Sea, snow and fireworks - New Year's in Sopot

In the north-east of Poland, on the Baltic coast, lies Gdansk Bay.  At its northernmost point is the Hel peninsula, a huge populated sandbank stretching 30-odd kilometres into the sea to form a barrier from the worst of the stormy waters, and at its southerly extremity lies the estuary of the Vistula river that flows just over a thousand kilometres from the Beskidy mountains (close to the Czech border).  On the shores of the bay lie the Trojmiasto (the Three Cities) of Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia. 

The southernmost (and the largest of these) is Gdansk, formerly the Prussian Hanseatic port of Danzig, and home of the Solidarity Revolution in the 1980s that ultimately spread throughout the country and brought about the downfall of Communism.  In its heyday it was a major shipbuilding centre but funding problems and antiquated machinery and practices have led to a collapse of the industry in recent years as capitalism has replaced communism and its huge state subsidies (and captive Soviet market).  The northernmost is the port city of Gdynia, still providing ferry services across the cold sea to Sweden and other Baltic states, and an increasingly prosperous tourist destination.  I worked there for a year or so back in 2001-2, staying in the Nadmorski Hotel right on the beach, and thoroughly enjoyed it.  In fact, Gdynia was the first major town outside Warsaw that I ever visited, in the summer of 2001 for a weekend, staying in a very cheap but comfortable hostel close to the central railway station.  I remember spending a pleasant couple of hours drinking cold draught Tyskie beer at a beachside bar watching scantily clad beauties playing beach volleyball in 30C sunshine and thinking Poland was not such a bad place at all….

Between the two rapidly modernizing port cities lies the third of the Trojmiasto, Sopot.  In contrast to its larger neighbours, Sopot retains a run-down and scruffy elegance from its early 20^th century heyday as the health resort frequented by the rich and famous from across Poland and Germany.  After the Second War, it remained a leisure resort for the Communist leadership and with their downfall its popularity as a seaside resort has remained.  It may lack the busy ports and shopping malls of Gdansk and Gdynia (although that is changing, with a new shopping complex close to the pier), but its beaches are perhaps cleaner and its hotels and bars generally more atmospheric – less modern, certainly, but pleasant for all that.  At its centre lies the Molo, stretching some 515 metres out into the sea (and in total some 650 metres long), and the longest wooden pier in Europe.  Unlike a typical Victorian English pier, it lacks the tacky amusement arcades and seafront theatres, and instead is little more than a place to stretch the legs and take the sea-air, but at the beach end there is a selection of souvenir and jewellery stores specialising in Baltic amber creations, and some good seafood restaurants.  Right next door sprawls the Sheraton Hotel complex, and next to that the older and perhaps more luxurious Grand Hotel, both with their own private beach areas and expensive dining.

 Sopot in the snow

It’s a nice little town, and this year, just for a change, we made the 400 kilometre drive to stay there and welcome 2015.

The drive was good, on quiet highways, although the weather could have been better.  It was a cold day, so there was patchy fog throughout the journey.  Then about 40 kilometres south of our exit we ran into snow, and by the time we came into Sopot it was near blizzard conditions.  The road down from the highway winds through a pleasant forest parkland, so it was very pretty even if the road itself was treacherous.

We stayed at the Pensjonat Eden – more of a guest house than a hotel – situated in the town centre just a couple of hundred metres from the beach and pier.  If you look at Tripadvisor there are some very negative reviews, complaining about unfriendly staff, poor repair and decoration in the rooms, and a lack of amenities.  Look at the hotel’s website and some of this is justified – the hotel, especially the outside, could do with a lick of paint, and by modern standards the rooms are perhaps not the best: we had a family room that was not much more than a modern double room but squeezed in a double bed and a convertible sofa bed as well as a table and two armchairs and a toilet/bathroom.  But it had a balcony and sea view, and was warm enough.  And everything worked ok.

 The Pensjonat Eden

 Nice staircase....

