourselves until noon, when it looked like half of Zakopane has ascended to the shoulders of the same mountain.

Above (top to bottom): Mary smilingly approves of the only way to properly ascend a mountain; our first sight of a wild chamois on the slopes of Kasprowy Wierch; sitting tight on Liliowe Pass, looking out over Ticha Valley to the northwest. This is the highest point on the ridge, where most regular walkers turn back to the cable-car station.

Below (top to bottom): Panoramas from the ridge between Kasprowy Wierch and Liliowe Pass - looking east from the cable-car station on top, over the Gasienicowa Valley; walking southeast on the ridge towards Liliowe Pass, looking out over the same valley; vistas over the Ticha Valley from Liliowe Pass.

Below (top to bottom): Clear skies and empty paths vanish by mid-day, the cable-cars vomiting a steady stream of visitors onto the mountain top; Mary's deck chair neighbour looks askance at her as she triumphantly holds up a pair of crampons (life-savers on the slippery paths). We have no clear photograph, but the bronze plaque in the centre (just above the window with white words) commemorates the visit of Pope John Paul II to the station in 1997. As a young student in Krakow Seminary, he loved spending time in the Tatras.

Mount Gubalowka was much lower. Set across the valley from the main peaks, it offered a panorama of nearly all the Polish Tatras as they unfurled like a banner to the south. In 2007, I had heartily quaffed a mug of highlanders' tea (a potent mixture of tea and vodka, or rum) before racing light-headed up the gentle slopes of Gubalowka. Mary enjoys the brew, but chose to go up differently. The engineers worked really hard to construct the funicular, she blithely quipped. We should honour their work. This contraption we honoured ferried visitors to 1,123 metres above sea level. Well within walking distance of the town centre, there was always a queue for the funicular. We went late in the afternoon, giving ourselves barely an hour and a half of daylight - enough to watch the peaks set alight in the orange glow of the setting sun. The hive of activity we found at the top bore witness to Gubalowka being perhaps the most family-friendly mountain trip in all the Tatras.

Below (top to bottom): The panorama from atop Mount Gubalowka; everybody has pretty much the same idea of what kind of photographs they'd like to take; Mary uses a pair binoculars for the first time...

...and down

The exception to the two trips taken above was the one to Rusinowa Polana. A alpine meadow located near the border with Slovakia, we had to climb an hour to reach it. It was not Mary's preferred mode of locomotion, and her level of enthusiasm was evident. Low cloud obscured the mountains above, parting briefly here and there to permit glances of the vistas they so jealously guarded. I had wanted to wait out the cloudiness as the forecast had promised, but had to leave to disperse the cloud that had gathered closer at hand.

Above (top to bottom): Walking up from Polana Palenica to Rusinowa Polana; Heidi is not a happy camper. Rusinowa Polana means Rusyns' Field, no doubt referring to the Rusyn (who share kinship with the Ukrainians) herders who'd bring their flocks here seasonally to graze; the clouds sat thickly on the peaks around the meadow, only parting now and then to reveal the vistas they so jealously guarded.

Below (top to bottom): Walking back down to Polana Palenica from where minibuses return to Zakopane; As if willing our feet off the mountains, each downward step saw the ceiling of cloud lifted more clearly. Here, golden light, held back previously as if by a dam, floods the Bialej Wody Valley to the southeast. The far bank belongs to Slovakia.

Ambling down the hillside to where the minibus would take us back to Zakopane, we saw the gray roof above us already pierced in the distant valley by shafts of golden light. Once back in town, Mary resumed her search for highlanders' tea.

My wife cracks irony like a whip.

We could have no complaints about our stay in Zakopane. I had planned for four nights to maximise our chances of getting at least a single day of clear weather. We could count two and a half days which qualified. Crucially, Zakopane also yielded an invaluable lesson, one that would save me a lot of persuasion - plan mountain trips around cable-cars.

