I t’s hard to believe I’m in Poland . The powdery golden sand, sharp blue skies, waves softly lapping at the shore, and softly rising dunes are nothing like the drab, grey shoreline I anticipated when planning an off-season trip in central Europe .

I’m reminded of the beaches of the American northeast – the shores of the Outer Banks in South Carolina or even Long Island beaches in the Hamptons. I am, in fact, strolling along the Vistula Spit, a thin piece of land stretching out into the Baltic Sea in northern Poland, with the Vistula Lagoon on one side and Gdansk Bay on the other.…