To expect more of a hotel that is a hundred years old and run for most of that time as a family business is to me a little unreasonable.  The Eden is not a Sheraton or a Grand or a Sofitel or any of the other global brands, and does not pretend to be.  It is what it is – a guest house close to the sea, and should be judged by those standards, not those of the hotel chain.  Taken that way, then it has a quiet and homely ambience, and an old fashioned comfort and charm missing completely from bigger and newer places, and for me that is part of the attraction.  I’ve stayed in hotels all over the world, and sometimes it’s difficult to tell them apart, to distinguish the Sheraton from the Sofitel.  Every Sheraton has its Someplace Else restaurant and piano bar, serving the same menu.  Stay in one boxy Holiday Inn double room and you’ve stayed in them all.  Nothing wrong with that – they serve the market very well and I’m happy to use them.  But they can be soul-less places.  

The Eden is none of that.  The Reception area is small and not at all hi-tech, but the receptionist was friendly and welcoming and spoke excellent English (always an advantage wherever you go).  Step into the hotel and you are confronted with a massive open staircase winding its way up like something out of Hogwarts.  At the top of the stairs is a massive skylight, covered in snow during our visit but in summer it must illuminate the whole place beautifully.  To the right is a big dining room, and beyond that a bar and lounge area full of old furniture and paintings and leading onto a pleasant enough terrace (again, one for warm summer evenings).  I found the place a delight, and without question would stay there again.

 The dining room and lounge area

We settled in and dressing up warmly went for a stroll across the beach and along the pier.  To this Englishman there is something inherently unreal about ankle deep snow on a sandy beach.  It’s jusr…..wrong.  Beaches should be somewhere to strip off and swim, and relax with a good book and a cold beer, and get comfortably sunburned.  They should not be a place where you need to swaddle yourself with scarves and woolly hats and gloves and thick winter coats and waterproof boots and thermal socks, unless they lie north of the Arctic Circle or south of its Antarctic brother.  The snow is bad enough, the film of ice rapidly forming along the surf line (the sea itself was millpond flat, and lapped gently against the freezing shore) surreal.  But that is the reality of the Baltic coast.  I still haven’t got used to it.  

 Ally and her snow rabbit

 Just a few of the Sopot swans

Paddling maybe 50 feet or so offshore were flocks of seagulls and ducks and improbably the better part of 20 swans, looking ghostly in the faint moonlight and illuminations from the pier.  The beach itself was pretty much deserted, and we only stayed a few minutes before climbing the steps to the pier.  We walked its length to the deserted marina complex at the end, full in summer months with small sailing boats and motor cruisers.  Along the coast we could see the bright lights of Gdansk and Gdynia, and a kilometre or two offshore some larger Baltic shipping anchored in the bay.  They were still there the following night, New Years’ Eve, and must have had a wonderful view of the firework displays all along the coast.  We took some pictures then headed back onshore and found a fish restaurant next to the Grand Hotel complex and right on the beach.  I remember going there one hot summers night several years ago with my wife and a group of friends and it was a disco then, and I gave my creaking joints a bit of a jig about between beers.  It’s now been converted, unless the disco has moved upstairs, and is a modern and light and airy beachside restaurant that served a delicious seafood menu.  I had a very pleasant salmon tartare with cottage bread and salad, and a main of cod with fried potatoes and mixed vegetables, all washed down with a couple of pints of mulled beer (that is to say heated and infused with a selection of herbs and raspberry juice – very pleasant and it warms you up beautifully when you are cold, as we were).  

The next day, armed with a bag of bread leftovers from our late breakfast, we headed to the beach again to feed the birds.  There were far more swans than we had thought, getting on for 50 I should think, a similar number of ducks and hundreds of gulls, and the bread didn’t last long.  In seconds we found ourselves surrounded by them, squabbling amongst themselves for the scraps we were feeding them, like a scene from Hitchcock’s classic movie The Birds, but they were friendly enough and delighted the kids by taking the bread right out of their hands.  

 Food all gone, sorry....

