Breslau and NewYearsEve in Krakau

While Danny, Ben and Anja started off a day earlier, Franzi and I drove to Breslau on 29.12.2013 and arrived at afternoon after a 4h drive. Ben picked the WenderEDU hotel which we can recommend :) We started walking through Breslau (Wroclaw) at late afternoon. Unfortunately without Anja as she was sick :(.
The old city center and especially the cathedral islands are gorgeous. Climbing the St. Mary Magdalena church offered us a nice sunset view from the "Penance Bridge" where adulterers were tormented in the middle age. We had some good dinner, which was when I enjoyed a delicious knuckle of pork, before we finished our day dancing in the PRL bar, that played all kind of pop and chart music while being decorated with deepest communistic ambient including portraits of Stalin, Lenin and Mao as well as plenty communistic ads... a little ironic :P
The next morning Danny, Ben and Anja headed early towards Krakau (Krakow) to stop at Auschwitz and Birkenau. However, Franzi and I didn't fancy to visit a concentration and death camp between Christmas and new years holidays. Thus, we enjoyed the great weather while visiting Breslau's university quarter and climbed the Cathedral of St John the Baptist to have a great view over the city. Then we drove to Krakau with a short coffee-stop in Gleiwitz (Gliwice) before staying at Tramp Aparthostel. Unfortunately, it was cold and misty in Krakau.
Still, Krakau's old center is even more gorgeous than Breslau's and we were happy to see a Christmas market open^^ The city offers plenty of restaurants, bars and cafés... a great atmosphere! On 31st we visited the Wawel castle and the jewish Kaminiez quarter. The latter offers an even broader range of great restaurants and cafés :) We were unlucky as all tickets were sold out for the Couchsurfing party we wanted to go to. Still, we were lucky to reserve a dinner table at the awesome restaurant Pesto. There we had a delicious dinner before we had a super short countdown at the main market square, started the year off with sparkling wine and fireworks :D Happy new year 2014! Ben and Anja left early as they were still sick, while Danny, Franzi and I went for dancing before we had our first sleep in the new year :)

I, Danny and Ben in front of Breslau's town hall

Franzi in front of the sunset view over Breslau's market square from St Mary Magdalena church

 

 

Breslau's Cathedral of St John the Baptist

Find dwarfs throughout the city - funny gag^^

Cathedral of St John the Baptist

Cathedral Bridge

Franzi inspecting the locks at Cathedral Bridge

pretty^^

Locks at Cathedral Bridge

View from Cathedral of St John the Baptist

View over the cathedral islands from Cathedral of St John the Baptist

Krakau's Christmas market at the market square in front of St Mary Basilica

Sts Peter and Paul Church

Getting ready for the NewYearsEve show^^

2) Gdansk, Malbork, Torun, Poznan

Franzi and I continued our trip and drove from Sopot to Danzig (03.08.). It is a lovely hanseatic city. We slandered for several hours through the city, along all the amber stores. And we had much fun when running through a fountain and eating ice cream :)

Waterfront at the Motlawa river

 

Danzig's Neptune and the Lieschen that looks out of the window once a day

After Danzig we took another short beach time north east from Danzig. Later, we drove to Malbork to visit the famous Marienburg. The largest gothic fortress in Europe. The vista was stunning when the fortress was immersed in the golden late afternoon sun.

We then made our way till Torun where we stayed at PTTK Hostel, with an Eastern bloc feeling in and around it :P The next morning we slandered through the center, enjoyed breakfast in a cafè and later continued to Poznan. Both, Torun and Poznan, have really lovely city centers. Poznan is a bit bigger and offers some nice cathedrals as well :) We arrived back in Leipzig late at night...

Franzi in Torun's lovely center

Poznan's gorgeous and ...

pictures main square :)

1) Poland's Baltic Sea

Wednesday (31.07.), Franzi and I started for a long weekend trip towards Poland. The plan was to go till Danzig (Gdansk) via Poland's coast at the Baltic Sea and to return through the old cities of Malbork, Torun and Poznan.
We finished work, packed the car and carried a passenger until Berlin and stopped first in Stettin (Szczecin). The city welcomed us with old suburbs of the Eastern bloc. Most people were found gathered around bus stops... however, the city center was more welcoming :)
 

View over Settin's harbor. Including the typical Polish tv program ;)

 We slandered around the city for about 2 hours and continued towards Kolberg (Kolobrzeg), where we arrived after 11pm... officially it was too late to enter the campsite, but the gatekeeper turned a blind eye on that rule and let us in^^ Before we went to sleep we wanted to see the sea. On our short walk there, we had a quite frightening encounter with a wild boar :o
The next day (01.08.), we went to Kolberg's beach for some sun bathing and swimming... unfortunately, the beach was so packed that we decided to drive further where we might find less crowded beaches. While leaving Kolberg, we saw a funny sign "Military Market" and decided to have a look... plenty armored vehicles, tanks, rocket launchers... also knifes, rifles, old army badges... whatever your military heart desires :P

Wanna go on a ride?

Let's play a game...

We somehow misjudged the time we would need to drive in northern Poland... ~190km in 3.5hours - sux! Thus, we arrived at Slowinskis National Park late (6pm). Still, we walked to see the largest sand dune in the park. It took us 2h to get there, 30min at the stunning scenery and 2h back... it turned dark on our way back and we were kinda surprised when a huge shadow appeared in the woods. I stopped and Franzi's recognized "look there"... something the animal (another wild boar, but as huge as a bear) recognized, grunted aggressively and started running... due to the bad visibility it took me some time to see whether it ran towards or away from us. Luckily it decided for the latter... not sure when I was that frightened the last time :/ However, we were lucky that the parking place was still open - it kinda appeared like they were waiting for us^^

Fun on the way towards the biggest sand dune

The huge sand dune makes it way into the forest and leaves dried out trees behind

Great sunset on the way back

Next, we looked for a place to stay in Leba, the city next to the national park. It appeared like a city festival and we enjoyed some meat from a entire grilled pig :). After they told us that all of the city's rooms were booked, we were lucky and found one^^
The next morning (02.08.) we sought to enjoy some more beach and sun. Well, Leba's beach was even worse than Kolberg's... never seen such a packed beach. Now I know why I usually choose less touristy destinations^^ Still, the Poles have an interesting system of creating some privacy within the crowd of people - they raise a fence and build their own little beach home :P

The worst view of a beach I can imagine...

We enjoyed some fruits from the stores, a little swim and an hour of sun before we continued to the Hel peninsular. There we stopped for another swim and sunbath at the bay side of the peninsular and later another sunbath and walk on the outer side. The latter is the much better choice - superb and lonely beaches. We decided to drive until Sopot, arrived at night and camped there :)
The next day we went to Gdansk...