Logistics

Zakopane itself is small enough to get around on foot. There are frequent minibuses that leave from around the bus station to the various trailheads leading into the mountains. For the cable-car to Kasprowy Wierch, hail one for Kuznice; for Rusinowa Polana, Morskie Oko. The Gubalowka funicular station is at the northern end of Krupowka, the main shopping street.

Katowice: Polish courtesy and shopping mores

As we've written previously, Katowice was a base for our day trip to Ogrodzieniec castle. And with two shopping malls located within 10 minutes' walk of our accommodation (the refurbished train station was connected to a roomy four-storey one), we spent much of our time there indoor. With precious little sightseeing done, it is an opportune time to collect and share our thoughts on the courtesy we've received in this country.

Below: Galeria Katowicka, where we spent much of our time in Katowice and one of a number of malls we visited in Poland.

Shopping mores

Malls have been important revictualling stations. Our list of possessions damaged within the first fortnight of this trip reads like a lamentable litany. The catch on my camera tripod leg snapped on Day 1 in Tallinn (it hobbled on until another broke in Ogrodzieniec). On Day 4, Mary dropped her beloved Desigual shawl and unbeknownst, tragically, to me until evening I tore a gash between my trouser sleeves. Yes, I was wearing it. A week after that, the pocket lining on my five-year-old snow trousers suffered the same fate. Most of these were replaced in a mall.

It was also heartwarming to find at least one bookshop in every mall we've visited, coming from a country where bookshops are apparently declining. I don't have the statistics on hand, but there might be a bigger market for Polish-language books in Poland than there is for English-language ones in Singapore and Malaysia combined (verification of this is very welcome).

Yet shopping in Poland has been a mixed experience. Service standards are tepid at best and polar wintry at worst. We've seen many sales assistants blanch the moment we stepped into their shop. We could very well have been the Chewbacca or R2-D2 to their uncomprehending (and, for some, unsympathetic) ears. Many of those approached (which we did with please in Polish) and who spoke no English simply shrugged indifferently and afterwards redoubled their efforts at their previous errand, as if it would make us vanish.

Since we're on the topic of English-speakers, we should also share our two encounters with Jehovah's Witnesses in Poland. There were too many similarities for these to be merely coincidental. Both took place in malls, involved a team of two approaching us with the innocuous opening of hello, do you speak English? We'd like to practise ours. It went beyond that, of course, and we engaged them in earnest conversation. Our appearances marked us out as obvious targets - Chinese people usually aren't the first you'd approach to practise English.

Courtesy from Pole to Pole

While most of the Polish people we encountered were undeniably kind, the exceptions (some of which we alluded to previously) plumb new depths.

Most of our journeys between cities in Poland were on buses run by the company named Polskibus. All the buses were fitted comfortably with wifi and clean toilets, and our rides were mostly smooth. Boarding each time, however, was Thermopylae all over again. Nobody queued, nor was one enforced. Passengers massed like hoplites at the door, a phalanx singular in its purpose of getting through but at odds with one another. We dubbed it the Polish press. Gaps between travelling companions were prized and prised, and the less alert were often pushed down the pecking order.

There were two other courtesy-related incidents which stood out for the involvement of youthful protagonists. We've already met the Polish girl on the train in Malbork who refused to lift her jacket from an adjacent seat, even when it was evident that all her friends had boarded and standing space grew scarcer. At a crowded McDonald's in Krakow, a boy raced to the recently vacated two-seater next to us, narrowly throwing himself into the chair ahead of an astonished mother and her young child. She was calm about it, and promptly turned to find another seat. The boy pumped his fist with an exultant yes, returning our glances with smugness.

It was important for us to remember that we've also met wonderful people in Poland - most notably Dorota from Sanok (which we've not written on yet), whose house we spent the night in, who met us at the bus station on a rainy night with her good-natured Alsatian named Bono and the old man in Malbork who provided advice on where to get off.