After that, we had a walk round the town, looking for sparklers to light to see the New Year in but by the time we found a shop that sold them it had closed for the night.  On our wanderings we stopped for a while at what looked, from the outside, like a cheap and cheerful café serving zapiekanka (a long French bread stick, cut in half, topped with tomato sauce, grated cheese and a selection of meats – ham, salami, bacon -, chopped onions and mushrooms, and then grilled), various soups and pierogi, but it was expensive and disappointing.  My zapiekanka may have been half a metre long and filling but it was also overcooked throughout and charcoaled at both ends.  We found a better place perhaps a hundred metres further up the street that served up better food at half the price.  Ah well – you win some, you lose some.  Later we found another place that sold gofry, which is a delicious toasted waffle with a big selection of toppings like powdered sugar and jam, through about twenty different fresh fruits and whipped cream, to the inevitable kid’s favourite of thickly applied Nutella chocolate spread.  My two would live on the things if we let them.

In the evening, after a warm up bottle of wine in the room, we dressed up again and headed for the pier for the celebrations.  By 11:30 the pier was full of revellers along pretty much its entire length, and more crowds thronged the circle of shops at the landward end.  We parked ourselves there, nudging our way through to the seating so that the kids could see what was going on.  The fireworks were set up on the beach to the south, the usual batteries of rockets and huge roman candles and so on.  There was no countdown, but at midnight the first battery shot skywards and everyone broke open the cans of beer, bottles of wine and champagne, amid hugs and kisses and cheering.  We could see similar displays all along the coast into Gdansk to the south and northward to Gdynia.  I had hoped we would also see the displays out along the Hel peninsula too, out across the bay, but we were a little too far south to make them out.  But it was a spectacular display, and went on for a good twenty minutes. 

 Happy New Year.......

 ....to you all!

We headed back to the hotel through the park, swigging cheap champagne from the bottle (except the kids, who had Lipton’s Iced Tea instead).  In the park we paused for a while to set off a small bunch of cheap fireworks one of our crew had brought along, and built a small snowman before all the snow had melted (it had got warmer during the day and a thaw had set in).  Back at the hotel, we had another drink and some snacks, and crashed out about 1:30 or 2:00 a.m.  It had been a good day and an entertaining evening.

 The last drop.....Robs had it all.....

The next day we slept very late, but the dining room was still open when we went down for breakfast.  We picked up another bag of cast-off bread and cakes, then packed and loaded the cars for the drive home.  The snow had all gone by now, but it was a damp and miserable day, hungover like the rest of us, but the birds were pleased to see us when we went back to the beach to give them a final meal.  After that, we had another stroll around the little half circle of souvenir and jewellery stalls that were set up at the foot of the pier, and picked up a few gifts and bits to take back with us.

The drive home was fine but for much of the trip we were battling high crosswinds that made it a battle to keep a straight line, especially overtaking the convoys of TIR trucks heading south from the docks in Gdansk and Gdynia.  But again, just over four hours, including a comfort break and a burger break at McDonalds on the highway about half way home and close to Torun, was pretty good time and we were indoors by tea time.

It was a good trip, and good value for money, but I’m sorry, snow on the beach is just WRONG. 

CIA Torture and a look forward to 2015

So now we know.  

What many people have suspected for years is now officially recognized by the Senate report on CIA activities – post 9/11, torture has been used in a vain attempt to obtain “information” from detainees to make America safe.  No matter that under UN Charters, torture is illegal.  No matter that there is no irrefutable evidence that any of the information gained under torture has added anything useful to information already available through other means.  No matter that the US has roundly condemned other countries like Saddam’s Iraq, Gaddafi’s Libya, and Assad’s Syria for employing torture as a means to an end – it has been doing precisely the same thing.   But of course, that’s different – the US are the good guys, and Saddam, Gaddafi and Assad Muslims, sponsors of al-Qaeda and therefore bad guys.

Bull.  This is just another example of the hypocrisy and arrogance that is rapidly destroying any good reputation the US may once have had in world affairs.  It’s no more than affirmation that actually America is, right now, an ailing country in urgent need of treatment.

