Yesterday, Malbork / Today, Masuria

(More beautiful pictures of beautiful Gdansk--early in the morning and late at night--are here.)  

Yesterday, the plan was to go to visit Malbork, the enormous brick fortress of the Teutonic Knights, early in the day, and then have time to do something else in the late afternoon.

Well, problem number one was that the train we picked never showed up.  Yep, just didn't show up.  And we weren't the only ones confounded.  There were 3 German tourists who were also trying to take the train ... and probably Polish people too, but they weren't as confused as we were.

So, we all had to wait 2 more hours until the next train.  Which, of course, was late.  Emma and I had been warned that Polish trains are often late.  (Adriana said that sometimes they are delayed because people steal the tracks ...)  So, when the second train was announced to be an hour late, we thought, "Well, that's better than having a train just disappear."  But the German guys gave up.  Wimps.

This means the train is late.

As it turned out, we got to Malbork just fine--only a couple of hours later than planned.

The castle itself--Europe's largest Gothic castle--is enormous and incredibly impressive.  (Emma points out that there probably aren't many Gothic castles outside of Europe ...)  My understanding of the history of the Teutonic Knights in this area is that they were invited in, in order to quell the pagan Prussians, who were causing the Christian Poles a lot of trouble. The Teutonic Knights decided to set up shop permanently in the area, and in 1307 moved their headquarters there.  Unfortunately, their strategy included attacking and dominating the very people who had invited them there.  They were finally ousted by the Poles in 1437.

(More pictures here.)

According to our guidebook, the only way to see the castle is with a guided tour, but they must have changed the rules since last year, because they let us just go in on our own.  They don't make it easy, though. It's a huge complex, and there aren't any maps, there are few written explanations, and there aren't enough audiotours to go around.  Fortunately, we had Rick Steves on our side:  his travel guide gives a room-by-room accounting that was pretty decent.

Thank you, Rick!  (Or "Steve," as we like to call him.)

After those experiences with the train, we decided to change our reservation for the first of our two trains today to an earlier train, just so we'd have some breathing room to make our connection in the likely event that the first train was late.  Everything went smoothly, though ... And now we are here in the middle of Masuria, surrounded by forests and lakes.  We haven't done much more than walk around a bit and eat dinner in the overpriced restaurant, but the woman at the reception desk promises that we can ride bikes or rent canoes tomorrow . . .