I have been planning to go there for years, when I was living in Poland. So relatively close, and yet so exotic. So closely connected to Polish history, and yet strangely invisible. I find the same paradox in many places, not only in the stripe of land separating Russia from - what? - from what might be called proper Europe. 
I never went. Other destinations always seemed to attract me most. The country appeared as a sort of void, blending, in a way, with something vaguely familiar, featureless. Baltic, Hanseatic, normal. But what can I say about it if I've never truly been, not even in Gdańsk?