Do you like towers? Gdańsk has plenty. When I got up from my late afternoon nap (getting old) it was already after 5:30 so I calculated how much daytime there was left to sketch as much as possible, and so here’s what I did. First I went through the big gateway at the end of Długa and stood by the busy Okopowa main road, looking up at the imposing tower of, er, that place I mentioned a couple of posts ago, Przedbramie ulicy Długiej. Well the bit in front, that’s the Torture House. It was not torture to draw though, I long to sketch these types of buildings. Not torture houses, I mean, just big impressive buildings with interesting towers and not too many windows. The sky was a delight; you don’t know how refreshing it is to come to Europe and draw these dramatic skies after so many boring blue skies in California. In Davis we either have months of blue, or a few months of fog with blue days in between, and relatively few of the sort of cloudy-blue sky days I grew up with. I like painting them, but they are more interesting when there is some cool city scene below them. Often I decided not to colour the buildings in (sometimes I colour those in later if I haven’t the time, or not if I can’t be bothered) but all of these were coloured there and then, to capture what my eyes were telling me. Poland, well this part of Europe in general, has some of the most incredible towers, not just church steeples but on the civic buildings the most, and I especially love the green copper towers, they remind me of the ones I saw all over Copenhagen when I first arrived there in 1995.

This is the view down Ulica Długa towards the big town hall / museum of Gdansk building that I drew the previous night. It’s such a massive impressive building, I ended up drawing it three times from three different angles. It’s a popular and busy street this, always decked out in flags of the city of Gdańsk. I saw a number of historical photos of Długa, including one from after Nazi Germany invaded and Hitler paraded down here, with swastikas draped from these very buildings. I got many more reminders of those dark moments of history on this trip, especially while walking around Berlin, but the last time I was in Poland 27 years before I had visited Auschwitz, and that disturbed me so deeply, I never want to go back. Długa (Long Lane; Langegasse in German) was laid out in the 13th century and forms part of the ‘Royal Route’, but many of the big stone buildings are 16th century, though many were severely damaged in 1945 and rebuilt later. I stood out of the way next to a restaurant to sketch behind a lamp-post. I could have spent the rest of the evening sketching the old buildings along Długa but I wanted to go into the Old Town, and draw some more towers.

The tall brick tower above is called the Jacek Tower, and I stood next to a newspaper kiosk to draw it while the light was still good. It was next to a very ornate looking market hall that at first I thought was a train station, called ‘Hala Targowa’; on another day I would be sketching that place. Speaking of shops, one of the place I loved most in Poland were the Zabka convenience stores, which were everywhere. And I was well pleased for it. They always seemed to pop up just when I needed a snack or a cold drink, and it was while sketching this that I got what might be my favourite fizzy drink – Pineapple Pepsi Max. Those who know me know full well that I love a Pepsi Max, and I also loved Lilt, the pineapple and grapefruit drink that used to have those great Jamaican music adverts back in the 90s. Sadly Lilt is no more. However in Poland they have Pineapple Pepsi Max, and that may have been the discovery of the trip for me. Ok technically it is ‘Pepsi Zero Sugar’ like it was renamed in the US, but I still call it Pepsi Max. They have Mango Pepsi Max too, but that wasn’t as good as Pineapple. Anyway Jacek Tower (Baszta Jacek) was built in the 15th century as part of the medieval city’s fortifications, and you can still see a lot of bullet holes in the brickwork. ‘Jacek’ is Jacek Odrowąż, aka Saint Hyacinth of Poland, who was a priest and missionary in the 13th century. Yes yes I also thought about Hyacinth Bucket when I read the name, and that the tower was really keeping up appearances, ok that’s out of the way. Apparently there is a Polish phrase that goes, “Święty Jacku z pierogami!”, which means “Saint Hyacinth and his Dumplings!”, which means, well, it’s probably the Polish version of “Gordon Bennett!” or maybe even “I Don’t Believe It!” (wait, wrong show). I decided to draw this in pencil, but actually wish I’d gone for pen, like the other sketches I’d been doing. I was just really taken by the late evening sunlight still bathing the tower against the sky. Still, I wanted to press on and draw some more towers before dark. They were the only parts of the buildings the sun was still shining on.

The next two above were drawn in quick succession, very close to the Jacek Tower. The first one is the tower of the ridiculously tall Muzeum Nauki Gdańskiej (I had to concentrate writing that down), which was another big museum, this time of Science. I would very much have liked to spend some time in there and was ruing my limited days in the city, but life is only so long and I had a symposium to get to the next day. It was tall though. Actually I think the museum was just part of the building, as the tower was part of a large church called St. Catherine’s (or Kościół Rektorski Ojców Karmelitów pw. św. Katarzyny, and yeah I had to look that up because there was no way I was writing all that down in my sketchbook). There was a statue nearby of a famous 17th century astronomer and native of Gdansk, Jan Heweliusz (Johannes Hevelius). That statue and the little park it is in sit before the old town hall building (Ratusz Staromiejski) which houses the ‘Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kultury’ (I wrote that down from the sign above the door) which means ‘Baltic Sea Cultural Center’. My Polish guesswork is getting slightly better, it must have been the Pineapple Pepsi Max. The sky was absolutely positively going towards night-time now, so I headed back to my hotel for a brief rest before some night-time sketching (see my last post). I was satisfied with my sketchbooking, but there’s always more.

The next morning, after not sleeping very well (nice hotel, uncomfortable bed) I had planned to get a few hours of drawing in before my train, but noticed it was raining so had a lie-in. After a leisurely breakfast and a short workout in the gym I went out to stand in a doorway and draw the big old Ratusz Głównego Miasta tower again, this time from behind some pretty buildings. One place I didn’t sketch, the huge basilica across from my hotel, but it was so big I thought, leave it, next time. Givent hat it was 27 years since my previous trip to Poland there’s no knowing when ‘next time’ will be but the Pineapple Pepsi Max is a pretty big draw. I was getting a few raindrops on me while sketching this, so took my book back to my hotel room and painted it while sat at a desk, much comfier. Then I walked out to the train station, Gdańsk Główny. This was yet another beautiful building, though I was most disappointed not to find any Pineapple Pepsi Max in the building and had to make do with another less satisfying fizzy drink for my journey to Poznan. I am glad I arrived early, as it was a little confusing as to where my train would be leaving from, but I still had time to do a quick sketch of the station (below). I mean, I have sketched some train stations in my time but this one is pretty nice, from a tie when cities took real pride in how they looked to visitors. And that was my brief trip to Gdansk, now on to Poznan, and I should stop forgetting the little accent above the ‘n’ (I do have to copy-paste it every time, bloody WordPress editor not having the Special Characters button any more, and I don’t have a Polish keyboard). I told my mum and sister about Gdansk, and they must have been impressed because they came here themselves for a short city-break just after Christmas, taking the pirate ship, walking about the old town, and even getting a massive snowstorm that made everything look Christmassy (and presumably very slippery). I would come back to Gdansk, and maybe explore the shipyards and museums a bit more, but well, I want to go everywhere and draw everything.

And if you thought that I was travelling to a new city and not sketching a fire hydrant…well you’re wrong, here is one I sketched right after drawing the first sketch in this post. It’s a tower after all. The hydrants here are tall and more like ornate bollards. Stay tuned for my sketches of Poznań!