Leba vacation with a delay
Our trip to conquer Leba started out poorly. On the route, right on the adjacent track back in Warsaw, there was a train accident, so our vacation started with a few hours’ delay. We had a simple plan: sea, beach, fish, repeat.
It all started with a walk along the pier next to the red lighthouse. I stood there proudly, with the look of a man who just discovered that the Baltic Sea actually exists and is indeed wet. I was holding a digital camera with such reverence, as if I were carrying a relic—because let’s remember, back then a digital photo was magic, and a 128 MB memory card was a luxury. The next day we went to check the water temperature. I rolled up my pants to mid-calf—a classic Polish tourist move—and stepped into the sea ankle-deep, because anything higher is basically extreme water sports. I stood there barefoot, with my pants rolled up, looking like a fisherman who had lost his boat. I was still wearing my green shirt, of course, because why change when it goes with everything? I was talking to a terrified Michał, who was calling from work saying there was a storm in Ursus, the reading room was flooding, and he was ankle-deep in water. I honestly replied that I was also ankle-deep in water and I wasn’t making a fuss about it.
Baltic tropics and a fake Sahara
Swimming in the sea looked like this: Monika in a fleece jacket (in August!), me in a shirt (in the water!), hair blown by wind at the speed of a small hurricane. Happy faces, even if our teeth were chattering slightly. Because the Baltic is the Baltic—18 degrees Celsius is already the tropics.
We also went to the Łącka Dunes, where we pretended we were in the Sahara. Me wearing sunglasses like a special agent, my wife in red pants visible from space. At the marina, we posed by yachts we couldn’t even afford to touch, but the photo suggested one of them was ours. A key vacation rule: take pictures in a way that makes things look more expensive than they really were. Leba is basically Warsaw by the sea—you’re supposedly on vacation, but you can easily go grab a beer with people from work, because they’re spending their vacation in the exact same spot.
Sopot Festival and the pier
We couldn’t miss a trip to Sopot to see the famous pier, where the Sopot Festival 2005 was taking place—TVN and Plus flags fluttered proudly, and I stood there looking like a man who came here on official business to inspect the pier’s wooden planks.
