Music Fest in Gdynia

Heineken Open'er Festival 2007! Camping with one small down pour to make things interesting. Otherwise it was BBQ's, sunshine and live music. What fun.

The festival was held at an old airfield at Babie Doly.



We caught the train from Gdansk to Gdynia and then bused the rest of the way.

Baby Doly is on the north coast of Poland so we could walk and see the Baltic Sea. I put my feet in it and got ankle ice cream ache! A few silly buggers went swimming in it. I imagine that they were a pickled on vodka.



It was my first true back packing and camping European adventure. I really enjoyed stooging around the streets of Gdansk and making geeky visits to the museum to find out more about the local history. Unfortunately most of the information was in Polish or German so I didn't learn a lot.

Food was really cheap but very nice. We went to a fancy restaurant where we sang along with a pianist who knew heaps of movie theme tunes and show tunes. A real "you hum it and I'll play it" experience. He even played Rufus Wainwright's "Hallelujah" he gave us a round of applause when we sang it.

Wild boar, Pierogi (vege or meat filled dumplings) hot beetroot soup, frosty freeze ice creams about a foot tall (Lody) were all interesting and delicious!


Camping was good. We had a complete set of tent pegs which made things better than my last camping effort in Roxburgh. (Having a set of screwdrivers was ever so helpful!!) Clare and I were the slowest to erect our tent and we managed to choose the spot that got a big puddle right outside our door when it rained.

This gave a nice waterbed effect inside the tent until I found a spade and dug a drain.



We purchased disposable BBQ's and attempted to cook sausages. Polish sausages are very thick and only 1/2 the embers on the BBQ would go at one time despite huffing and puffing to get them going.



It was a focus nevertheless and provided us with some warmth. I did my best to support the festival sponsor. Partly because it became increasingly difficult to smuggle in vodka as they would check bags at the gate.

The music itself was great. The highlight for me was Bjork and Icelandic Brass Band. They really rocked out. With the help of some amazing technology tehy replaced the usual swirly graphics and stuff displayed on the big screens with digital DJ decks and a Reactable which looked a but like a fortune telling device.

So to conclude as if I were a tourism adviser. Go to Gdansk. Cheap sweet people, quality food and drink and lovely scenery.

POLAND - Gdynia and Gdansk

What a lovely country. Well the small part that I saw of it anyway!

Our main objective when visiting Poland was to buy Zubrowka bison grass flavoured vodka and to see the artists performing at the Heineken Open er Festival.

We succeeded in drinking many kinds of vodka, lots of cheap beer and not only to rock out on the mud covered arena but see some nice historic buildings.

The town that we stayed in was pretty much destroyed thanks to both Axis and Allied invastions. Many of the beautiful buildings and courtyards have been rebuilt.

St Mary's church has been a major project in Gdansk. It has massive and ornate pieces like the organ you can see below and the glass window. Not all the windows have been replaced but there is the odd panel of coloured glass that has survived which is scattered amongst regular coloured glass. It made me wonder what a mess the church must have been.

The streets were cobbled with stairways leading up to the shops on either side. A dog barked out the shutters on the second floor between flower pots.

We talked to a German visitor who said that although the older locals speak German they would not speak to him. Gdansk was actually renamed by the German's to Danzig. I'm not sure when it returned to the original name. This was common all throughout Poland.