Poznan

The Capital City of Poznan, to give it its full title (although no longer the capital), is Poland’s fourth largest city and one of the oldest, with a core population of around 0.5 million, but extending to 1.4 million if the scruffy industrial suburbs and small connecting towns are included. I did read a potted history of the city, but like much of Poland, it has been pulled backwards and forwards by many different competing countries: Czechs, French, Prussians, Germans, all have had a go at possession at one time or other, but it still retains a strong feeling of pride and independence. I have a more traditional hostel (by that I mean it is in an old, traditional, four storey building, with worn wooden bannisters and hand rails, creaky wooden floors, stair treads partially covered with old linoleum and it is full of lots of noisy young people, Americans mostly, working in an orphanage close by). It is clean (and cheap, at £8/night) and located in the Old Town, just a short 10 minutes’ walk from the Town Hall.

The Old Market Square is enclosed by a number of tall, gabled houses, similar to the Dutch design but wider and consisting of lots of different colours – pink and white, buff cream, burnt umber, blue and gold, mint green. They surround the 16^th Century Renaissance Town Hall, which is a very strange mix of architectural styles, Byzantine verdigris domes, Italianate decorations and motifs, Northern European brown brickwork sections, (unless this is a style in its own right, which I've not come across before). A network of cobbled streets leads away from the square and they are full of intimate bars, clubs, pubs and restaurants. It is like a stag weekend destination, which the stag weekends have failed to discover. My favourites are the cellar bars, which have a single, small doorway opening onto the street from a steep wooden stairway, so you can’t see what the place is like until you enter and descend to the bottom of the steps where you are suddenly right in the middle of a brick-work cavern. Of course, it would then be impolite not to have one drink, so it’s amusingly hit and miss. They are mostly full of students, counting out change to see if they can afford another shot and who are curious about how and why I've ended up in Poznan.

Beyond the Old Town itself is a busy commercial and industrial city. Apart from the many churches and museums I visited, I did go and visit a newish shopping complex called Stary Browar, which has won some sort of award as the best shopping mall in Europe. Well, the former brewery building is certainly a pretty impressive, albeit almost empty (soulless?), cathedral to consumerism, with glossy, designer shops in a vast, industrial brick and glass space. On my way to the real Cathedral, I pop into a much older, smaller, concrete shopping mall to get out of the rain for a bit. It is full of people shopping for things they might actually need. The coffee shop here is a place where friends meet, old couples sit, content in their silence, business men kill time before a meeting somewhere, a student, with very good English and piercing blue eyes sits revising. (I realise that all people, almost without exception, have blue eyes. I spend the rest of the day looking to see if I can see any people with brown eyes, but there are none, apart from a single Japanese couple. Strange.) An older lady next to me gets up to leave, says something and then leans across and grasps my arm warmly for a few seconds, smiling, and gesturing to the fact that I’m making notes in my notepad. I have no idea what she says, but I think I prefer the mentality of the old shopping centre rather than the new and I’m left pondering how long the city will remain as it is. Having said that, if the Czechs, French, Prussians, Germans et al have all tried and failed to change the place, maybe consumerism will fail too?

Old Market Square

Town Hall

Market Square (Again)

Hostel Stairs. Hmmm. This might be interesting

But a nice, bright, airy room..

...with a view

Stary Browar

Outskirts of the city. Yes, it was cold, wet and 'orrible

Poznan Cathedral

The Gold Chamber

The Kings of Poland