Gdansk Pilgrimage 2018 (5): Polish hoops, mustard soup and bison lager.

I've prefaced the travel narrative of our visit to Poland (itself backdated to the actual days we were there) with a series called Eight Days of Gdansk, which provides background on a European destination that's scandalously little known to Americans.

Previously: A deeply moving visit to the European Solidarity Centre.

Fusy Miętusy, a cafe and pub around the corner from the hotel, was the choice for our only non-hotel breakfast during the trip. It was comfy; the food and coffee were good. I liked the decor, which reminded me of Joe's interior touches at Pints&union.

There's nothing like an afternoon pro basketball game, so we boarded another SKM train, this time past Sopot to Gdynia, and a contest between MKS Dąbrowa Górnicza and the homestanding Asseco Prokom Gdynia.

It would have been a lengthy bus ride for MKS Dąbrowa Górnicza, but American players Cleveland Melvin and Trey Davis combined for 58 points as the visitors overcame a slow start and cruised to an 86-76 win.

From 2004 through 2012, the team won nine straight Polish championships. Curiously, during the first six championship seasons the team played in neighboring Sopot, then moved to Gdynia for the last three titles. Sopot promptly created a new team, leaving Gdansk, the most populous municipality of the Tricity conurbation, without a basketball team.

The price for a beer at the arena was only slightly higher than one purchased in a typical restaurant.

It fascinated me that Jacek Winnicki, the hyperactive coach of MKS Dąbrowa Górnicza, wore both a beard and a bun.

Back to Gdansk ...

 ... and a return to the eccentric and endearing Kashubian eatery Tawerna Mestwin for dinner. I wanted borscht (beet soup) and an entree-sized portion of marinated herring in cream sauce. Unfortunately the borscht was gone, and I decided to try mustard soup with sliced hard-boiled eggs, something I’ve never had in my life.

It was amazing. The photo isn’t mine; phone was dead, so I’ve borrowed this view from the Interwebz. I’ll be recreating this delicious soup at home.

For a nightcap, a quick trot to the neighborhood mini-mart yielded the official beer of New Albany's Summit Springs hilltop strip mine retail development: Żubr, a tasty beer and a species of European bison.

Dojlidy Brewery /dɔɪˈliːdə/ (Polish: Browar Dojlidy [ˌbrɔvar dɔjˈlidɨ]) is a brewery located in Białystok, Poland, and owned by Kompania Piwowarska SA, the Polish subsidiary of SABMiller. The brewery was modernized between 1997 and 1999, then in 2003 it was purchased by Kompania Piwowarska SA. The Dojlidy Brewery used to make many different brands of beer, after being bought by Kompania Piwowarska S.A. their main product is Żubr. Żubr is one of the most popular beers in Poland and is also on sale throughout Europe.

I mention Żubr primarily because Dojlidy's excellent Porter once was a great favorite of mine, although I haven't seen it stateside for at least a decade.

Next: Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk.

Eight Days of Gdansk, November 2: Marcin Gortat on Polish basketball, and prospects for a game in Tricity.

A native of Łódź in Poland, Marcin Gortat currently plays for the Los Angeles Clippers. This is Gortat's 13th season in the NBA, and in this essay from 2016, he tells his own basketball story and describes the sport's progress in Poland.

How We Play Basketball in Poland, by Marcin Gortat (The Players' Tribune)

... The state of basketball in Poland right now is … well, it’s not great.

Understand, in Poland we don’t have four or five guys making it to the NBA every year like in France or Spain. I’m the fourth Polish guy to ever make it to the NBA, and given the state of our national-team program, there probably won’t be another one for a long time.

That’s because we don’t really have a program to teach the game to young kids. I’ve been doing my best to help, with youth camps and an initiative that sends promising young players to America to play AAU ball, and then brings them back to Poland to play for the national team. But it will be a few more years until the first group of players completes the program.

It wasn’t always this way. We used to be better. Poland used to love basketball. In the ’60s and ’70s our national team played in almost every Olympics, and we were competitive. But since 1984, the year I was born, Poland hasn’t qualified once for the Games.

There was even a time when NBA games were on TV in Poland. After watching Michael Jordan, Grant Hill and Shaq, kids would want to go outside and play street ball. But when basketball left public TV due to something called the Broadcasting Act of 1992, that’s when everything started to really fall apart.

Gortat surely is the best male basketball player from Poland. The finest female player might have been the late Margo Dydek, who was 7' 2" and played in the WNBA prior to her untimely death in 2011.

The Confidentials enjoy their off-season travel, and this has meant the occasional opportunity to watch basketball games in Europe, first in Bamberg and most recently in Porto, Portugal in February.

The Polish cities of Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia are known collectively as Tricity (Trójmiasto), with a combined metropolitan population well north of 1,000,000.

Sopot lies between Gdansk and Gdynia.

Tricity supports two teams in the Polish Basketball League, which has existed in various forms since the late 1940s: Asseco Gdynia and Trefl Sopot. Ironically, the primary indoor arena in Tricity is located within the boundaries of Sopot, which lies between Gdansk and Gdynia; holding 15,000 spectators, the home of Trefl Sopot is the largest arena in the league even though Sopot itself has a population of only 40,000.

Perusing the schedules in advance of our departure, I see there are three possibilities for seeing a game, with two dates for Asseco Gdynia and one for Trefl Sopot.

We'll do at least one of them, and I'll tell you about it once we're back home. If there is beer and kielbasa, that's even better.