European Centre of Solidarity

The last year, with one of my Australian friends, I visited the museum dedicated to the Solidarity movement. The museum was called Roads to Freedom and it was meant to be only a temporary exhibition while the big museum European Centre of Solidarity was being built, next to the historic Gdansk Shipyard. We both were impressed by the exhibition and I was moved by the hard and dramatic times Poland went through and then emerged as a modern country with a great future. Yesterday, I went to the new Solidarity Centre to see the place and the new exhibition. I found the Centre very impressive, very well designed and the new exhibition even more moving.

The building does not meet with everybody’s approval, but I like it a lot. Some call it a rusty heap of scrap and indeed it makes such an impression. It is a very nicely stylized and sophisticated heap of scrap, though. The entrance to the centre is next to the main entrance of the shipyard. One has to pass the monument of the fallen ship yard workers, the workers of Gdansk those who started the end of communism. Approaching the place I get emotional, so much has happened here, I am grateful for the turn of events, grateful to all those who went through the extremely hard times that formed the new Poland while I was working on my personal career in Sydney. I am aware of being somewhat pathetic writing what I just did but this is the Polish part of me talking.

We entered the building and my friend said : barn!. I thought : wow! This is what it looks like, what do you think? A barn or a modern, spacious entrance?

This already inside the building

I never thought I would be that impressed by modern. Me, a lover of Florence!

The building has 6 levels and we decided to start from the top. The sixth floor. It is not really that much of a floor. It is most of all a roof with views over Gdansk.

In some distance from the museum there is another place one can see the 360 panorama of Gdansk. The Basilica of Saint Maries. They are like two brackets defining the Main Town of Gdansk - new and old.

It has been very dry and hot in Gdansk for more than one month. The roof vegetation suffered.

I think that it would be rather nice  to sit at the roof garden in one of the deck chairs having a chat with a friend looking Gdansk or reading a book. I may try it before I go back to Sydney.

There is also a great library I can visit to browse books before I decide to buy something. The book offers are endless in Poland and they are so nicely published that it is a pleasure to handle them. I find it rather easy to get carried away and buy more that I should.

The end of August is this time of when the whole Gdansk ad whole Poland should celebrate the victorious days of Solidarity that happened 35 years ago. There are celebrations and there are also painful manifestations of power and hate showing how divided Poland is these days. It saddens me.