Believe it or not: despite having grown up in Berlin, until this day, I had never been to Poland. It changed when I convinced my friend to go on a spontaneous day trip across the border to Szczecin.

From Berlin, FlixBus took us there for around 25 Euros roundtrip, and each way was only about three hours on the road. Leaving in the early morning on a grim and grey January day, we would have more than enough time to explore the city.

Szczecin is not a major tourist destination, and that became apparent pretty quickly. There are a few tourist attractions which are well-maintained and cool to see, but most of the city is residential and large parts are in dire need of repair, apparently left untouched since the cash-strapped communist regime took over in the wake of WWII.

That being said, there are a few nice things to look at. Here is a selection of some of the things we stumbled across while exploring Szczecin on foot.

Finally, there was a bit of language confusion as well. My friend and I had gotten through the day quite well by using gesticulation and German, but when we decided to buy a cake from a bakery, there was some miscommunication: we thought the price displayed was for a slice of cake, while actually it was for the whole thing (Poland’s prices are famously lower than those across the border in Germany). That evening, both of us went home to Berlin on FlixBus with one entire cake each. It was worth it, though. Hella good cake.