The weekend in Toruń was great, it's a really nice city. It is a lot larger than I had been led to believe, and has a large amount of intact, old buildings, as well as a lot of ruins of an old castle. The castle was built by the Teutonic Knights who then ruled the city, apparently rather oppressively, as the townsfolk rebelled and destroyed the castle in the process.
As I mentioned in my previous post, Toruń has the distinction of being the only place in the entire world in which Nicholas Copernicus was born (Mikołaj Kopernik in Polish). Because of this, there is a museum dedicated to him in the building where he grew up. Not surprisingly, there is a statue of Copernicus in the main square, holding a model of the solar system. The building behind this statue is the old town hall.
Toruń has a leaning tower, like many other cities (Pisa isn't the only one - just the one with the best marketing). There is a superstition that if you stand with your back to the tower, on the correct side, and make a wish, it will come true. The small child in the pram in this photo is Julia. She is the daughter of Sylwia's cousin (for those of you who know her). The interior of the tower contains a pub (of course). I don't know if the floor has been levelled or not, so it could be a very interesting place to drink (especially after several drinks).
2 comments:
And acording to your link, the city Toruń is called Thorn in English....
The German name is actually Thorn, so they might be assuming that English uses the same names as German.
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