There’s Gnome Place Like Wroclaw (Poland NE Eur No 11)

Dear Friends and Family

Wroclaw’s main railway station is only a 15 minute walk, on one major street from our B&B Wroclaw Centrum Hotel. Still, it was helpful to have a Polish high school student accompany us there. He proudly told us that he is a Boy Scout. The Polish Scouts created a resistance army during WWII and fought bravely against the Nazis. Linda thanked him for guiding us to our hotel with a U.S one-dollar bill. This is something really special to receive here. He was delighted. Many Poles have been so kind to us. We are really grateful they struggle to speak with us in English and don’t resent our inability to speak their native language. Polish writing looks like English, but it has 32 letters, instead of 26. There are many rules and many exceptions to those rules. Wroclaw (pronounced “Vrotswav”) is a city of 1.1 million, including 120,000 university students. Unlike in the USA, public university education is free in Poland.

Our hotel was not far from a large mall, just a couple of blocks from the historic old town. We arrived after dark, and we were hungry. Linda asked Bruce to bring some food back to our room. He’s a proud “food scout” and loves a bargain! There was a Chinese self serve place at the nearby mall offering what he thought was a fantastic deal for all the food you could pile into a to-go container at this late hour. The offer said 50% off, “was 3.89, now only 1.89.” When Bruce got to the register to pay, he discovered it was 1.89 for 100 grams, not for the whole to-go container. He was too embarrassed to return half the food he greedily piled up. So, for about 30.00 zloty, ($8.35), we had more than we could possibly eat. He ended up finding a homeless guy on the street who was happy to receive the free (third) meal. 😜

We heard some really good amplified street music in the old town main square inWroclaw. They don’t need a license to perform. They are usually very good musicians. If you are not good, you don’t play, since, without tips or a happy audience, it’s no fun. We hear these folks all over Europe, but not too much in the U.S., where local regulations often prohibit unlicensed street performance. We looked online for a concert while we were in town, but only found strange groups like “Fertile Hump,” and “Dopethrone Sunnata and Red Scalp.” We refined our search to classical music and struck pay-dirt!

We got tickets to the opening night of the Wroclaw Philharmonic orchestra season. Woo-hoo! The featured Polish composer was Karol Szymanowski. The Danish violin soloist, Nikolai Znaider, had high praise for Szymanowski. Ironically, Bruce played the piano at this composer’s house in Zakopane. Szymanowski is no light-hearted Mozart.The music was really dark, crazy and intense. Had Bruce known that, he would have given a much wilder performance. Szymanowski composed during dark times in Poland’s history. It shows in his sad, but passionate music. The orchestra, soloist and venue were fantastic. We really enjoyed the pieces by Dvorak and Brahms. The concert hall, NFM, is ultra-modern, with the best acoustics.

There are miniature brass gnomes depicting activities at nearby venues scattered around Wroclaw. These gnomes came from the Orange Alternative, an anti-Communist movement of peaceful protesters. Artists spray painted orange gnomes over communist propaganda to make people feel less afraid, and to make them smile. The idea took off. Now, there are over 500 one-foot tall gnomes around Wroclaw. In front of an Italian restaurant, for example, there’s a gnome riding a Vespa motor scooter, carrying a pizza, a jug of Chianti, and an espresso coffee maker. In front of our hotel, a gnome is taking a snooze. In the old town, a tourist gnome is snapping a photo of a miniature gnome. There is an office where people get gnome maps of Wroclaw and hunt for them. It’s like hunting for Pokémon in the Iphone game! Linda wished her girls were there finding gnomes and taking pictures with her. Her favorite was a gnome washing his clothes in the Odra River. Wroclaw is a fun city in which to“gnome around.”

We got out of the old town one day and walked to the Wroclaw University Botanical Garden, established in 1811. It has two reflective ponds, lined with pathways that twist and turn beneath ancient trees. We walked through a couple of acres of well-tended plants and flowers. Several specialized green-houses contained bromeliads, cacti, water plants, and ferns. There was even a greenhouse dedicated to African plants. Linda picked up some acorns dropped by a two-hundred year-old oak tree and will try planting them. It would sure be neat if they were fertile.

We joined an old town walking tour one morning that ended on “Cathedral Island,” one of six islands in Wroclaw. We crossed the “bridge of love” with its thousands of locks representing promises of forever. Ours is in Paris. From where our group stood at the end of the tour, our guide pointed out several churches. Most of them were absolutely beautiful. There was even a military cathedral with soldiers outside standing guard. We learned that Wroclaw was founded in the year 1000 and was about 75% destroyed during WWII. The old town fared a little bit better and was only about 50% destroyed. The impressive gothic-style old town hall sits at an angle in the old town center, surrounded by lovely reconstructed old town buildings. City planners wanted the exteriors of the buildings to look like they did originally. In some instances, windows are only painted on for symmetry. It you don’t look closely, it is easy to miss the fake windows! We included an example of this in the photo of the green building. See if you can spot the fake window. There are still over 100 gas street lights that a lamplighter lights each evening, which adds to the old town atmosphere.

Time for us to blow out the candles and get some rest. Hope you are all well.

Love, BnL

Author: bnlmos

We are a retired couple, together nearly 35 years, who love International travel. Having a "blog" is brand new to us, so have patience as we do our best to keep in touch with our friends and family. Please feel free to comment on this blog or contact us via personal email. brucemos@hotmail.com View all posts by bnlmos