My last post about our trip to Poland involved the Nickel Obelisk and lol yes I will keep calling it that because it makes some people really mad and I think it’s funny.
So listen. I haven’t posted in a while because life moves far too fast plus I am a notorious overthinker and am very aware that I know nothing, which in this space is the height of embarrassment. But look, I have no time to learn everything right now. This is where I’m at. And on July 5th, 2024 (I put the year here because honestly documenting everything we encountered on our journey to Poland will take me beyond 2024, so…) I was at Malbork Castle.
Malbork Castle is in what had once been known as Marienburg. We had now made it to the northern part of Poland and there was a lot of Mennonite activity around here. I’ve seen Marienburg mentioned in numerous places in my ancestry readings on Grandma Online — ancestors who had been born here, or located here during a census, or part of a nearby church. And no, I don’t have any names right now. This has got to be the worst blog in the history of blogs. Useless. Welcome to my angst.
ANYHOOZLE.
Here is Malbork Castle! It was built in 1274 and is the largest castle in… central Europe? I cannot remember anything right now. But listen, I can fix this: you should definitely check out the GAMEO page on Marienburg.
Our visit to the castle was just as useless as this post. Why? We were in a hurry! So we figured we wouldn’t take the audio guides — just pay admission and do our best to run through this absolutely massive medieval complex. BUT we were stopped at the gate. What, WHY? We were holding our tickets that we had just purchased. But those were no good without the audio guide. No admission. We were turned away. So let this be a lesson to you if and when you go. Don’t be like Andrew and Erin. Take the audio guide!
There was still lots to see anyway. And I guess we just donated to the good cause of helping to maintain this UNESCO world heritage site. Yay for us.
We were interested to see this picture of the castle devastated by World War 2:
And to see how it’s been restored IRL:
We simply walked around (or… ran, I guess, in the interest of saving time) the former moat which is now a lovely walking path which we absolutely did not get to enjoy:
And took some pictures. I hope you can appreciate the fact that I revert to brutal honesty and do not pretend to know anything about this place nor to have seen anything inside. I could’ve lied, you know. But no. I just tell the truth about my failings.
I also could’ve skipped it, but listen — this place is too fantastic to ignore. And yeah, our ancestors very likely saw this place. I’ve read stuff about how they may have sold wares inside the castle walls? Unsure about the specifics. Like I said, I am panicking and cannot remember anything about this right now.
We quickly took a selfie and hurried back to find Andrew’s parents who were simply sitting on a bench waiting patiently for our return.
We hopped back into the vehicle and once again were on the very lovely road to our next destination.
