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Compassion Rising Tour 2025: Copernicus museum in Frombork

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8 August: Piaski/Frombork - Lake Pasleka

The predicted stable dry weather was not to be. At 6:30 it started raining again for more than an hour. Packing the tent wet....
The water tram to Frombork was packed. I hadn't managed to book online, but luckily I was still allowed on, albeit without a seat.

Copernicus
In Frombork, I first visited the Copernicus museum next to the cathedral, in the former bishop's palace.

A beautiful presentation that illustrated the life and era of Copernicus.
He was born in Torún and went to school there. He then moved to Krakow, which was the capital at the time. He specialised further in law and medicine in Italy, including Bologna and Padua.

From 1510 until his death in 1543, he stayed in Frombork. In 1519, he helped fight the plague there as a physician.
He was also an economist. He coined the 'law of bad money', which stated that bad coins gradually replace fine coins, as the fine coins are collected for speculative reasons and sometimes even melted down.

Between 1514-33, he wrote his best-known work, The Revolutionibus, which ended up on the blacklist of banned books. It was published in 1543, the year of Copernicus' death.

Walking around in a context where once such a well-known figure also hung out always gives me a strange feeling. Copernicus literally caused a major upheaval of the ecclesiastical worldview with his heliocentrism.

Copernicus museum

Cathedral
Afterwards, I paid a short visit to the cathedral. I was lucky: at 1pm an organ concert was just starting. For each piece, the organist explained the composer and the components of the organ, but unfortunately only in Polish.

When I was back outside, it was raining again. After Frombork, I had planned a 60 km ride. However, the visit to Frombork had taken more time than planned, and with the rain I didn't feel like reeling off those 60 km at all. I was hungry and one of the restaurants appealed more to me.

When I had just finished eating, Alex from Berlin came in. I had met him at the second campsite in Poland (27 July, Niechorze). He told me then that he was on his way to Kaliningrad to visit a friendly couple there. However, the man was no longer in Russia. He did not want to serve in the war and is now staying in Croatia. Tania, his partner, goes to visit him there from time to time. The impact of a mad war on ordinary citizens

What a coincidence that we met here again, so just before the border. Now that deserved a joint selfie!

After a few more purchases in a supermarket, it was already after 4 o'clock. To still do something today, I cycled another 20 km to a quiet forest campsite at the Pasleka lake. A 'very old school' campsite, with no electricity (only generator for the owner's fridges), virtually no mobile coverage, and no hot water. Instead of an ice-cold shower, it was much more pleasant to go swimming in the lake in the last rays of the sun, among the dragonflies and leaping frogs. Pure enjoyment.

Cathedral of Frombork

August 9: Orneta

Yesterday I passed the town Orneta.

In the market square were a number of information panels explaining the story behind the mysterious 'nun painting' in Frombork Cathedral.

These Catherine Sisters were tortured and murdered by the Red Army in 1945. Insanely cruel!
The captions under the photos are testimonials I had translated by GoogleLens.
Red Army soldiers were already at the gates of Olsztyn when the evacuation of patients from the hospital began on the evening of 21 January 1945. Lay staff and the Catherine Sisters working there tried all night to save the sick.

On 22 January, the Soviets took the city. The brutal persecution of the civilian population began. Sister Maria Krzysztofa Klomfass was murdered in hospital. She had fought to defend purity.

On the same day, Sister Maria Liberia Domnick, while seeking help for children in the hospital ward, was shot near the central railway station.
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