The Young Adult and I Travel Again: A Poland and Bosnia Trip Report

Gdansk

• 3 nights
• At Munich’s airport, I was a little surprised to note that the name of our destination alternated between Gdansk and Danzig, the city’s old German name, on the departure board.
• Highlight #1: A private tour with Sebastian, an exceptional and gifted guide from Poland by Locals. This day we focused on military and non-military aspects of Gdansk, Gdynia, and Sopot. Among other things, the tour included (1) visiting the workshop of an amber artisan who entered the business in the 1980’s after being fired from the Gdansk Shipyard for union activities and (2) hiking at Kepa Redłowska, a forest along the coast of Gdynia, where we explored WWII bunkers, a defunct artillery battery used for coastal defense, and the Baltic Sea.
• Highlight #2: Another private tour with Sebastian that included a visit to the Museum of Military Technology Gryf and to Hel. The former is an experiential museum on an old military base about an hour outside Gdansk where we saw and touched all sorts of military equipment, rode in a military off-road vehicle on an obstacle course, shot guns (including an old WWII Sten), and rode in a restored 1950’s-era Soviet-built tank for 20-30 minutes. The young adult loved it. Next up was the coastal defense systems at Hel. The young adult now loves to tell people that he went to Hel, the people were nice, the temperature was comfortable, and the food was great.
• Travel style differences: On our first day in Gdansk as we prepared to head out to explore the city, I pulled out the RS Gdansk walking tour (pages ripped out of the guidebook so I didn’t have to bring the whole book). The young adult rolled his eyes. We ended up just wandering around the city.
• Memorable Food: Street food in an area of the Shipyard where old shipping containers have been converted into street food stands next door to warehouse space used for music, dancing, and partying. “The hippest place in Gdansk” per Sebastian. The microbrewery Browar Miejski Sopot offered great Polish food.
• Hotel: Fama Residence Old Town Gdansk. I found this place on Booking, but prices were much better on the hotel’s private website, so I booked there. A quintessential RS place – good location next to the Golden Gate, locally owned, clean, good value, good breakfast. Highly recommended.

Olsztyn

• 1 night (an overnight stop between sites)
• Highlights: Stopped at Malbork Castle (awesome) and Schloss Finckenstein on the way there. The latter was a Prussian manor that was Napoleon’s residence for 2-3 months in 1807 when he passed through Poland. It was burned down by the Red Army in 1945, so the palace is now in ruins. The owner of the property met us there, unlocked the gate, and hung out while we explored for an hour or so. It was very cool.
• Memorable Food: McDonalds! More for the story than the food. We asked our young driver Simon, whose English was not great, if he could take us somewhere to eat lunch after Malbork Castle. He smiled and enthusiastically said, “McDonalds!” I’m not sure if that is because he expected Americans to want McDonalds, he likes McDonalds, or he just wanted something fast. We asked if maybe we could get something more Polish. Long story short, we ended up at McDonalds.
• Hotel: Hampton by Hilton Olsztyn. New, nice, inexpensive.

Wolf’s Lair & Mauerwald

The side-by-side destinations of Wolf’s Lair and Mauerwald offer bunkers galore. The former is the site of Hitler’s headquarters in Prussia during WWII. The latter was the headquarters for the OKH, the ground force command. The former has blown-up bunkers; the latter has in-tact bunkers. The day was spent entering bunkers, climbing to the top of bunkers, and even walking through the ruins of Göring’s Wolf’s Lair house singing the old British Army marching tune, “Göring has only got one…” (later changed to “Hitler has only got one…”). A fun day!

Warsaw

• 4 nights
• Highlight #1: Eat Polska food tour, which was great.
• Highlight #2: National Museum of Warsaw (art), where the young adult and I had a lot of fun viewing art, talking, and laughing… sometimes at the art… perhaps more than we should have.
• Highlight #3: Handel’s Rinaldo performed at the Royal Theater in Łazienski Park, one of the few remaining 18th century court theaters in Europe -- it seats around 200 people and allows for a rather intimate performance.
• Memorable Food: Czarnomorka. This was a fish restaurant with fresh seafood in an open refrigerated case. People walked in off the street to buy fresh fish to take home to cook, and the kitchen staff walked out to grab whatever they were cooking for guests.
• Hotel: Chopin House B&B. RS recommended. We shared the 2-bedroom apartment. I would give it an “okay at best.” I was overcharged relative to the quote on my reservation, and a credit still has not appeared on my credit card, so add “hassle” to the experience. Value for money, even at the quoted rate, was marginal. I would be reluctant to stay there again.

