I did not especially enjoy my time in Toruń but that was not the city’s fault. Instead, it was our coach on a day trip from Warsaw that took a circuitous route through the countryside, turning a journey that should’ve taken under three hours into more than four through some unremarkable farmland and woodland with multiple crossings of the River Vistula our first clue something was amiss. Perhaps the driver knew of congestion we did not or just wanted to avoid highway tolls. This was annoying but I could not complain too much as the trip was provided free-of-charge as a ‘cultural outing’ as part of a conference I was attending in the capital. Regardless, we eventually arrived in the city with the outskirts being of typically brutalist concrete construction although one was brightened up by a large mural depicting Nicolaus Copernicus. After parking in a busy car park down by the river, we were led beneath the city’s defensive walls and past a leaning tower, both made of red brick rather than the marble of the more famous leaning tower in Pisa, then along attractive Medieval streets to the townhouse where the city’s most famous son was born in 1473. One of many impressive old brick Gothic structures in the city, it and the adjoining house are now a museum dedicated to Copernicus, even though most of his life's work was carried out further north in Warmia. There are various relics of his pioneering heliocentric work in astronomy as well as more day-to-day artefacts and exhibits of broader interest on the history of Toruń. We were also treated to a “4-D movie” that explained the history of the city and Copernicus, seats raising up and down to represent the galloping horses of the Teutonic Knights for example. This was an interesting gimmick at first but soon proved tiresome and I was a little concerned for the impact it may have had on the joints of the more elderly members of our tour group because it certainly rattled mine.

By the time this experience was over and our guide let us free there were only 45 minutes left before we had to catch the coach back to Warsaw. Toruń is not an especially large city and the core zone, with its array of Hanseatic buildings, is smaller still but I would still advise more than 45 minutes to explore it properly. There was no shortage of fine churches and houses, with the oldest still standing from the 13th and 14th Century. We were told Toruń has the largest number of preserved Gothic houses in Poland, which is a claim sufficiently obscure I had no reason to doubt it. Along with the man who popularised the belief that the Sun and not the Earth is the centre of the universe, Toruń is most famous for its gingerbread, which has been made here since the 13th Century and is a softer, more cake-like affair than the hard biscuit/cookie gingerbread usually refers to in the UK. There was just enough time for us to wander some of the streets and buy some of this excellent confectionary before rushing back across town to see the ruins of the Teutonic castle (picture attached). There was no time to get closer but there didn’t seem to be too much left of it, although I am willing to be corrected by anybody who had time to actually get up close. It was only afterwards that I realised that this castle was known to the Teutons as Thorn, a fortification familiar to any fellow players of Medieval II: Total War. It was then sadly time for the lengthy drive back to Warsaw. I do not know the identity of the tour company that ran this trip on behalf of the conference organisers but I wish I did so I could recommend against them. This reaffirmed my long-standing belief that it almost always best to organise one’s own travel where possible and it seems there are train links here from Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw, and more but I caution I have no experience of their efficacy. There were two further trips associated with our conference planned to honour Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Frédéric Chopin, who form an alliterative ‘CCC’ trinity of famous Poles alongside Copernicus. I did my best to get out of those trips and explore Warsaw in my own time and only wish I could have done the same in Toruń.