We came into the port in Gdansk just before noon. This port area has great importance. It is where the first shots were fired on September 1, 1939 which started WWII.
The Solidarity movement came out of protests in 1980, but before the 1980 protest, workers had tried in 1956 and 1970 to get better conditions and failed. The methods they used did not work and this got many killed in the process. In 1980, Lech Walesa led workers to strike and they got what they wanted. This started another movement which ended communist rule and succeeded in a Polish democracy.
Amber is a big thing in Gdansk. The resin from trees solidifies on the ground over 40 million years to form the amber rock. It then is mined, cleaned and polished to create many types of jewelry and art. Sometimes spiders or scorpions became trapped in the amber as it formed.
Old town in Gdansk was rebuilt after WWII. The city did not want to rebuild using the German style after the war, so most of the buildings have a northern European look and really reminded me of the buildings in Amsterdam.
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