POLISH OPTIMISM
Wednesday, November 1st, 2006
Warsaw is huge and is full of pockets of culture and history, connected by scattered and vast spaces. The scale of the main boulevards is massive and the legacy of the Soviet architecture leaves the feeling that this is a city that is going to have a hard time competing to make people want to live there. There are long pedestrian underpasses under every major intersection that often require going about a half a mile just to get across a few corners or to the tram stop out on a distant island, not to mention the stairs up and down. There are a lot of buses and trams, and one metro line, but they still connect these vast open spaces. We walked miles and miles both ways across the core of the city and were exhausted. It’s scale demoralizes you as a pedestrian. Amazingly the city just cries out for cycling as a solution to the distances and scattered street plan, but we saw very few cyclists compared to other cities in Eastern and Central Europe. We certainly wished we had bikes, and a few feet of bike space of the hundreds available on every big street.
But there is a lot of energy in the city and the people are clearly tough, as evidenced by the amazing struggle to survive two world wars and the soviets. And the other thing I found in Poland was the fact that the people are some of the friendliest that we have encountered and seem to be very happy. We found bus drivers, shop keepers, and people on the street were laughing a lot, and always seemed to take the light side.
We left Warsaw on a First Class train, as we had only taken second class to date on the entire trip and were feeling like a bit of a splurge (15 USD extra), since second class on some of the trains we had been on in Poland were crowded and not very comfortable. Well first class was fine, and very quiet, but very dull, since it was all business people. But I was feeling worn out a bit and couldn’t face an adventure that day. You don§t get good stories from travelling first class, but sometimes you need a break. The adventure is definitely inversely proportional to the style and class of train, with local and 2nd class only cars being the most colorful, and intercity reserved seat first class the worst. I think mixing it up a bit based on your mood is best, but India may be an exception, since apparently you can barely get on any train there unless you reserve a higher class (of the 8 train classes there) seat through the tourist ticket windows. The same goes for buses, as the Muppet buses are what I will remember, while the slick AC intercity coaches a bit lacking. Of course, most places in Europe 2nd class is more than fine for even my lanky body to travel comfortably.
We arrived in Wroclaw (sort of pronounced Veratz-off) after traversing the great plains of central Poland. Wroclaw is in the finally the Silesia region of Southwest Poland, a fascinating area with a turbulent history and beautiful rolling countryside. But the best thing about Wroclaw was the fact that we got to stay with another local family for a few days through the wonderful (did I mention how much I like Servas today).
Gosia and Wojciech met us at the train station and took us to there home in one of the neighborhoods of Wroclaw. The family lived in one of the old style high-rise soviet era apartment buildings, which was fascinating for us as we have seen thousands of similar buildings in nearly every city we’ve been too and always wanted to know what they are like on the inside. We’re taking a mini-city within a city as their “neighborhood” of “Gaj” had 30,000 people in about two dozen buildings. Well, their place was very nice and homey, and they were amazingly gracious and generous hosts for our stay.
Gosia is a high school English teacher in Wroclaw and she was one of those teachers that you always remember from school, full of energy, enthusiastic, and just plain cool. But she asked us a favor in return for our stay and Cheryl and I ended up speaking in front of two of her English classes. The kids in her classes were fascinated with our lives and San Francisco and they even sang a rousing version of Happy Birthday to me as well. Pretty special and unforgettable for sure! The only problem was that talking about all the great things about San Francisco made me homesick, but luckily it only comes in waves. We are slowly appreciating how special our lives were in SF and how lucky we are to live there. But we’re not done with our adventure yet, so onward.
Wojciech was the cook of the family as well as a Biologist, and he made us some great nettles and soup of local plants, that I’m still not sure what they were, but everything was delicious and a nice break from restaurant food. They live at home with their nice 14-year old daughter, Carolina, who showed us around the city and tried to work on her English as much as possible. Wroclaw is an amazingly beautiful and historical city with bridges, cathedrals, and islands, all spreading from the grand old town square. We would have stayed a third night, but I was actually getting really sick and I really needed to rest for awhile.
So we said goodbye and headed on a lovely bus ride through little towns on our way to Jelenia Gora, just on the edge of the Karkonnose mountains. We spent two of the lowest key days of our trip so far just hanging out in the little city and walked up a little gorge to yet another scary old pedestrian bridge that was of questionable integrity and missing numerous cross boards. Always fun, since you gotta love the lack of Lawyers here. We did have a bit of a schedule now, since we had booked our apartment in Prague for 5 nights and only had 3 days to get there.
But it looked like we could cross the border up over a mountain pass less than an hour away by bus, but when we inquired at the tourist office (in German, thanks Cheryl), we were wold there were no buses that crossed the border and that it would involve walking across the border and hiking down into the next town.
O.K. I admit it, when she said this, I couldn’t help but thinking in my mind, yes, NOW THAT SOUNDS FUN. So we walked to the Czech Republic, because after all, I’ll do just about anything for a really good beer.
found the areas just outside the old city kind of a mess. Our room (with fridge and hot water) was about a mile north of the entrance to the old city; however, it was just a little too far from the trams to be convenient, and the walking was awful to and from the place, since the sidewalks and intersections are blocked with cars. Everyone weaves around the cars and the little space left is too little to walk side by side, so Cheryl and I would literally walk full speed single file for a mile. An odd consequence of these miserable walking conditions (oh and there are lots of people walking), seems to be that people clearly just want to get thru the area as fast as possible. We had old ladies pass us walking at 4 mph, and the younger folks hit nearly 6 mph. Yup, wolds fastest walkers. Don’t stop to tie your shoes.
It also contains the excellent (and undersold) ethnographic museum containing 3 floors of Polish folk culture, including reconstructed rooms from houses of the more common people. 
We visited the Technical Museum which had some vary cool old mechanical devices and displays, including what must be the worlds largest collection of Typewriters (mostly Eastern European). The Roman ruins under the old square have been restored into a mini-mueum with skylights to the square. They even use some of the space for public events, as they were setting up for a reception that evening.
They were pleasant and bizarre. And they’d never have made it out of the art commissions halls in San Francisco. One of the stranger sights that we have run into in the former eastern Bloc.
The upside of this slow change is that there is still some remnants of traditionally Slovakian way and dress. We saw an older man bring in two horses and a wooden cart right into the bus depot, and leave them to go get his morning snack and coffee.
rich.coffin