ABSTRACT
The fact that great historical moments are a combination of sheer chance, unleashed charisma and prolonged plotting was perhaps nowhere so obviously proven as in Gdansk. On a personal level that truism, at least in so far as it related to the combination of chance and plotting, can be applied to my good fortune in being in Gdansk at the right time. However, I can only claim to having realized in retrospect that I was a witness to the beginning of one of history's great moments.
