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.

Gdansk-next-the-sea

No, Gdansk has neither been renamed nor become British. Gdansk-next-the-sea is but a rendering in English of Gdansk, Pomorze (po being next to, morze from more which is sea), the Slavic name for the region from which the more familiar Pomerania was derived. Yes, the popular orange-white lap dog of the same name was bred in this southern Baltic coastal region stretching from the East German coast to the Vistula River just east of Gdansk.

Below: Pretending to be warm and snug on ulica Dlugi, the main thoroughfare in Gdansk's Old Town.

Gdansk is famous for two things: being Danzig, and Lech Walesa (who became the public face of Solidarity, a nationwide trade union movement instrumental in toppling the communist regime). Students of History, specifically of the post-First-World-War settlement of Versailles, would relate to the Free City of Danzig, which is Gdansk in German. In medieval times the city was, like Tallinn and Riga, a member of the Hanseatic League. Its location near the mouth of the Vistula whose course forms Poland's spine helped it to dominate Poland's maritime trade. Much of this passed through the hands of German merchants, who were invited by the Pomeranian dukes to settle in the city from the twelfth century onwards (hence Danzig).

Below: "You who have harmed simple man, mocking him with your laughter, you kill him, somebody else will be born, and your deeds and words will be written down." So read the words of Czeslaw Milosz on the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970, erected as part of the demands of Lech Walesa's Solidarity in their stand-off with the communist regime ten years after. Back then, it was the first monument in the Soviet bloc put up to commemorate victims of the communist regime. Lech Walesa eventually became Poland's first post-Soviet head of state. His trademark moustache, except for a respite in 2002, remains. (Our pose was Mary's idea of Solidarity.)

This gave Gdansk (or Danzig if you please) a mixed Slavo-German character which was extinguished in the aftermath of the Second World War and occluded by the subsequent writing of national and nationalized histories (claiming either an exclusively German or Polish past for the city). In 1945, with a slice of eastern Germany given to Poland as compensation for the slice of eastern Poland taken by the Soviets, the German population (those who were still alive) in Gdansk was expelled and the depleted Polish population replenished with Poles who were in turn expelled from those parts of Poland taken by the Soviet Union.

Below: the interior of St Catherine's Church, where we found shelter from the freezing morning. The church was built by the German merchants who brought prosperity to the city.

We arrived in Gdansk late on the eve of New Year's Eve. Having decided to visit Malbork (more on that in a later post) the next day, we waited until 2016 to explore the city. But 2016 could barely wait, clattering unceremoniously into our room at midnight with an interminable series of bursts and claps. And then came the heavy footfalls of returning revellers in deepest, darkest night. We didn't sleep much, of course.

Stepping outside in the late morning, the first sky we saw in 2016 was blue. The sun was shining, but winter finally began to bite harder. It wasn't long before we started speaking in slurs. Imagine Nien Numb's half-lipped babble in The Return of the Jedi (another masterstroke in punny characterization by George Lucas, Numb flew the Millennium Falcon with Lando Calrissian in the mission to destroy the second Death Star), and you'll get an idea of our stuttling exchange in the freezing cold. Shelter was found at St Catherine's Church on the northwestern edges of the Old Town. Incidentally, the church was the first to be built by the German merchants of the Hansa. The Polish hymns playing inside warmed our hearts even if our lips took a while to regain their former functionality.

The crowds were out in full force when we exited the church. Most shops were closed. (Such circumstances treated passers-by just the night before to the strange spectacle of two Chinese tourists queuing up to buy bottled water at a liquor store.) Cafes and restaurants, thankfully, weren't.

Below (top to bottom): other notable landmarks in the Old Town, the ones that follow being located between St Catherine's Church and ulica Dlugi - the Great Mill, where grain was ground; the Hala Targowa, a neo-Gothic covered market; the Great Armoury, a structure from a time when cities often faced the spectre of incursion.

We followed the stream of tourists to ulica Dluga. This east-west axis bisected the Old Town and was part of the route taken by Polish kings when they visited the city. For most visitors, Ulica Dluga issues from the Golden Gate on its western end, proceeding past meticulously restored burgher houses with their fancifully painted facades to the Gothic Town Hall and the fountain of Neptune (dry when we passed but once said to have spewed beer in simpler times) at Dlugi Targ (the market square) and ends at the Green Gate where the king resided if in town. One could see the street was where the wealth brought in by trade was lavished.