It would have been nice to not be reminded that every society contains a spectrum of temperaments.  Just as well that societies rest on regulated coexistence. Without that we might each be drawn to punching the teeth out of the next snob we come across.

Ogrodzieniec: fire, ice and rock

From Wroclaw, we travelled to Katowice, a city so industrial it didn't appear in my guidebook (I was using the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide). Our sole intention was to use Katowice as a base to visit the ruined castles perched scenically on the ridges of the nearby Polish Jura uplands.

Below: This picture of Ogrodzieniec Castle gives an idea why the trail which links this to similarly-situated ruins is called the Eagle's Nest Trail.

Fire and ice

It was snowing when we got to Katowice. The days had gotten appreciably colder since Warsaw, where we first felt the bite of winter (it was -10°C when we left Wroclaw). The following day dawned cloudless and colder. Even the train carriage to Zawierce, from where we would get a connecting bus to Ogrodzieniec Castle, was chilly.

The bus stop just outside Zawierce's train station that morning was the scene of a small commotion. By provincial standards, the coming and going of public and private buses constituted rush hour. One bus, parked near a road crossing, didn't move. We were about to cross near it, looking for our bus, when we paused to ask a fellow commuter for directions. Moments later, a little explosion startled everybody. It came from the rear tyre of the stationary bus. That brief conversation had saved us from straying too close. There was smoke, lots of it, a small fire, and a second burst which issued from the front of the bus.

The fire department was on site within minutes. As we watched the firemen carry out their jobs competently, I felt a sharp jab against my shoulder. A shrill voice cried out, Minus sixteen! Why didn't you tell me!

The day's temperature was laid bare by an electronic board behind the bus stop.

Ice and rock

We got off the bus at Podzamcze to a gust of wind. Podzamcze was a village strung out on both sides of a two-laned road, just below the castle's grey ruins. It seemed nobody came in the dead of winter - every other yard held a barking dog unprepared for visitors. Even the wind grew in strength with each step we took towards the castle. When we crested the hill this smote us with icy ferocity. Almost like climbing Everest, Mary grumbled. My only anxious thought was that my socks were too thin.

Below: The wind absolutely battered us as we walked up this road. And the cold burned.

The castle, as you might have guessed, was close. We contented ourselves with going on the trail which went around the castle hill. This wove in and out amongst the feet of rocky outcrops standing like sentinels around the castle. The castle walls were built skilfully to harness the natural defences proffered by the topography of the land. Walking right up to one outcrop and looking out over the battlements, we understood why the trail was christened Eagle's Nest.

Above (top to bottom): Sights on the path that went around the castle - rock sentinels into whose torsos the castle walls were skilfully built; the rolling Polish Jura uplands all around; a disused concrete bunker testifies to the natural defensibility of the terrain...

Below (top to bottom): ...What bravado amidst wintry conditions looks like; Another outcrop that looks suspiciously like the Merlion.

Ogrodzieniec Castle and many of its sister strongholds along the trail were built by King Casimir III, known also to posterity as the Great who was bequeathed a Poland made of wood and bequeathed to his heirs a Poland made of stone. The line of keeps were meant to guard Krakow (the royal capital then) and the nearby border with Bohemia, which at that time controlled Silesia (Wroclaw is Silesian) to the west and south. Vigil was kept, until neglect and war consumed the castles.

At the tallest outcrop northeast of the ruins we paused. I wriggled my toes, and felt nothing. Morning was turning to be brilliantly clear. There was perhaps two-thirds of the circular path left to go, but my shivering subconscious half-imagined severed toes bouncing like beans in my boot. I looked at Mary. There was frost on her glasses. If we stayed out in the open any longer there would have been frost in her eyes. It was too much. We turned back, poked around a little bit more at the base of the castle rock and walked back down the hill.

Below (top to bottom): Standing at the base of the castle, like children playing at the feet of sleeping stone giants; a view of Mount Birow, south of Ogrodzieniec Castle, the pitted terrain of which was occupied as far back as 30,000 years ago. Birow was originally in the day's itinerary, which was scuppered by a conspiratorial mutiny of my subsconscious and toes.