Sarajevo

• 2 nights
• Logistics: The Balkan part of our trip was 5 nights and included a lot of moving. I worked with Ema at Funky Tours to set up guides and transportation. She was great to work with.
• Highlight #1: A post-arrival tour with our guide Mustafa, which included the Sarajevo Tunnel Museum, which has a small remnant of the original tunnel used to supply Sarajevo and to move troops during the 1992-1995 War. Mustafa shared his experience walking the tunnel as a 14-year-old to get supplies for his family.
• Highlight #2: Exploring Colina Kap Observatory (in ruins due to the war) and the 1984 Olympics bobsled track (now covered in graffiti).
• Highlight #3: Dinner with three generations of a Bosnian family in an apartment building where the grandmother had lived during the 1992-1995 war. Some of the windows of the building had bullet holes around them. We learned about life under Tito, life during the war, and modern life in Bosnia.
• Highlight #4: Chess in a park with a couple of teenagers.
• Memorable food: (1) Of course, the homemade dinner at the family’s house that included vegetables from the garden. (2) Dinner with Ema at Restoran Dzenita, which offers traditional Bosnian fare in the middle of the Baščaršija, the oldest part of Sarajevo. We had a sampler dish with many Bosnian foods, cevapi, and baklava for dessert. Ema also gave us a primer on Bosnian coffee. (3) Bosnian coffee – we drank a lot of it!
• Hotel: Halvat Guesthouse. Awesome. Recommended by Ema. Super friendly owner who made a fabulous breakfast and offered us Bosnian coffee every time we saw her (we always accepted!)

Lukomir

• 1 night
• A high-altitude herding community that we reached by an 8-km hike from the village of Umoljani
• Highlight #1: the hike
• Highlight #2: the look-out above Lukomir that offered great views of the valley below.
• Highlight #3: rain and hail late in the day that resulted in hanging out in the hostel’s dining space playing cards, talking, and laughing with our guide for most the evening.
• Memorable food: A burek-like pie (“pita pie”) made of potato and cheese served with lettuce/tomato (a true Bosnian burek has meat!), a breakfast of Bosnian doughnuts with cream cheese and sour cream on the side to spread on them.
• Lodging: Pansion Lukomir. Rustic. I would say more hostel than pension.

Mostar

• 1 night
• Highlight of day: Stop at Tito’s Bunker at Konjic – Yugoslavia’s underground bunker for post-nuclear war governance. The young adult loved it, as did I.
• Memorable food: grilled fresh trout from the Neretva River at a river-side restaurant near Konjic. One of the two best fish meals of my life.
• Lodging: Muslibegovic House. Part guest house. Part museum. Super cool authentic Ottoman décor in the rooms. Reasonable price. Decent breakfast. Loved it.

Dubrovnik

• 1 night
• Highlight #1: En-route stop at Počitelj (a medieval walled town). Here, I bought elderberry juice from a lady selling juice and produce from her garden at the bottom of the town. She opened the bottle and rubbed her nose all over the bottle to make sure it was sweetened. Creeped me out, but I drank it anyway.
• Highlight #2: En-route stop at Kravice Falls where we spent a substantial amount of time skipping stones on the beach (the young adult really likes to do that when we are around bodies of water), drawing in other visitors to the falls who wanted to skip stones, too.
• Highlight #3: Sitting at an outdoor café on Dubrovnik’s main street. The young adult and I reflected on the trip, talked to people at the tables around us, laughed a lot, and watched the world go by as a pianist played and sang hits from the 1970’s and 1980’s. Sites are cool; people are cooler; it was a favorite moment of the trip for me.
• Memorable food: Gelato from aROMA Gelato (how can vegan dark chocolate gelato be so good?) and Peppino’s.
• Lodging: Stradun View En Suite Rooms & Studio. We had a small but comfy room with two twin beds. This was one of the few places we shared a room. I figured we would be out late exploring (we were), and we had a 6:15 am departure for Amsterdam from the airport. It was hard to pay Dubrovnik prices for two rooms just to get a few hours’ sleep. (The other shared room was at the Munich Hilton – super pricey!).

Amsterdam/Haarlem

• 1 night
• Highlights: We spent all our time in Haarlem with the young adult’s cousin, her husband, and another guest they had. The cousin gave us a tour of Haarlem.
• Memorable food: DeDAKKAS, a rooftop restaurant atop a parking garage with a heavy focus on vegetarian foods. Awesome.
• Lodging: Hello I’m Local Hostel (recommended by the cousin). Common areas great. Rooms okay. Breakfast okay.

Conclusion

So that was the trip shared by two unlikely friends. Minus the bumps. We did so many fun things, why dwell on the negative?

I made a photobook again this year. At the end of each day, I have a favorite thing of the day for each of us and a misadventure of the day. At the very end of the book, I have favorite thing of the trip. When I asked the young adult his favorite thing, his response was "the friendship." My favorite thing was the times we talked a lot and laughed hard -- the National Museum, playing cards in Lukomir, and sitting in the cafe in Dubrovnik.

The young adult's favorite place on the trip? Warsaw. My favorite place on the trip? Sarajevo.

Fabulous! Thanks for posting!!! Here I am trying to plan a trip to somewhere in Asia for fall of 2024 and now you’ve shot me right back to Poland.

Do you have the contact information or website for Sebastian?

And the woman who rubbed her nose all over your juice? Well, you’re braver than I am:)

Hi, Valerie. The young adult and I are thinking about Japan next year 🙂. I already have a trip to Venice and Rome scheduled in early April with another friend.

