Mercure Helios Torun 2m

Torun, 24-07-2001.

Torun surely has charm, a soul reaching touch of clasic admosphere that breaches the charactre of this ancient realm of the Teutonic Knights, small cobble-stoned streets overshadowed by mighty churches which ghotic appaerance makes me feel small and insignificant...

A ring of powerfull looking walls surrounding the inner city is testomony of my first visit to this ancient place. A light rain drizzling ...

... leave you almost in the middle of a trunk road E75, aka Kujawska street. Don't hang your hopes on it, though; it's a single carriageaway, although it's packed with cars and trucks so crossing it will be a challenge. Turn left and follow this road along a camping until you reach a crossroad with Piłsudskiego Street, and soon you'll find out that it's not a street but a huge bridge on the river Vistula. The Old Town will be on your right, you'll see it yourself anyway.

... lights up. I search for a non-smoking cabin (train is moderately full and my 2 backpacks take up lots of overhead space). Even in non-smoking cabins, people smoke. They just have to leave the cabin (these are couchettes? Which are individual cabins with 8 seats but can only fit 4 – 6 comfortably.). Smoking is in bars, clubs … I can't escape it.

Torun is a striking Gothic town. Unlike Gdansk and much of Poland, Torun was not devastated by bombing in ...

... For me, however, Torun will be remembered for having some of the best ice cream ever (I think I am obsessed with food considering the amount I have written about it in this blog). They have a lot of places that sell ice cream in Poland. A lot of them are just the soft serve machines but this ice cream shop in Torun just looked like it would have good ice cream. And it did. Absolutely amazing. So there you go, another food-filled blog about Poland.

The night I get to the ecclesiastic main town of Polan: Toruń. It has a medieval centre recognized by the UNESCO, and a huge Rynek with a nice town hall in the middle. This was the native town of Copernic, and lived for 7 years in one its houses. There is some teutonic castle in ruins and some protection walls. The river walk is also very ...

Back in the car we go and it's off to Lipno we go. We get there and get to the cemntary. Lines of cars and people everywhere. We survey the 2 sites and buy flowers and candles. We get to the the first stop and pay our respects. We than go to our 2nd stop and notice that someone has placed all these flowers on the grave (they were not there before). I'm pretty sure Dad and I were thinking the same thing. Who are these jack ass's placing all ...

... want to lose it because I don't want to commit fraud, but I want to claim something on my insurance. So anyway I got to Torun and my host met me straight away - he actually ran to where I was standing because he didn't want to be late - the thing was that I didn't have a time table, so I couldn't really care less about when he turned up. Nice to see that he was enthusiastic anyway. Because we were partying so much in Warsaw, I never managed to get time in to use the net and find a new ...

... from where the signal is generated from? I ask, because I got back to Lipno this afternoon and booted up my laptop...I had forgotten to turn Airport off, and lo and behold, I am currently on another free network! Now let's make this clear, Poland is not the most technologically advanced nation at the best of times, and Lipno is a tiny little country town of 10,000 people, in the middle of nowhere, near no big cities, with even dial-up internet prices something ridiculous like 2 ...

... ages and I was getting worried. I asked a few people and got blank looks then one girl came forward to practice her English. Just then we reached the first street I had written down and I knew where I was. She insisted that I get off there, as she knew she could help me. Then she wasn't sure which way I should go along the street but I knew that I needed to get off before the bus took its next turn so I wanted to follow the bus. She is going to ...

... me slid open and a guy grabbed my arm, pulling me in. He didn't speak English, but that didn't stop him from trying to have a conversation with me, which his friends thought hilarious. After some introductions and an explanation that they were going to Woodstock (not Torun, I was glad to hear), through Rafau and a girl whose name I didn't get (they spoke some basic, broken English), Witek (the one who'd pulled me in) declared "I love you, Adele ...