Day 33 - Malbork Castle (Gdansk)

Gdansk, Poland

While I went to bed at a relatively early time of 11pm last night, it was once again not a full nights’ worth as the two Swedish girls had to leave at 3:30am for their early flight and the Italian guys came back from a night out at 5am.

I didn’t care too much because I kind of needed to be tired today as I myself had to catch that same early morning flight tomorrow.

As for today, I decided to go on a day trip out to Malbork castle.

Malbork is a city about a half hour away by train and the castle is the largest in the world and is over 600 years old.

There are tours you can take out there but I decided to do it on my own. I was so much as interested in the history of the castle as much as the beauty of the architecture of it.

So, I went over to the train station and caught the first train out there.

Malbork is on the way to Warsaw so there are quite a few trains going in that direction.

I didn’t realize, however, that some of the trains are local trains and they stop at every stop and travel much slower.

That half hour train ride ended up being an hour.

No worries though as we finally pulled into the station around 11am.

I had read that the castle was a 15 minute walk from the station but what it didn’t say was which way to go.

You arrive in the middle of town with the castle nowhere in sight.

I asked a bus driver if he drove to the castle and after he said yes I just hopped on his bus (Bus #1 by the way).

I had only gone a couple stops when he stopped at the next stop and pointed at me that this was my stop.

I was now in a residential area but I could see the tip of one of the towers to my right.

So, I just walked towards the tower.

And then the grand castle appeared…

You have the option of just walking around the castle on the outside for free or for 29.50PLN ($10) you could tour inside.

Naturally there were alot of tourists there but I just kind of did my own thing trying to avoids the clusters of them.

Every corner you turned was a new picture to be taken.

Part of me rethought my idea of not purchasing the audio guide and taking time to actually learn about the castle but today was just about turning my brain off and just enjoy the beauty of the place.

After an hour of walking around I headed back to the train station.

When I went to buy a ticket at the window the woman told me the next train wasn’t for another two hours.

Ugh.

It was confusing though because on the digital board nearby it said there was a train going in that direction in a couple of minutes.

In here broken English I figured out that that one was an express train like the one I had taken yesterday to get into Gdansk and was more expensive.

I didn’t care. I didn’t want to hang around there for two hours waiting to go home.

The original local train I took out to Malbork was 19PLN ($6) and this express train was 49PLN ($16).

I looked at the clock and the departure time on the board – they both said 13:05 and these trains only stop at the station for less than a minute.

And then I saw the little “delayed 5 minutes” under the train info and I smiled.

Five minutes later I was boarding my train and this time it only took the half hour I was expecting it to take originally.

By 2pm I was back at the hostel.

A little later I went to the restaurant attached to the hostel a little later and had some Polish rye soup with not-so-Polish bruschetta bread.