O szczęśliwy powrót, Sopot

“O szczęśliwy powrót” names this place. It dates from nineteen ninety-nine. Its title can leave you with a sense of a welcome return, while the city around it carries a much older history.

Sopot sits on Gdańsk Bay between Gdańsk and Gdynia, and together they form the Tricity urban area. In the late sixteenth century, Sopot was a fishing village connected with the Cistercian abbey at Oliwa. A sea-bathing establishment appeared here in eighteen nineteen, beginning the transformation of this shore into a resort.

Jan Jerzy Haffner, formerly a doctor with Napoleon’s army, opened a bathing institution in eighteen twenty-three, followed by further spa buildings. Sopot received municipal status in nineteen oh one. The war at its close destroyed about a tenth of the town’s buildings.

In nineteen forty-five, Sopot became part of Poland and took its present Polish name. This quietly named place belongs to that larger story of departure, change, and return.