Above (top to bottom): Ulica Dluga from west end to east - Mary making small talk with some locals at the base of the Highland Gate, where prisoners were once kept and tortured; looking back towards the Golden Gate; my expression betrayed my thoughts at the Fountain of Neptune, where Iegend says once spewed beer...

Below (top to bottom): ...the Green Gate at night, beyond which the street meets the river; Christmas lights makes Christmas feel like forever in these parts.

The trade which generated the wealth, though, was most amply represented by the sights along the Motlawa River. The river and its promenade on both banks ran perpendicular to ulica Dluga just beyond the Green Gate. Many of the former warehouses have since been converted into museums, shops, restaurants and hotels. Several artefacts point to the significance of Gdansk's maritime history - the Zubaw, a medieval crane capable of lifting loads up 2,000 kilograms, two galleons moored alongside its embankment which take tourists on a cruise to the river mouth, and the Soldek, in 1947 the first ocean-going vessel built by the Gdansk shipyard. Trade is still lucrative these days, albeit in tourist dollars.

Below (top to bottom): Standing before one of the galleons that regularly bring tourists on cruises down to the river mouth. The last building in the background (rightmost) is actually the Zubaw. Yes, we know - looks nothing like a crane; further down the promenade by the Motlawa, the Soldek.

We did not follow the Motlawa all the way to sea, turning back towards town while still within sight of it. Even after a dinner of potato pancakes (fast becoming a firm favourite) and a cup of hot chocolate, we still had three hours to kill before beginning another overnighter to Wroclaw with Polskibus. Boarding later on, our bloodlust extended beyond hours (let's discuss Polish manners in another post). As 1 January 2016 drew to a close, crackers were still going off all over the city. These might have been more useful in clearing a path up the bus for us.

Warsaw: Reconstructed glory

Once Mary and I decided on Europe over South America, I agonised over the languages I'd have to get acquainted with to smoothen the journey. Usually this amounted to little more than hi, bye, thank you, where is, do you speak English please. Of course, I'll still be struggling to pick out words when we speak with people. At the very least we (I) could read signs, transport schedules, buy tickets and not get (too) lost.

Needless to say, Europe is unlike South America, where knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese would suffice to get by - mostly. It was not so hard to pick up smatterings of the Slavic languages (Polish, Slovak, Czech, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croat, Bosnian, Macedonian and Slovenian), having grappled with bits of Russian and Ukrainian on our honeymoon. But there were other newer, stranger languages to cramp into my limited intellect - amongst them Greek, Albanian, the Baltic (Latvian and Lithuanian) and Finno-Ugric (Estonian and Hungarian) languages. Going from Vilnius to Warsaw took us from the unfamiliar Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian tongues to the more familiar Polish one.

It was an overnight journey. In between sleep, we caught glimpses of the rolling Suwalki countryside between southwestern Lithuania and northeastern Poland laved in deep silver-blue moonlight. But nightshade was cast thickly over the horizons each time we passed under street lighting. It's ironic. With lamps we emulate moonlight, and seek to banish darkness. Yet the reach of our lamps is short, and night gathers in redoubled force beyond the furthest penumbra.

These thoughts accompanied our start to a fifteen-day sojourn in a country which emerged not very long ago from nearly two centuries of a benighted history.

Below: "Saruman! Saruman, come forth!" Wait, that's the Palace of Culture and Science, eerily lit in the Varsovian night.

The country that disappeared

Growing up, I struggled to reconcile what I knew about Poland to obstinate childhood convictions. Was Poland not a misspelt male Frankish name masquerading as a country? And Dad said before too that it has disappeared from the map before.

Wait, countries actually disappear?

They do, though it would be many years before I understood that by disappearing it was meant that Poland suffered partitions by its neighbours. The most (in)famous ones took place in three stages between 1772 and 1795, during which the Russia, Prussia and Austria carved up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (introduced while we were in Vilnius - a discussion of why the Commonwealth was unable to resist its neighbours would take up too much time, and would be left for another time perhaps). Then, like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to its north, it enjoyed two decades of independence between the two world wars, before being taken apart by the Nazis and the Soviets in 1939. The Soviets didn't leave until 1991.

