Day 7

Is it a Change-of-Scene, or is it a holiday? Or perhaps just madness?

A bit of both, I suppose. On Wednesday night last week I decided to take my chances with Omicron again, and booked a flight to Gdańsk. I went to bed feeling positive. 

Like everyone else, on Thursday I woke up to the news about Ukraine. Gdańsk is a good distance from western Ukraine and a long way from Kyiv. On the other hand it is only 50 miles from the Russian border at Kaliningrad.

Since then I had been trying to decide whether to cancel or not. Right up until this morning I was doing an hourly risk assessment, and of course various countries have been closing their airspace completely, or selectively.

Oddly enough, I would have preferred to go in the opposite direction to Portugal again, but the flight times were not as convenient. 

Anyway, here I am. 

I have been to Poland twice before, but for work and only to Warsaw back in 1998. Seeing some more of the country has been on my list for a while. 

My flight was late afternoon, which meant an evening arrival. Getting to the hotel and eating dinner was the limit of my ambitions. I have 3 full days here and travel home on Friday. 

There are refugees in the hotel, but I am not sure if they are staying here or if it is a kind of reception centre.

My Blip is Ryanair (alias Buzz) on arrival at Gdańsk 15 minutes early. It was lovely to step off the plane into that cold, dry Central European air. I miss it. The Extra is from the hotel restaurant. Some contraption made in Darmstadt - perhaps a relic from pre WW2 when the city was in Germany. I will have to investigate.