Gdansk will be among the venues when Poland and Ukraine host football’s 2012 European Championship. A charming city it may be, but there is much work to do before it is ready for an influx of foreign visitors on such a huge scale. The first thing you notice on arrival in Gdansk, which along with its smaller neighbours Gdynia and Sopot makes up the Tri-City area on Poland’s Baltic coast, is the lack of infrastructure. There is no rail service to take passengers from the small airport to the city centre and the only road is a single lane, potholed strip which twice a day fails to cope with the rush hour traffic. I visited with three friends, including two brothers whose grandparents fled to England when the Poles re-took what was then the German city
... read more