Below: A familiar face - the city's monument to Adam Mickiewicz (last seen standing in deep thought outside St Anne's Church in Vilnius). This was put up in 1898, the centenary of the poet's birth, though at a time when Warsaw was a provincial city in the Tsarist Empire and Russification policies were being intensified.

Poland has always been a hotly contested piece of real estate, lying right on the east-west passage across the Great European Plain. The land is no stranger to war and ruin. From eastwards came the Mongol hordes and countless Russian armies, from westwards the Franks and their latter-day kin. The most recent war, the Second World War, wrought apocalyptic ruin on Polish soil. As Mary reminds me (smugly quoting from a travel documentary), more than 90% of Warsaw was levelled by 1945.

Below: The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, just east of the Saxon Gardens, a tale of tears and of blood shed for the Polish cause.

Blue skies over Warsaw

The Warsaw we visited had been rebuilt from the ashes of 1945. Walking in the Old Town and admiring the handsome facades on Plac Zamkovy, it is hard to shed the consciousness of all these once being rubble. But I'm being a purist here, and a hypocrite - there are few attractions in Europe that haven't been patched up. It wasn't all reminiscence and faithful reproduction. A few additional flourishes to the Warsaw cityscape were also made courtesy of the Soviets. The most notable Soviet monument in the city is the Palace of Culture and Science, a monolith of Socialist Realism that even today remains Poland's tallest building.

Above (top to bottom): The reconstructed Old Town, starting with Plac Zamkovy which is dominated by the Royal Castle. Interestingly, the Castle is younger than I am, being rebuilt only in 1988; St Martin's Church seen from an alley; Standing beneath the Barbican, a fortified gate north of the Old Town.

Above (top to bottom): Polish culture - language, arts, faith (in this case Roman Catholicism) - kept alive a nation's identity when Poles either did not have a Poland or could not call Poland their own. And Poles are heirs to a rich cultural history, represented by the pictures here - the Baroque edifice of St Casimir's Church; the intensely nationalistic decorations put up inside St John's Church in the Old Town; the interior of the Church of the Holy Cross, where the composer Frederick Chopin's heart is interred (in the first pillar on the left, and yes he was Polish); in the same church, a chapel dedicated to Pope John Paul II, who became a symbol of Polish resistance to Soviet domination...

Below (continued): ...Copernicus, famous for putting forward the theory that planets revolved around the sun, throned before the Polish Academy of Sciences; the (rebuilt) National Theatre, another cherished haven of Polishness.

Below: Postwar Warsaw wasn't simply rebuilt to look like prewar Warsaw. The Palace of Culture and Science was constructed using Soviet funds and labour, and of course entirely under Soviet orders. The Soviets milked every opportunity presented by its construction to generate pro-Soviet propaganda: the frequent publicity given to how the frenzied construction (by workers labouring through consecutive shifts) always proceeded ahead of schedule, its presentation as an apparent gift from the Soviet people to the Polish people and that as a symbol of Soviet progress it towers over everything else in Warsaw. It still does.

Blue skies were the norm while we were in Warsaw. The mercury plummeted too, and for the first time on this trip we suited up with all we've got. This did not stop Varsovians from getting out in force. Despite it being four days after Christmas, Warsaw looked to still be in the thick of festivities. We really like the Christmas lights put up in the city. They weren't very elaborate - several installation pieces here and there, and fairy lights on trees - but were tastefully selected.

An additional day in Warsaw would have been ideal to see the sights beyond the vicinity of the Old Town. But in our planning we couldn't pull away from the thought that there wasn't very much to see because it was once all destroyed anyway.

Below: Checking out the Christmas decor in Warsaw, which invites wonder - wives wondering if their gifts will ever match those glittering parcels on Warsaw's streets, and poor Thomas the train wondering what he did wrong to deserve his eye-catching cabaret get-up.

There were a number of lessons from our chilly day and a half in Warsaw. While we commend the spirit of the Polish people in rebuilding, we should not forget how many times their cities, and their state with it, have been razed to the ground.

So, countries do disappear, and international boundaries as we know today cannot be taken to be fixed in perpetuity. If big ones like what Poland once was cannot escape such a fate, what are the odds of thinking a small country like ours can be held to prosper forever? I suppose it is our duty to try, nonetheless. Stranger things have happened in this world. And they were not brought about by people sitting, standing by and watching.

