Peace with the past

It's -7c, freezing cold as I stand at the airport in Gdansk. The air is thick with acrid smell of smoke, most likely caused by burning coal for heating. It's early in the morning and I'm asking myself why did I return, I had sworn not to return for at least ten years or so. Oh yes, the bank account that must be closed. No time like present, so I make my way to Polski Bank at the airport and kindly ask the lady there to close my account that has been generating loss since I transferred all the zlotys to my Finnish bank account. I've got all the documents prepared, everything anyone might want to see but in the end they only need my passport and voila, mu account has been closed and I've got a new document with a bright red stamp to make it official. I don't even need to pay the outstanding fees on the account. No kurwa, I can assure you life wasn't this easy when I was actually living in the country.

Poland has developed a lot in the past decade but Soviet past is still never far 

 I left Poland in August, being stressed, tired and fed up with my life and myself. I only felt an enormous amount of relief to be on my way. I felt like nothing in Poland had worked, it had been a struggle to get anything done. Being back in Poland for holidays I came to notice that most of that unhappiness must have been a direct result of the problems we had at work. I won't deny Poland is a challenging country to live in, but I would still claim that the stress I was experiencing at the office made me think, act and eventually be a person I am not and that affected every aspect of life making me unsatisfied with everything I had or did not have. So, back to the holiday story. The holiday opened my eyes to see Gdansk in a light I had never seen it before, or hadn't wanted to see it before. I decided to write a holiday post about Poland.

My journey back to my formed home city continued from the airport to Wrzeszcz (and I cannot guarantee the spelling), nowadays a fashionable district but where- the rumor has it- cars were being burnt in the night not so many years ago. Today Wrzeszcz offers e.g. an extremely lovely vegan restaurant called Avocado, where you can eat a healthy and tasty meal for 5 euros. Vegan ingredients might be a bit difficult to find and the selection is not that wide but in my opinion in Gdansk it is quite easy to find vegan restaurants. At least easier than in my present home country Ireland :D
In addition to Avocado, there's also shopping mall Galeria Baltycka in Wrzeszcz where you can burn money or kill time, depending on which one you happen to have at your disposal. Galeria Baltycka has everything starting with H&M and finishing with Tommy Hilfiger, so it's entirely up to you to decide the price level. I won't even try to guess if good old Tom is any cheaper here since being chronically poor, I did not dare to go that close to temptation.

Stuffed eggplant at Avocado 

And then of course we have the Baltic Sea about which I have been continuously writing back when I was living in Gdansk. Baltic Sea was one of the things I wanted to see during my short holiday and I spent one day walking from Sopot to Gdanks. The "beach boulevard" felt very familiar, I had been walking the same route time after time with my friend. We used to go there for evening walks, after all we were living very close to the beach.

From Sopot to Gdansk

The beach used to be our sanctuary here in Gdansk, we were living very close to it. In this former home city of mine I used to walk and exercise a lot more than in Ireland and I was a really thin girl when I left. WAS.

My old home, Jagiellonska 10

Grey, the fashionable color of the era- these days these grey monsters are painted with cheerful colors, there are renovations going on everywhere in the city

I felt melancholic walking by my old home. The building was built during Soviet era and it doesn't really look all that tempting and home-like but the location was very convenient at the rent relatively cheap. In the past these massive buildings were mushrooming everywhere partly because "big" and "massive" where the operating words of the ideology and partly because the apartments were badly needed to accommodate people flooding from the countryside to the cities to find work. I don't know if this tale is true, that's what I've been told by a friend. My apartment was a concrete box inside of which most things were a bit or a lot worn but it had a certain charm of the bygone days and I liked it.

Even if the concrete boxes offer a relatively cheap accommodation, these beach villas in Sopot cannot be rented with a kid's weekly allowance. 

We went to see the Christmas Fair in Old Town and happened to witness a demonstration against some legislative changes. I don't know anything about Poland's politics so I won't write more about it, It will suffice to say that people participated with enthusiasm.

The demonstration 

I never thought I would miss the crowded Polish supermarkets where you have to fight your way to the cashier as people don't seem to know how to queue. As my friend once said, in Poland the queue is actually a row and the fastest goes first. First come, first served. Despite this small inconvenience I found myself wandering in Biedronka and E-Leclerc. When I used to do my grocery shopping here I felt annoyed because I was unable to read the labes but now I notied that actually, I was not. I can still remember the most common things I used to buy in Polish. And there's always the package and pictures on it to help you to find what you're looking for. Well, all in all my holiday was a great experience and I had also time to relax and meet my friends, In the end, you miss the people you've left behind most. And surely I am going to return to Poland for holidays if I stop getting poor in the future.

It's not recommended to jump to the sea

Old Town dressed for Christmas