Wroclaw, the four seasons

Wroclaw has the four seasons, all inclusive. No, unfortunately I am not referring to the fancy American hotel. Kasia, a polish friend of Robert’s, described to me a saying that they have in polish: March is the month when all four seasons compete for attention. Okay, that’s a bit more poetic way of saying it… but she is absolutely right. In one day we had sunshine on the brightly-colored crocuses, then rain, then freezing rain, then legitimate M&M sized hail, followed by a couple hours of snowfall. The day was topped off by more freezing rain, and then somehow, a small sliver of a moon and clear skies.

spring crocuses...

... and afternoon hail...

Despite the weather, being in Wroclaw (can I just say Breslau from now on? I know that Kasia might be offended…) with Robert was wonderfully relaxing. I recovered from my jetlag, he did some reading for University and attended some classes, and we ducked out of the horrendously undependable weather by going from café to café in the old-city. One of the nicest, the one that Robert said had my name written all over it, is called the Literature Café. Incredibly quiet and very quaint, surrounded with bookshelves on all sides, I managed even to order some herbal tea in polish. Okay, “managed” is clearly an exaggeration… it’s more that the nice waitress and I had a fun time pointing to things on the menu and then she sounded them out for me. Man, polish is one crazy language. As soon as you recognize a few letters, you realize that they switch them all up on you – the j surely doesn’t sound like our English j’s, and the c’s…. well, don’t get me started. I don’t know how Robert has gotten past the letters, even, let alone the grammar structure. 

<-- A dwarf in the marketplace... riding a pigeon? 

On one evening, Kasia suggested to me that she and I meet at the Galleria Dominanska, a big shopping mall, while Robert played soccer (note: in the freezing rain). That was my second time taking the tram in Poland all by myself; I was very proud. It helps of course that Robert bought me a 7-day pass… but nonetheless the city was becoming more and more manageable, and the streets are so symmetrical that I don’t know how I could get lost there. First Kasia showed me the basement of a relatively fancy clothing store. In the basement they store all of their “old fashions”, and they sell them for tops 5-euros. She was incredibly proud of being able to show me such a find, and I ended up buying two shirts and a dress for no more than twenty euros. Not too shabby. We walked from there to the big shopping mall. Kasia explained to me that that’s where kids meet up to hang out, they go to the shopping mall and spend an entire day there with their friends. They’re all new, she said, along with all of the stores that came with the privatization of Poland. 

I love that she can speak such good German, because she is a great source of information as to what life and politics in Poland are like. And I felt like an absolute idiot when we concluded that I knew next to nothing about polish history. But hopefully that will change with a few more books and a few more evenings out at the mall. Once there we chatted over smoothies and went to the grocery store on the first floor. I thought she had a lot to buy, but it turns out that she just needed some sliced deli meat. She helped me ask for some fresh perogis – sort of like Chinese dumplings, and usually served with cream and ketchup. I ended up getting 500 grams of the sweet cheese kind and 500 grams of the meat kind. Robert and I brought them with us to Prague and they served us well; we got two meals worth of food from that purchase.

<-- a hearty lunch of cheese and meat perogis

Robert and I joined his roommates for meals twice (they always seem to have either schnapps or vodka around to accompany meals…), cooked a bit for ourselves, and took advantage of dry days to walk along the Oder River. My favorite meal though was our lunch in the market hall. We went to this tiny little conglomeration of tables in the corner of a massive indoor marketplace, resplendent in its dark grey communist concrete. But clearly the life of the market lies in the flower stalls, the produce, the meat and fish stands. We literally bypassed all to get ourselves some soup, and right away one could tell that English simply would not fly; thankfully Borscht was not hard to say. Our dark purple broth came with little tortellinis called “Ushka”, which is polish for little ears. No ears though (thank goodness) but mushroom filled noodles that only looked a bit like the shape of an ear. 

An old man joined us and spoke with us in Polish. He said a few times that we were beautiful to be young and studying. His only English phrase was “how are yooooooou”, which he pronounced proudly as a declaration rather than as a question. Robert said that all sorts of walks of life go to that place for food – businessmen and students and exhausted construction workers alike.

Luckily we survived the four seasons and even enjoyed them – there’s really no point in hating freezing rain if it happens on a daily basis. On Thursday we took the tram to the train station at 6:30 along with all the city’s morning commuters. We made it in time for our 7:00 train (let it be known that this is due to Robert’s sense of punctuality, not mine) leaving a calm and cool city behind us. I have no recollection of the rest of that train ride since I was fast asleep before we even left Breslau. Next stop, back to Germany, specifically to the grand Saxon city of Dresden to grab some coffee and switch trains for the Czech Republic.