Trakai's Island Castle

A town of wooden houses strung out along a slender peninsula which tapers until an island castle, reached only by wooden footbridge, comes into view. A dwindling, little-known people brought thither by a conqueror's sword from a distant country. All on a rush-fringed, wood-framed horizon of mirrored meres.

Below: Pinch me, out on the bearded barley... Oh wait, wrong verb.

It was the stuff of fantasy. Except that when the chill wind bit and the wife pinched, everything remained in place. Trakai was real (OK, it's partly reconstructed, but forget I said that), and special. It's also, we're told, the only castle in Eastern Europe to be built on an island.

Below: The lakeside paths in Trakai are full of serene views such as these. The bottommost picture shows Uzutrakis Manor, built in the late nineteenth century, which during the Soviet period was used as a sanatorium for Soviet security officers.

The castle we know today was built by Vytautas, grandson of Gediminas whom we encountered earlier as the founder of Vilnius. Vytautas' brick castle, which replaced earlier wooden predecessors, was intended as addition fortification against the threat posed from the west by the Teutonic Knights. It was never used as more than his personal residence, however, as shortly after construction began Vytautas defeated the Knights in the landmark Battle of Grunwald and decisively curtailed the latter's formidable military prowess.

The dwindling, little-known people were the Karaite, whose kinsfolk we met on our 2013 visit to Chufut Kale in Crimea (we visited just two months before the thinly-disguised Russian takeover occurred, as recounted in an earlier post). As previously introduced, the Karaite professed a religion akin to Judaism, and although they're also spoke Hebrew, their native tongue is Turkic in origin. They were acquired as captives on a raid to Crimea and brought to Trakai by none other than Vytautas himself, unwitting victims of dynastic upheaval and meddling by foreign princes. Together with some of their Tatar kin who were also forcibly relocated, they served as soldiers, scribes and envoys (particularly to the Turkic khanates in the east who spoke similar languages). Today, all that remain of this once thriving community are an ethnographic museum, a handful of wooden houses and several restaurants serving up Karaite cuisine.

Below: the Karaite kenessa, the local prayer house, one of a handful of wooden reminders of the Karaite presence in Trakai.

As usual, we arrived in pressing need of food. It was nearly noon on Sunday, and it seemed the town had barely got moving. Our empty stomachs led the way to Kybynlar, a restaurant serving Karaite food which we were mightily relieved to find open. A brunch of kibinai, stuffed pastry like our very own curry puffs, rebuilt Mary's resolve to walk again.

The streets had gotten livelier by the time lunch was over, and a steady traffic had built up on the footbridges leading to the Island Castle. We all resembled a column of villagers seeking refuge behind castle walls from war in the outlands. Nobody was in any particular hurry though, tarrying to tease the local waterfowl and to contemplate the strength of the castle walls through camera lenses.

Above: No queues for dole, as the resident waterfowl participate in the daily, longest-neck-first scramble for sustenance.

Below: Stepping out from the marching column of outland visitors to contemplate the strength of the castle walls through my camera lens.

The castle was astir when we approached the gate. An animated voice on a microphone rallied a crowd in the courtyard within. We could have braced ourselves for a sortie, except the would-be skirmishers were children at a Sunday event. Outside the castle, families and couples took strolls on the peaceful path that went around the keep.

Below: You only see this once through the castle gate, but this Sunday event for children could be heard for miles around.

Much of the action took place within and around the Island Castle. Crossing the footbridges to town led one back to the dead of winter. Quieter lakeside trails passed upturned boats which awaited the resurrecting touch of summer. No ripples disturb the lake in these parts, the offending mallards and swans being found closer to the castle where crumbs might more likely be enticed from curious visitors.

Below: One of many seasonally retired boats awaiting the onset of warmer climes.

It might sound timely for a visit, and there is a lot to commend one. The cold is a small price to pay.

Logistics

Trakai is an easy half-hour's bus ride out of Vilnius (so many buses head there and back that you won't have to worry about timing your visit specifically). From the bus station, it is a two-kilometer walk to the castle. Turn right upon exiting the bus station and walk northwards (with the lake on your left). There are frequent maps along the way to help, and supermarkets and restaurants if you're hungry.