The website for Sebastian's company: https://polandbylocals.com/

As for the nose issue... what can you do? Happily no COVID symptoms.

Also a gentle reminder to all who are interested to read the trip report about a day in Sarajevo. It's more typical of my trip reports -- story-focused, not so much nuts-and-bolts like this one.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/the-young-adult-and-i-a-day-in-sarajevo

I do enjoy my travels with my husband, but I absolutely treasure the many adventures I've had with my kids, both as "kids" and now as "young adults". I did a trip to Europe with my sons and another with my daughters. The trips were different though Munich was requested as a stop for both trips.

Lovely trip report. And I did read your Sarajevo report too. Life brings unexpected people into our lives for different reasons. Sometimes those reasons don’t surface till years later. I’m sure that young adult is learning some coping mechanisms while on your trips together.
PS, my 7 year old grandson has ADHD and it is challenging on some days more than others.

Another great report, thanks for sharing. That young adult is very lucky to have such a great travel role model.

Dave, I like the format you used for this TR. what a wonderful trip and how lucky you both are.

Dave, thanks for the fun and easy read! I love that you're enjoying time with your unlikely travel partner.

It seems I'm destined to see Poland 1 city at a time, despite my 2020 attempt to see more of Poland. This summer it's Warsaw so I've taken note of your restaurant highlight.

Gdansk will have to wait for another year....

Glad that you were able to enjoy Finckenstein Palace, the owner is so nice just letting history buffs like us explore his property haha! Crazy how one can just have all to yourself the ruins of the palace where Napoleon had his famous affair with Marie Walewska. I guess that is the magic of Poland, where significant history sites still remain undiscovered by mass industrialized tourism.

There is actually a 1937 MGM film called Conquest based on their love affair in Finckenstein where Greta Garbo plays Marie Walewska to Charles Boyer's Napoleon (but was actually filmed in Monterey, California!)

Great report! Special thanks for the Bosnia portion - I am getting very excited about my fall trip there!

Great report Dave. An unusual mix of places and experiences, as well as a special mix of travelers.

Once again you have brought tears to my eyes. Thanks for sharing the adventure with us.

Fantastic trip report! We traveled to Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia in 2017 and Sarajevo was our favorite stop as well. In 2020 we were six weeks away from departure for Poland when Covid lockdown happened. Post Covid we've taken two trips and are leaving for a third this fall - but the Poland trip hasn't been rescheduled.

I read the portion about the Museum of Military Technology Gryf, out loud to my husband, and now he's chomping at the bit to reschedule that trip. How did I miss this four years ago when planning??? This is going at the top of our list of places to go. I also appreciate the info about Chopin House B&B in Warsaw. This was supposed to be our lodging in Warsaw but I'm going to look elsewhere.

Thanks for the helpful information needed to re-plan our trip to Poland!

jules m -- It's fun to travel with young people! It keeps you young!

Barbara -- Thanks for reading about the day in Sarajevo. Love, love, love that 7 year old! One thing that built resilience in the young adult was having a grandmother who adored him and stepped in whenever needed to help out with him.

CL-- Thanks! I'm lucky to have a young person with whom to travel!

diveloonie -- Yes, a new format! I enjoyed looking at your photos from Germany!

CWSocial -- Warsaw is great! You will enjoy it. Glad you had a good time in Bulgaria!

Carlos--

Thanks for the recommendation on Schloss Finckenstein. It was a great find and a fun place to explore. Yes, it was very nice of the owner to come let us explore while he held the gate open. I don't know what was there when you visited, but there are some placards there now that tell a bit about the manor and its history, including some drawings of what the manor looked like in the past. So, one can see the features of the drawings in the ruins. It really was great. Thanks again for the recommendation!

TexasTravelmom -- Bosnia is a very interesting place to visit. You will enjoy it!

Rob! Thanks for the comment. You know the bumps 🙂! We're talking another trip. We'll try to have things in place to avoid the bumps!

Katheryine -- Thanks for the comment! I appreciated your comment in "The Teen and I" post hoping that the two of us got to travel again.

Leia -- I did 25 days in Slovenia in 2019. It was awesome. I love that place. I think I would put a few places in Slovenia ahead of Sarajevo, but Sarajevo was still great. On the military musuem... they told us they may have to shut down the tank rides due to the war in Ukraine. It has made it difficult to get spare parts! We were supposed to use an AK-47 as part of our shooting, but bullets were too expensive/scarce for us to do that.

Ok, not quite finished up with Sarajevo, but I did just come from coffee and crepes at the City View Hotel rooftop cafe - and I have no good stories but the views are phenomenal.

And this was pure coincidence: last night I ate at Dzenita after going to my guide’s recommendation “across the street” and it was full (made a reservation for tonight). After I sat down, I looked at Google reviews and they were awful. Lol. And my food was great and my waiter was funny! I just now noticed the note I had made about your highlight meal there…..

Glad you had got to see the views from the cafe and had a great dinner. I liked Sarajevo quite a bit... very friendly people!