This has been the case for years – arguably, in fact, from its first colonization by white European settlers.  Then, the enemy was the native American, who was the wrong colour, wore very little in the way of clothing and had never heard of God, never mind worshipped him.  So of course the “New” Americans – British, Dutch and other Europeans until Independence - wasted little time in sorting out that little difficulty by a wholesale slaughter using weapons that were superior to anything the Natives possessed.  It was a process that continued as the settlers spread westward across the plains, through to the Indian Wars in the 19^th century that completed the job and forced the surviving Redskins into reservations.   Nowadays, these might be termed concentration camps or perhaps, more charitably, mere ghettoes.   But by whatever means, the Native population had been decimated and left with little in the way of wealth, prospects or human dignity. 

By this time, of course, our Americans had created and were close to abandoning a slave economy.  Again, millions of people, all the wrong colour, had been uprooted from their homelands – this time far away on the African continent – and shipped in the most appalling conditions to America, where they were sold in the same way as animals, to labour and make life easier for the white owner.  It took a bloody Civil War to end slavery, at least in law, though it has been argued that slavery still exists, not only in the US but across the “civilised” – for which read Western white – world.  My own country, the UK, should hang its head in shame over this – it has at least apologised for its part in the 18^th and 19^th century slave trade in providing the ships to transport them – and do more to combat the appalling conditions that still exist elsewhere (including it has to be said in Britain itself).  The Australian government has apologised for doling out similar treatment to its Aboriginal population and continues to take steps (perhaps too small, but steps nonetheless) to help them live better lives now.  Perhaps I missed it, but I cannot recall similar action being taken towards the Native American population by a US government.  

Despite Rosa Parks and the efforts of other Civil Rights campaigners like Martin Luther King that have given the coloured American population much better lives than even fifty years ago, with better living conditions and career prospects than ever before, racism is still rife in the country (as it is elsewhere, including in many European nations and in Britain).  Proportionately more black people live in low quality housing.  Proportionately more are in prison or unemployed or poorly educated.  This cannot be mere bad luck, nor can all of them be blamed for the positions in which they find themselves.  No, the victimisation is still there and still clear, and frequently ignored or swept under the carpet.  The events in Ferguson Missouri and New York over the past few weeks clearly show that racism is still rife amongst US law enforcement agencies, and that there is still a reluctance to address the situation.  Two unarmed coloured men die at the hands (in one case quite literally) of white law enforcement officers, and yet in neither case have criminal charges been brought.  Quite the opposite: in both cases, the victims themselves have been blamed for essentially bringing about their own fate.  The unrest and demonstrations of people nationwide, both black and white, suggest the opinion is not shared by the general public.  Meanwhile, across the country, not a day goes by without similar cases being reported.  The evil gun culture, so entrenched in US society, continues to rack up its bloody toll, and the powerful (and rich) NRA continues to influence politicians to block any legislation that may change this.

And now, since 9/11, there is a new enemy to fear, and that is the Muslim.  Don’t get me wrong, please, I condemn the 9/11 atrocity without reservation, and equally the 7/7 atrocity that hit London subsequently, and indeed any other terrorist act.  But the way the Bush government lashed out in response, like a spoilt child whose favourite toy has been broken, and dragged the British and the rest of the Coalition along with it on a pile of doctored “evidence” and lies has surely made the situation worse. 

In the 1990s, Iraq invaded Kuwait (a territory that it claimed, historically, to be part of Iraq).  Protesting that invading a “sovereign nation” was wrong and against international law (correct on both counts) Bush the Elder launched the First Gulf War and with the help of Britain and others pushed Saddam’s army back across the border and “liberated” Kuwait.  This was accepted by pretty much everyone, including Arab nations.  Fast forward a few years to 9/11.  Bush the Younger’s response to the attack on America’s own soil was to launch the War on Terror, ostensibly against the al Qaeda organization (NOT in itself a sovereign nation) and to pursue this invaded both Iraq (where the butcher Saddam was toppled) and Afghanistan (where the fundamentalist Taliban were ousted from power).  This seems to me to be hypocritical at the very least – you cannot accuse someone, no matter how heinous they are, of breaking international law in this way, and then within a very a short span do exactly the same thing and insist you are doing “the right thing”.

