For The Love of Travel

My first port of call today is Market Square (Rynek), the city’s municipal centre but also the social and cultural centre -a place of happenings, concerts, performance art, lined with terraced cafes and restaurants. Originally built in the 13thC, it was ravaged by fighting in WW2 and had to be rebuilt in the 1950’s. Proudly square-shouldered in the square’s centre stands the Town Hall, a miraculous survivor from the 13thC and the city centre’s defining landmark. The neighbouring Flower Market operates 24 hours a day, with scores of flower sellers available in the event of a matrimonial emergency, and ready to meet the requirements of empty-fisted Romeos – such is the importance of flower-giving in Polish society. Love the fountain in the midst of all the flowers and autumn leaved trees…

The University Church (of the Blessed Name of Jesus) is late Baroque, ranked one of the most beautiful in Central Europe. Jesuits built it as part of the University complex in the 17thC –  frescos on the vaults; painted to imitate marble and gilt – its very well-preserved and most of the furnishings are original. 

The University building is magnificent and still functions as an academic building. Past professors include Alois Alzheimer and Robert Bunsen. Since the start of the 20thC, the Uni has produced a remarkable 9 Nobel Prize winners. 

A little picturesque alleyway, Jatki, is home to numerous artists studios and souvenir stalls (in past times, the principal industry here was meat – butchered beasts filled wooden stalls). The defining feature of the street is the collection of bronze farm animals, sculpted by Piotr Wieczorek in the 1990’s, this “Memorial to Slaughtered Animals” was funded by local government.

Lastly, view over river Oder towards Cathedral island (Ostrow Tumski);  and some lovely architecture around the National Museum, I didn’t visit inside, museum’d out at present.  

Wroclaw may never have lost its ancient Polish element – 20,000 Poles lived here before World War II – but Poles would never have imagined that the city would become a part of the motherland again.  Wroclaw became Polish again by default. Stalin prodded Churchill and Roosevelt into rolling Poland west in 1945. Poland lost the cities of Lwow and Vilnius and gained the bombed out shells of Breslau (Wroclaw) and Danzig (Gdansk).      As soon as I got into Wroclaw, breathed a sigh of relief….now this is a city I like. Lots of green, old architecture, cafes and restaurants….time to wander aimlessly around the Old Town, keeping my eyes peeled for Wroclaw’s adorable and elusive gnomes; there are over 300 around town.

But first, I’d booked into the Raclawice Panorama, a 140m long canvas depicting Kosciuszko’s legendary (and short-lived) victory over the Russians in 1794 – this is one of the only remaining panoramic paintings in the world – a genre popular in the 19thC.

Then to view the Old City from the top of the Cathedral of St John the Baptist, a Gothic church and landmark in the city. A climb of 50 steps up a narrow stone staircase and mercifully, a lift to the top.  An amazing view over Cathedral Island, and once back in the church, incredible gold door that leads to the top of the pulpit, inside. Loved the leadlight as well.

And a lover’s bridge that’s packing heaps of locks!

When you tire gazing at cherubs, gargoyles and bearded national heroes, you can find your way to the cnr. of Pilsudskiego and Swidnicka to get a new take on public art….Jerzy Kalina’s wonderfully lifelike bronze “Anonymous Pedestrians” descending into the earth – a tribute to those who worked in underground organisations to undermine the Soviet regime? They would have looked even better in rainy conditions!

Love my boutique hotel on the edge of the old city, surrounded by parkland and part of a hipster neighbourhood! THE most delicious salmon meal I have EVER had, I think cooked sous-vide. It was perfect! 

I walked past Nalanda cafe and was instantly drawn inside…its vegan, gluten free, eco cosmetics – with a bookstore. A special place where good literature, fair trade coffee, and energy-giving food is all under one roof. 

Derelict factories and foundries, blackened chimneys and abandoned maintenance yards of Silesia’s industrial boom represent the bulk of Silesia’s tourist offerings today. Grey, bleak for the most part…..Freedom Square’s small oval of greenish pleasantry stands out in the urban tangle and was the city’s main axis point in the first city plan of 1860. There used to be “Tomb of the Unknown Insurgent” in 1923, unveiled by one of the heroes of the Silesian Uprisings, Wojciech Korfanty (see below for info on him). However during Soviet rule, that memorial was replaced with a monument of 2 thuggish tommy-wielding Red Army soldiers standing atop a truly hideous concrete pedestal – they were removed in 2014 after years of protests. Some city functionary wasn’t specific enough in their instruction…because while the thugs have gone, the hideous pedestal remains…… 🙂

I went looking for and found some treasures but they were difficult to find. 

Tatiana’s restaurant – delicious sour rye soup (zurek) and wabbit for lunch!  Always love a good statue, especially when they are of figures that have created change i their time….and these 2 couldn’t be different from each other… Józef Klemens Piłsudski was Chief of State (1918–22), “First Marshal of Poland ” (from 1920), and defacto leader (1926–35) of the Second Polish Republic. From mid-World War I he had a major influence in Poland’s politics and was an important figure on the European political scene. He was the person most responsible for the creation of the Second Polish Republic in 1918, 123 years after it had been taken over by Russia, Austria and Prussia.

A Polish national activist, journalist and politician, Wojciech Korfanty (April 20, 1873 – August 17, 1939) achieved infamy as a paramilitary leader during the Silesian Uprisings. Born the son of a Polish Silesian miner, in his early life Korfanty studied philosophy, law and economics at the University of Breslau (Wroclaw) becoming involved in Polish nationalist circles as a young man and joining the secret nationalist society “Z,” which resisted the Germanisation of Upper Silesia’s Polish population in the decades prior to World War I.  After World War I, Korfanty was one of the chief advocates of joining Upper Silesia and other eastern German territories to the new post-war Polish Republic. As diplomacy failed, ‘Uprisings’ were successful in forcing the German authorities to leave Upper Silesia. Korfanty was largely credited by Poles for his role in the outcome when Silesia’s most valuable industrial districts were granted to Poland after the war.

In August 1939, he was released from prison due to bad health and died days later, only two weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland which began WWII.