To truly gauge how strange it was for an Englishman to open an English
language school in the Polish town of Giżycko it is necessary to
understand a little of the history. For instance, during World War 2 Adolf
Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair was just some 30km from Giżycko, which meant that
the towns fortress (built 1844-1848), was the sub-area HQ and it acted as a
base for Hitler’s HQ guard troop at the Wolf’s Lair, and in fact the
town was known by its German name of Lotzen, not Giżyko at all. In 1945
the future base for my language school was ‘liberated’ by the Soviet
army, who like many liberators in history duly forgot to go home, and would
not in fact become officially called Giżycko until 1946.