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. Just a few hundred metres at its thinnest point, the Polish side of this sandbar ends abruptly around halfway along the spit, at which point the land runs into Russian territory. Despite its location rubbing up against a hostile neighbour , this pretty stretch of shoreline is proving itself to be a tranquil little haven.…