A few years ago, I was going from Poland to Mumbay, with some cargo to be unloaded in Karachi, on the way. Mumbay was called Bombay, and I liked it better so. In Poland, I was with a ship in a common wharf placed equally between Gdynia and Gdansk. Here are my “adventures” in Gdansk, the medieval city, relatively fresh “freed” from Soviet influence. Nice city, very nice, even if I was still under the influence of Bretagne and the Brittons from Brest, :).
General view over Gdansk, Poland
First of all, I headed to the nearest city like ensemble. It was something like a neighborhood, close to the port gates, so it was no need to hire a taxi. Usually a taxi is good before you learn the way to move around, but this is very useful in France, not in Poland. The former commies service providers were lacking scruples when they met capitalist flags. I found quick enough a supermarket. This is something which appears first in a “free capital flow” medium. Polish vodka was still famous, I missed it a little, remembering I was buying it on the black market, not many years before, so with a thirst of over two days, for the sake of old times, I took a pack of beers and two bottles of the white spirit. One goal was to talk to my father, and another one was to talk to someone else. Back to the ship, in my cabin, the chief mate (a Greek) and the electrician, another Romanian, waited the liquor. The Greek was ok, he had work to do, the cargo was complicated, he had to supervise, so he went and came, sipping with no speed from his crystal tumbler. Not the same with the electrician. His measure was the bottle itself, not a mere 10 cl tumbler. With beer to chase, he finished almost alone the first bottle. I grabbed a beer and went around to find some public telephone cards. This wasn’t good. Amazingly enough, for you maybe, not for me, this was forbidden fruit, as well as the telephones. Not a functional phone in a five Miles radius. I managed to find a ten minutes card. Not two, unfortunately, they were rara avis. Oh, everywhere in this world, except on Sundays, I couldn’t leave the ship before five o’clock PM. My duties were of that nature, and actually it wasn’t strictly necessary. Only in Brazil, one couldn’t change money after that hour, in France the small shops were closing, and so on. I can’t remember something else.. oh, but yes! THE BANKS were closing at five! Everywhere! In that specific Polish port, the nearest post office was already closed. I found finally a phone, talked to my dad who recently retired and quit smoking, so the ten minutes ran out in a breath. And a beer. One of the two I had. Back to ship, I thought, I’ll have some more vodka and a beer or two and I’ll take a taxi with the electrician. This one haven’t been fine with all until the second bottle was finished. After that he had a shower, after that he had another two beers and then he said “Let’s go to the city!”. It was 8 PM. We found a taxi. The driver, told me it would have been fine to make a tour, to the shipyard, where Walesa was visiting and having a speech. He was “home” there. “I forgot the camera”, I said, and I wanted to turn back. “We’ll loose the President” the driver said. “Without camera, I don’t care about the guy”, I added, so I told him to hurry. Of course until we came back on the road, and close to the shipyard, the official column was leaving. The driver was nervous. “Which city?” he asked. “Gdansk, of course, how comes, which city?” “It’s the same distance, there is Gdansk and there is Gdynia”, he said. We went to Gdansk. What would I care of Gdynia? It was dark, it was CLOSED. Not any decent restaurant open. The electrician boasted and boasted of how nice the architecture was. I didn’t care. I couldn’t find another phone card. The rain started. I went to hotels, I went to where I saw a light on, it was surrealistic. I went in a cheap bar, I don’t even imagine how it was open at that hour, and I wanted a vodka bottle. It was over one AM. I was upset. What you think it happened? The bartender asked me languid: “Do you like a phone card as well?”
Gdansk by night, before midnight, 🙂
[both pictures are from yahoo images as long as Google was not working at the moment I wrote. I don’t have my own, I forgot to tell you that I couldn’t find a film, either, that rainy night – morning, :)]
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