Leaving Gdansk

This part of the trip has been a little different since we've ben visiting and staying with Polish relatives.  In a way it's a unique opportunity to see Poland from a non tourist perspective.  The relatives we stayed with,a lovely couple of retired academics, live in an apartment in a Soviet era built huge complex.  The buildings are rather ugly, squat cubes or rectangles with huge numbers printed on the size of each building.  Most buildings are around 6 to 7 floors, no elevators.  You get into the building via a code and each apartment is locked with a double door.  Apparently there were a lot of thefts, break ins earlier on.  These apartment complexes dot the city of Gdynia but they are also found in Gdansk.  They actually look pretty good now, they're very well maintained and the grounds are also maintained very well with a lot of trees, shrubbery and flowers.  It's one thing the Soviets did quite well make renting and owning relatively affordable.
I was curious about life under a communist regime but could only get a little bit of the history due to my limited Polish conversational skills.
During the Soviet era food was more scarce.  Poles were encouraged to tend their little gardens in community plots.  We visited such a plot.  It was huge with about 1000 garden spots which one can buy and pass on to next of kin.  Each plot has a little cabin for washing up, relaxing, drinking vodka after a hard day's work in the garden, a toilet and a glassed in fair size greenhouse.  Obviously this is prime land but it's original purpose remains.  It cannot be developed for another purpose, that's fantastic.
In the Soviet era health and education, even higher education, were free and there were no long delays for major operations.  The interesting thing was that solidarity was more evident.  People were in it together, there was less of the dog eat dog mentality, everybody had a job even if that job produced inefficient results.  Everybody had housing, there was nobody on the street but life was still rather grim and humorless.  The Soviets didn't go for a lot of sparkly, shiny stuff and fun.
Regarding modern Gdynia and Gdansk, Gdansk itself was a bit of a disappointment aside from the old town, it's very very spread out, sort of hard to actually "visit" if one doesn't have a car.  The port of Gdynia was equally unimpressive compared to other beautiful ports visited in France like St. Malo and Concarneau.  It was all right but there wasn't much to write about beside the fact that there was a tourist Pirate boat just like the ones they have in Mexico and an old navy boat left over from the war with a newer one on which young recruits train. 
In general Poles do not seem to like immigrants especially older Poles who are weary of anything new disruptive to the old way of life.  In Gdynia we din't see any visible minorites.  The town is very white.  That trend more or less continues in Warsaw.  Poland is a very Catholic country, the dead Pope Polish  John Paul still enjoys en enduring popularity, his picture is very very present.  It was in both the homes we were in.  People still go to church on Sunday and this includes young people or at least the young people we met.  It was a lovely time, a different time for me since I didn't get to share a lot or ask a lot of questions.  I always have a lot of questions but had to be satisfied with the limited way I was able to participate.  Meanwhile I had fun trying to pronounce words like wszystko (everything) Pszcszyna (a town in Poland) bezwzgledny (fittingly this means rutheless).  Polish is loaded with czs sounds and lots and lots of w, easy roll off the tongue it is not, definitely a challenge.  We're in Warsaw now ensconced in out lovely apartment, you can't find hotels in the old town.  There are none. I'll be writing on our stay here in the next installment.