Back in Podzamcze, we searched high and low (literally) for a cafe or a restaurant that was open. A banner promised food 800 metres away. It was a simple countryside hotel, but in our circumstances it felt like a palace.

Logistics

We took the train from Katowice to Zawierce, from where Bus 7 runs to Podzamcze, just below Ogrodzieniec Castle. If you miss the bus, or would like to return to Zawierce earlier, there are frequent private buses that ply the same route. The castle is visible from just about anywhere in the village. For the best views of the ruins and the surrounding countryside, follow the trail that leads around the castle. Pod Figurą Hotel & Restauracja provides accommodation and decent food year round.

Above: a map of the trails around the castle.

Wrocław: vrotswav, not row claw

While watching an episode of Lonely Planet on our flight to Helsinki, I writhed each time Megan McCormick pronounced Wrocław as row-claw. Amazingly, nobody corrected her even as she merrily row-clawed her way past local guides. (I'm embarrassed to say I once did the same in a conversation with a friend from the same city nearly a decade ago.)

Below: Our highlight in Wroclaw, the Aula Leopoldina in the main University building.

The immediate reason why the city's proper Polish pronunciation isn't apparent is the letter ł. Other letters familiar to English readers are also pronounced different. W in Polish is read as v, c as ts, ł as w - so a transliteration of the city's name is actually vrotswav. Obviously, ł doesn't turn up in non-Polish keyboards (for the same reason, I'm dropping the stroke in my ł henceforth), leading people to say it in ways they're used to.

From Wroclaw to Breslau

The many smokestacks we saw as we approached Wroclaw betray the largely industrial complexion of the Silesian region. Silesia was yet another alien name we encountered in our history classes in bygone days (again as part of the territorial clauses of Versailles). The historical region corresponds very much to southwestern Poland, and slivers of southeastern Germany and the northeastern Czech Republic.

Below: Silesian scenery nearly always includes a smokestack, or three. This was from the top of the Cathedral of St John the Baptist features the Church of the Holy Cross in the foreground.

But Wroclaw is more than another industrial conurbation. Its past reflect Silesia's transnational nature. Established by the Piast dukes who later put together the kingdom of Poland, the city came latterly under the control of the Czechs (when Polish rule weakened), the Austrians (when Bohemia was incorporated into the burgeoning Habsburg empire) and the Prussians (when Silesia was wrested from the Austrians in a series of eighteenth-century conflicts). Under the Prussians (later the German empire), Breslau (Wroclaw in German) eventually grew to become the largest German city east of Berlin.

Germans settlers were first invited to Wroclaw in the mid-thirteenth century by the Piast rulers to aid rebuilding following the devastation wrought by Mongol raids. 700 years later, another cataclysm was visited on the city as the Nazis and the Soviets fought tooth and claw over Festung Breslau (Fortress Breslau) during the Second World War. Like Gdansk, Wroclaw was a part of the Western Territories - land previously under German control given in compensation to Poland as the Soviets took a strip of eastern Poland for itself.

Below (top to bottom): Memorials to Poland's emergence from the Iron Curtain - A sculpture titled Anonymous Pedestrians, commemorating the people who vanished after the 1981 imposition of martial law; One of a entire battalion of gnomes scattered around Wroclaw. Each corresponds to a spot where activists once drew attention to attempts by the municipal authorities to cover up anti-communist graffiti by spray-painting gnomes over them.

From Breslau to Wroclaw

On our overnighter from Gdansk, Mary had astutely chosen the seats just in front of the bus exit. It meant we could recline without remorse and sleep comfortably. En route to our hotel, we saw a billboard announcing Wroclaw's designation as European Capital of Culture in 2016. This was unfortunately positioned - five storeys above an gaudily lit adult store.