The lack of a Plan B – what do we do now we’ve toppled the government? – merely led to a slaughter of the innocents in both countries that continues to this day (even though US and British and other troops have gone home – apart from a few “advisors”: special forces and spooks to you and me, pretending to be trainers).  Both countries are now mired in corruption and illegal paramilitary forces that prevent any semblance of a normal life for the citizens, most of whom merely want to have enough food to eat and a decent education for their kids.  Understandably (if perhaps a little unfairly) the Iraqi and Afghan youth trapped in this situation blame the US and Britain for their plight, and hence provide a rich seam of discontent to be mined by al Qaeda and IS and other militant Islamic groups.

Perhaps predictably, a lot of young Arab people elsewhere view the situation with resentment – they see no future for themselves or their countries – and are also prime targets for the militant Islamists to draw into their clutches.  They perceive that Western society – in particular America and Britain – has bullied the poorer Islamic nations, and are lashing out against them in revenge.  They are fanatics and happy to die themselves to exact their revenge.  It is a twisted view, of course, and one thankfully held by only a minority of Muslims – but that minority, by its vicious and bloody tactics, its mass killings and public beheadings of white Westerners (and any local who does not share their view of the Koran) has the stronger voice.

Militant Islam may well have risen anyway, with the same principals of jihad and death and destruction, but there is no doubt in my mind that the American policy of trying to force its own version of Democracy on nations that perhaps didn’t really want it has been a major factor in speeding up its spread.

Which brings me to another point – the broken US political system.

Clearly, it isn’t working.  The choice of government seems to lie between a Republican party that (correctly) puts American interests first but is happiest if those interests are supported by its own vested interests (basically private enterprise, big business and a low taxation regime) and a Democratic party that (correctly) puts American interests first but wants to spread the wealth generated around a bit more fairly, so that even poor people have access to health care and a decent education, even if that means that the wealthy have to pay a bit more tax to pay for it.  There seems to be no real middle ground.   

Government is formed by a combination of the Executive Branch (the President, his Cabinet and the Judiciary), Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate, both elected offices) and local State government through Governors and locally elected representatives.  Individual towns and cities too have a high degree of autonomy through powerful elected Mayors.  It’s a complicated system, and the whole edifice is greased by money  - not only in taxation (both local and federal) but at the party level by “donation” – which is essentially people dipping into their pockets and giving their hard-earned cash to fund their candidate of choice.  Much of this, I’m sure, is well meant and done for the public good by genuinely decent and concerned citizens of all races and religions.  British parties are funded in a similar way but much smaller scale.  But the more an individual or organization donates to a party the more it expects in return.  This raises a question rarely aired, to my knowledge, and even more rarely addressed: when does a “donation” become a “bribe”?  To put it another way, when does genuine financial support to enable a politician or his party to do genuine work become hiring that politician for personal gain (that may or may not coincide with what the majority of the electorate actually want)?  Where is the line between civic responsibility and corruption?

Yet this questionable form of democracy is what the US is desperately trying to foist onto nations that for perhaps generations have happily survived and indeed prospered under various forms of government that are a million miles from what is acceptable to Western society.  Absolute hereditary monarchies have their place in society, as do benevolent dictatorships, surely – provided the human rights and well-being of their subjects are protected and prioritized.  It’s only when the monarch or dictator moves away from a recognition of basic human dignity that problems occur – and that is another example of human frailty rather than something that “democracy” is likely to prevent.  Anybody has the right to a personal opinion, but not to impose it on other people – that to me is key human right, and one that by their actions, successive US and Allied democratic governments have broken in trying to enforce their beliefs on others.

I’m perhaps a being a little unfair to the US here because political systems world-wide appear to me to be in a bad way.  In Britain, arguably the inventor of democracy, extremist parties such as UKIP are gaining support through a virulent anti-EU and anti-immigration platform without offering any positive message or manifesto of how they will improve people’s lives.  The major parties are more concerned with sound-bite politics and scoring points off each other by scare-stories and personal abuse, and the most senior members of both Government and Opposition are career politicians who have gone straight from university to party politics without doing a “real” day’s work in their lives.  Their policies are bringing pain and hardship to families the length and breadth of the country – and yet there seems to be no real alternative.  Conviction Politicians, genuine public servants whose first thought is to their electorate and not to personal gain, seem as extinct as the dinosaurs.

