Yes, am back in the fair British Isles (well, not so fair actually - the weather today was more Polish than Gdansk) after a fantastic trip to Poland. Still a bit stunned by how good it was - even the dreaded "meet the parents" went amazingly well! Not only did I not vomit through vodka consumption with J's dad, I even managed to vaguely impress him as I lasted on the first night until 1.30am, despite having been up since 3 the previous morning. Hardcore, us Irish, dontcha know.
I did notice the odd funny thing though - such as the entire plane (bar me) applauding when we landed in Gdansk.... I just had a wistful/condescending smile on my face as I thought back to early holidays with my parents in the 80s, when plane travel was still novel enough for the Northern Irish contingent to do the same as we touched down in Malaga. It's kind of nice to do it - after all, a couple of blokes have just successfully made a big heavy lump of metal travel through the air and landed it safely hundreds of miles away without killing a couple of hundred people - they deserve applause! But then I suppose the London Underground drivers would start getting the hump if we didn't do it for them and go on strike, after which everyone would have to applaud when they got off, which would mean massive raucous whoopin' and a hollerin' at every station. But I digress.
Another weird thing is that you don't pay on the bus according to the length of your journey - you pay for the amount of time you're sat on it. At the beginning of your journey. Not great for a tourist, and probably not great if you don't happen to know exactly what the traffic situation is like before you leave the house.
Gdansk Old Town is really purdy though, as you'll see if you bother trawling through the photos I'll post a link to. Lots of pictures of pretty buildings and the pier at Sopot, which is a seaside town next to Gdansk. Apparently it's the longest in Europe. But then, allegedly the main church in Gdansk is the tallest in Europe, which seems a bit greedy. It is awfully high though.
The language barrier between me and the folks proved not to be an issue, thanks to Justyna's exemplary translation skills, her mum's English vocabulary which exactly correlated with the amount of alcohol consumed, and a hitherto unrealised talent of yours truly for wildly expressive facial expressions and body language. We bascially went out for a couple of drinks in the evenings, before coming back, eating huge amounts of Polish food, drinking vodka and having a great time into the wee small hours. And I don't think I put my foot in it once. Well, apart from the time in an attempt to get a point across I spoke two lines of German, which was met with a bit of an embarrassed silence. A life in the diplomatic corps does not beckon.
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