It being barely 9am, we left our baggage at the hotel as check-in had to wait. Our progress to the heart of the city was arrested at the Galeria Dominikanska, a shopping mall not five minutes from the Rynek, the main town square. Mary saw Zara, and sightseeing was put on ice until after lunch.

By the time we were done, we resumed our walk to Ostrow Tumski (in English, Cathedral Island), where the city was first established. Ostrow Tumski belonged in a cluster of seven islands on the river Odra (Oder in German), and as its name suggests is where the twin-towered Cathedral of St John the Baptist was built. Subsequent development has seen the island connected entirely to the Odra's left bank, though its name is unchanged. At the cathedral, we paid 5 zloty to be whisked to the top of one tower, from where we saw the spires in the Old Town silhouetted vividly against the late afternoon sun.

Below (top to bottom): Walks by the Odra - from the right bank; to the left, and behind the Cathedral of St John the Baptist; to its top from where this city panorama unfolds.

From Ostrow Tumski we walked to the Rynek, where the Christmas and New Year decorations were being dismantled. Both vicinities showcased Wroclaw's pre-Prussian Polish and Catholic heritage, and were thus where postwar reconstruction efforts were focused. This was carried out selectively and strategically. As with elsewhere in the Western Territories, de-Germanisation and re-Polonisation went together to justify Poland's claim to what was termed the Recovered Territories.

Below (top to bottom): Wroclaw's medieval Rynek, incidentally Poland's second largest and, with Ostrow Tumski, the focus of postwar construction efforts; posing proudly in front of the eclectic-looking Gothic town hall, built over 250 years starting from the late 13th century, with our new snow trousers; the first time on this trip the temperature reached negative double figures.

Two landmarks in particular represented the two processes just described - the equestrian statue of Boleslaw Chrobry erected just south of the Rynek, and the reconstructed University of Wroclaw. The former replaced a similar monument to Kaiser William I which was deemed inappropriate because of his Prussian background. The University of Wroclaw was for us the highlight of our visit to the city. Its crown jewel is the Aula Leopoldina, an assembly hall on the second level which was grandly decorated with classically inspired friezes and frescos. On its walls were lined portraits of powerful people previously associated with the institution. Frederick William, the Prussian king who had participated in the First Partition of Poland, had his portrait replaced. In the upper levels of the building, a permanent exhibition listed the achievements of those Polish scientists affiliated with the university.

Above: Boleslaw Chrobry (the Brave), held to be the first king of a unified Poland and whose statue replaces one of Kaiser William I.

Below (top to bottom): Back to school shenanigans - the main building of the University of Wroclaw; the podium in the Aula Leopoldina; imagining ourselves in class (erm, yeah, I used to behave loke this in music lessons...) once more at the Oratorium Marianum, where recitals were once held; exhibits showcasing the university's medieval accomplishments.

Pressed for time, we didn't tarried. The university was our last stop, after which we hurried to catch a train to Katowice. We very nearly ignored Wroclaw, but were glad we didn't. There were other attractions in the city which we missed, but we think it would be enough to have visited just for the Aula Leopoldina. Walking back, Mary reflected that she wouldn't be where she is if she had studied at the University of Wroclaw.

I would have failed all my examinations if I had sat for them in that room, she said.

Malbork: the charade of crusade

Tourism really is a game of qualifying superlatives to sell novelty. Malbork Castle, compared to those we've seen thus far on this trip (Tallinn, Sigulda, Vilnius, Warsaw), is very large. It also happens to be the largest Gothic, brick castle in the world. It's why we've come to visit.

Below: Mary shows off the castle that bears her name. Malbork in German is Marienburg - Mary's Castle.

