As a loyal follower of Neptune, as soon as I arrived in Gdansk (née Danzig) I made a beeline to the bronze Fountain of Neptune, a stylish affair dating from 1615.

When I got there I was surprised to find Neptune sporting a stylish tee shirt.  He looks good in it, but say what?

The tee shirt bears the letters KONSTYTUCJA, which turns out to be Polish for “Constitution”.  Apparently the Lord of the Oceans has come out in support of the Polish Constitution against government numbskullery.  Reuters has an article all about it “Neptune statue gets T-shirt

Apparently no smiting has yet occurred. The tee-shirt appeared on August 10th and the local authorities seem to have been content to leave it in place. I offered up a slice of Starbucks carrot cake to Neptune, to show my support.

Gdansk/Danzig has a very scenic old town center.  It has the benefit of being mostly a post-WWII rebuild, where they wisely omitted the boring 19th c bits and rebuilt the city center as the great Hanseatic merchant city ought to have looked in 1800.  They did a nice job!  Yes it’s a romanticized rebuild, but it is actually quite charming with lots of tall gabled buildings and giant redbrick churches.

P.S. The authorities modified the Neptune statue in 1988 to add a bronze seahorse tail reaching awkwardly up to cover Neptune’s groin.  That seems a bit retrograde, given his accoutrements had been exposed for all to see for three centuries.  And people wonder why the Baltic herring fisheries are in such decline!