Polish Nobel Peace laureate and democracy icon Lech Walesa left hospital today, three weeks after being admitted for pneumonia.
"They have let me leave on the conditions that I spend a month convalescing. I feel weak and I'm going to spend most of that time at home," 67-year-old Walesa said.
"My doctors didn't manage to identify the bacteria that got me, but I know that two people who went to Tunisia with me were also hospitalised with an infection," he added. Walesa visited Tunisia in late April to lend the North African nation his know-how for its transition to democracy.
Last week, he announced that after he was discharged from hospital, he would be forced to cut back on his busy public speaking schedule until the end of the year.
Internet fanatic Walesa has not let his health scare stop his avid blogging, and has continually posted pictures from hospital -- posing with staff and a steady stream of guests -- at lechwalesa.Blip.Pl.
Walesa has diabetes and cardiac problems, and in 2008 was fitted with a pacemaker in a US clinic.
As a shipyard electrician, he was leader of Solidarity, a union born during a 1980 strike in the Baltic port of Gdansk that won grudging recognition from Poland's communist regime. As a result, the mustachioed Pole won global renown.
In 1981 the government changed tack and imposed martial law to crush Solidarity, but the movement remained alive underground. Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his non-violent opposition to the regime.
Solidarity returned to the fore in 1989, negotiating an election deal with the authorities and scoring a victory that brought down the regime, speeding the demise of communist rule in Europe by 1991.
In 1990, Walesa became Poland's first democratically-elected president since World War II, serving one five-year term. He has remained a respected freedom activist ever since.