I’m painting a bleak picture here, in this Festive Season, but I find it very difficult to identify anything to be optimistic about.

As far as the Report that inspired this piece is concerned, Obama is to be congratulated for ordering it, releasing it and supporting its findings.  He is also to be commended, in my view, for his measured reaction to the Ferguson and New York police killings, and his continued efforts to promote dialogue across the country about gun control, health care, race relations and so on – the Big Issues that remain unresolved.  The shame is that pretty much throughout his Presidency this Democrat has been hamstrung by a Republican party, strong in both Houses and now having control of both, that often made it impossible for him to enforce the kinds of social change he committed to and that gained him office, and have now left him a lame duck President for the final year.  I think that is a tragedy not only for America but arguably for the world.

In the wake of the Report, the usual GOP hawks like the odious Cheney, and the former CIA Director Michael Hayden, crawled out of the woodwork defending the CIA’s behaviour specifically, and torture (sorry, Enhanced Interrogation Techniques – so much nicer, don’t you think?) more generally, as being necessary, producing valuable intelligence and saving American lives – all three claims roundly disproved by the content of the Report according to all the key point summaries I’ve seen.  I find it very interesting that Bush the Younger, who approved the entire programme and was clearly (by all accounts, on both sides of the argument) regularly briefed in detail as to what was being done and to what effect, has remained silent and made no comment.  Is he perhaps just being his usual stubborn, simple-minded self, incapable of recognizing an error of judgement (most likely), or is he perhaps as appalled and embarrassed by the Report as the rest of us but unable to formulate a way to express his contrition and apologise (yeah, right…..)?

Britain and other European nations like Poland and Portugal, Germany and the Czech Republic, should also be asking questions of themselves and their relations with US after their documented assistance in providing facilities for the CIA rendition flights that carried suspects to the US and, in some cases, provided facilities to start the entire interrogation process.  The British Government has admitted to providing flight assistance – re-fuelling facilities and the like – but insists that it played no part in any interrogation process, whether enhanced or not.  Alexander Kwasniewski, Polish President at the time, has stated publicly that his country provided similar assistance and also an interrogation centre, but that as soon as the Polish government got wind that some of the things going on there were a little unsavoury, “demanded” of Bush that they stop and apparently this happened.  Other countries implicated have so far been silent on the matter.

Clearly, it’s a story that is going to run and run through 2015, with elections scheduled in both the UK and the US.  Early days, but it seems likely to me, based on public opinion as reported on various news services and conversations I’ve had with people (and, yes, I know that is not a real guide), that Labour will win the UK Election (though perhaps without a clear majority, opening the nightmare scenario of deal-making with Farage’s UKIP mavericks and others) and the Republicans will return in Washington (with a probable dumping of much Obama legislation out of spite and a return to the kind of free-market excess and gung-ho foreign policy that arguably led the world into this mess in the first place). 

If that happens – well, hold on for a rough ride.  The Arab world, whether Militant or moderate, will feel less than impressed with the prospects, and Israel, conversely, will become even more stridently anti-Arab (if that is possible) with the stronger support of the Jewish Republican lobby having a greater say with its government.  Relations with China have thawed lately, and business improved as a result, but will this continue under the new power structures?   How will the increasingly fractious relationship between Britain and the EU develop?  Probably not well, especially if there is any attempt to restrict immigration and introduce controls.

Through it all, IS and other Militant Islamic terror groups are likely to grow in strength, barbarity and hence influence.  This is the great imponderable, in my opinion.  Never mind a still ailing global economy, and the unrest being propagated by Russia in Ukraine and other neighbouring regions that have prompted sanctions that are now biting very hard (Russia will be in recession soon, and how they react to that may be interesting) – the confrontation between Militant Islam and the rest of the world is likely to have more far-reaching consequences.

Action needs to be taken against IS and the other organizations, but storming in booted and armed as the US and its allies have done in the past does not seem to have worked – Iraq, Afghanistan and IS themselves would seem to be the proof of that.  A new way needs to found to address this, and I am less than convinced that any Western politician, let alone government, has either the ability or the courage to do that.