Earlier this week I took a quick trip to Gdynia and Gdansk, Poland, via ferry from Karlskrona, Sweden. This trip was organized by ESN Sweden, so there were a few hundred other international/exchange students attending universities in Sweden that I went along with.
The start and end of the trip were rather long, boring bus rides across Sweden (Karlskrona is far in the south). I learned that the Swedish countryside is really quite rural, which makes sense given that there are only nine million people in this country. The more fun part of the journey itself was the ferry. We took a Stena Line ferry, which is this massive ship that looked to me more like a cruise ship than the kind of ferries there are in America, but it took cars on board too. The passage was about twelve hours long, overnight, so we had cabins on the boat and there was plenty of eating, drinking, and gambling available to pass the time. I did not find the food impressive. The booze was cheaper than in Sweden though (but not as cheap as actually in Poland), so that was pretty awesome.
We arrived in Gdynia early in the morning. As Poland hasn't implemented Schengen yet, we got to wait for a long time in a queue for passport control. At least I got some more stamps in my passport. After completing the border crossing we took a bus to Gdansk and were given a tour from some ESN people from Poland. It was great to learn a little about Polish history, because I knew almost nothing besides it had been invaded by the Germans early in WWII and then got to live under the unpleasant rule of the Soviets until the recent past.
After the sightseeing and lunch, we took buses back to Gdynia for a little shopping before boarding the ferry for the return trip. Poland is a cheap place to shop. I didn't buy much though, as I didn't really have an easy way to carry a lot of stuff, nor do I have a lot of excess cash I felt the need to blow.
The return ferry trip was similar to the journey over, but it seemed like people were partying even harder on the way back. Many people had bought large quantities of cheap Polish booze (like suitcases full, or hand trucks with stacked up cases of beer), so there was a lot of drinking all over the boat. We'd been told that we're not allowed to drink outside of the bars, and then only drinks bought in the bar, but there were hundreds of students scattered about everywhere drinking the cases of beer, boxes of wine, and bottles of vodka they'd bought anyway. I think I was the only one in my cabin who got some real sleep that night. I was woken up at 6 or 7 in the morning to one of the guys who I'd shared it with packing up since we were about to dock, and he was still incredibly drunk. It must have sucked for a lot of people to have to go sit on a bus for hours after that, but then the other students on the trip were probably mostly all younger than me so can probably still take that sort of abuse.
There were a few couple of rather surprising things about the trip. First of all, there were a ton of Americans. Way more than I'd seen any other time in Sweden. A lot of them seemed to be exchange students at Linköping University. Somehow they have attracted a lot more Americans there than KTH has I guess. The majority of the students on the trip were from Europe though, especially Spain, with a few more from various other places in the world. The other surprise was that Poland seems to be a less impoverished place than I'd feared it might be. Sure it's not as wealthy as most Western European countries, but they seem to have a rapidly growing economy. I saw a lot of new construction and clearing away of the depressing remnants of the Soviet era. The ugly old gray apartment buildings remaining appeared mostly abandoned, with a lot of new looking more cheerful buildings to replace them.
The trip was rather short but quite good, and I would be happy to go back some time.
