Teutonic Nights | Lighting the Trip Fantastic
Naturally we’d end up a few miles from the Russian border this summer. It’s baking, and we mean fry-an-egg-on-the-pavement baking hot, but we’re cool as cucumbers on ice. As the temperature soars, so does our sense of anticipation. Burn! Home of Daniel Fahrenheit, electric Tricity it is. Radisson Blu. Blue is the new black. Breakfast has the eggs factor. Suite, the wow. The hotel hides behind a wildly flamboyant 17th century façade looking across Dlugi Darg. A street named desire.
At the epicentre of the province of Pomerania is Gdańsk| Gdynia | Sopot. The trinity that is Tricity. Gdańsk and Sopot are poles apart, or at least separated by a 30 minute taxi ride. The former is Poland’s most historic city, looping round the Motlawa River, all remade medieval dreams and spires; the latter is Poland’s most exclusive resort, embracing the Baltic Sea, all cream hued beaches and wind sculpted dunes. Sopot has nightclubs – lots of Pole dancers and last tangos. Gdynia is somewhere in between, by map and metaphor. It’s also worth heading to nearby Hel and back for spotting the haves and the have yachts.
Dr Paul Richards, Chairman of King’s Lynn Hanseatic Club, recognises an Anglo Polish connection: “Gdańsk and King’s Lynn were major trading partners in the 15th and 16th centuries.” Knowing both places well, he recommends, “The Maritime Museum on the River Motlawa – it includes the Great Crane of Zuraw. Also the very large brick church St Mary’s which isn’t far from there.” St Mary’s is purportedly the largest brick church in the world. He highlights Dlugi Darg as a street of great historic interest. Tricity is hot.
Right. Off to The Esteemed Graduates of International Academies of Fine Art Show in The Great Arsenal. The Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage goes to the talented young artist Aneta Kublik. She describes her apparently monochromatic work See Invisible, “The aim of my work is to show anxieties and fears, feelings that have no form or shape. To reveal the visibility of these abstract concepts I used a figurative representation of deer – animals immersed in fear. By limiting the palette of colours, I focussed on the right brush movement which creates animals, plants and landscapes emerging from the darkness. My works are seemingly black, but with the right light or perspective we can discover the image – its movement, shape and hidden colours.”