The charade of crusade

Malbork sits squarely within the Baltic historical theatre in which we've been journeying since our arrival in Tallinn. Situated in what was once West Prussia, it was the headquarters of the Knights of the Teutonic Order. At its zenith, the Order's territory extended to present-day Estonia, even absorbing into its fold the Brothers of the Sword in Livonia whom we met in Sigulda earlier. More than a half-millennium after its last Master wound up the Order (to become the first Duke of Prussia, from which the eighteenth-century Prussia of Frederick the Great was descended), its crusading past continues to spawn a series of historical legends and counter-legends. In darker times, the Knights have been mythologized as intrepid pioneers of Germandom who carried Christianity and civilization to the pagan east. Its enemies saw them as German invaders bent on mastery and massacre, and resistance to them celebrated in triumphant, nationalistic tones.

These deserve a second look.

Below: King Casimir IV of Poland, a scion of Jogaila's line whose defeat of the Order brought it under Polish overlordship, points his sceptre triumphantly towards Marienburg.

While German polities regularly supplied men and money, Englishmen, Frenchmen (when they weren't fighting each other), Flemish, Bohemians, Danes and Swedes also took part in the fighting. The purported pagans they fought numbered the Catholic Poles, the Orthodox Novgorodians and the recently converted Lithuanians. The Novgorodians blocked eastward expansion from Estonian by the Order and its allies into the Russian hinterland. The Poles and Lithuanians held strategic lands that would have connected the Order's base around Malbork with its possessions in Latvia and Estonia.

National resistance celebrates the Order's decisive defeat at Grunwald (known also as Tannenberg and Zalgiris) in 1410 by combined Polish-Lithuanian forces (these were commanded respectively by the cousins Jogaila and Vytautas, grandsons of the Gediminas who founded Vilnius). This precipitated a decline which saw the Order subsequently recognise Polish-Lithuanian suzerainty and give up its West Prussian lands around Malbork. We should also recall that both Jogaila and Vytautas (remember he also rebuilt Trakai's Island Castle in stone) sought the Order's alliance as they tussled for power in a civil war between 1389 and 1392.

So both sides fight crusades, which was really a charade for political manouevring and the rewriting of history.

Below: The only geopolitical battle in Malbork today takes place on the river, where niftier mallards edge heavier swans to get to precious bread crumbs on the ice.

Emptiest Gothic, brick castle in the world

The 45-minute train ride took us past yellow fields, distant wind farms and most memorably the hilltop old town of Tczew, which lingered on the horizon for many miles after we passed. We sat opposite an elderly man who stopped us from getting off a station earlier at Malbork-Kaldowo, saving us a 45-minute traipse to the castle.

Given that it was New Year's Eve, it was quiet when we got to the castle. The grounds were vast. All was brick, and it felt like Legoland, except the builders used only red. We crossed the Nogat on the footbridge just behind the castle to get the best views, and lunched at a riverboat restaurant called U Flisaka moored on the far bank. The castle walls were bathed in the mellow glow of the westering sun when we were done.

Above: A vast Legoland in red, which the above collection of panoramas can hardly do any justice to. Look how empty the grounds were too.

Below: Mary goes to swansee.

We crossed the bridge to the castle just after three, to find the gates locked. Oh yes, New Year's Eve - they shut earlier. The only other tourists in sight were a Polish couple in town for a fancy dress countdown party and a German family who approached us to have their photograph taken. The streets were as empty. Only makeshift stalls sell fireworks to youths stocking up to give 2015 a rousing farewell. The train back to Gdansk, though, was full, and we had to stand between carriages. There was hardly room to move, partly because one youth refused to lift her jacket off the adjacent seat.

It would have been nice to not end the year on a note of discourtesy.

Logistics

There are frequent trains from Gdansk Glowny to Malbork (even if you can see the castle from Malbork-Kaldowo, it isn't that stop). The town centre is a short walk from Malbork station itself. Turn right upon exiting and follow the signs. The best views of the castle are on the far bank of the river, reached via a footbridge near the castle.

Above (top to bottom): Even the railway station in Malbork looks like a castle; U Flizaka, the riverboat restaurant moored along the Nogat. The food's good and affordable, with impressive views of the castle to be had.