Once, not so long ago, Poland’s primary seaport was a rather grim and gritty place. Blue-collar to the bone, cranes dominated the skyline, and warehouses, increasingly derelict, crowded the waterfront. Stolid, lunchbox-bearing workers marched off, en masse, to the city’s famous shipyards. While I’m sure it had its pleasures, this was not a place synonymous with fun.
But times have changed—rather dramatically—in Gdansk. It is located near the Baltic Sea and home to about half a million people. Like other ports (and other urban centers in this part of the world), history here is long, complicated, and fascinating. Gdansk has been a Free City, a member of the Hanseatic League—an extensive medieval trading network—and also part of the German Empire (when it was known as Danzig). And it was the birthplace of Solidarity, a trade union and mass movement that shook the foundations of communism across the Eastern Bloc.
