Touring Wroclaw

Sunday brought with it the tour from hell. I was super excited to tour Wroclaw and get to know the area. Unfortunately, the tour guide was insane. She firmly believed that no rest was necessary for us weak Americans. All in all, between 9 and 3, we walked about six miles without a break. And I was super hungry because the night before we'd gone out late. So, of course, I assume I'll sleep in then grab a light breakfast and hold out for "lunch." Only obiad was crazy late.

Even so, we had some cool experiences. Below is some building they built for an academic conference in a real World's Fair tradition. The whole park is reminiscent of World's Fair grounds. Except on a smaller scale.

Also in the park was this awesome example of social(ist) realism.

This is a sweet sculpture in the same area. It's super phallic, and when Solidarity was coming to the forefront, someone scaled this HUGE thing in order to put a Solidarnosc flag at the top. The authorities took months to find a way to get it down, so the flag just stayed at the top. Swell.

I was saddened by the small scale of the Japanese garden. There was no waterfall of remembrance or pathway of peace. Obviously they need to go to the stud farm in Ireland (which has a legit Japanese garden) to learn how to do this.

We took a boat tour of the "Venice of Poland" and there was this legit event going on where all these volunteers were painting a huge fence along the zoo. It was so cool.

The other super legit thing in Wroclaw was this bridge. It has a billion locks on it. It's a tradition for couples to come to the bridge and put locks on it. Usually with their names and frequently saying how long they've been together. There were obviously a lot of Polish locks, but I saw asian characters and some foreign languages. The bridge was being used to film a new soap opera based in Wroclaw. So we were shooed off the bridge almost as soon as we got there. The actors were covered in fake blood, so I'd be interested to see that episode! Not because I like violence. But because I was there for the filming.

Wroclaw also has these little gnome things everywhere. This is the one on the bridge. There are academic ones reading near libraries and universities. There are golfing gnomes in old town. They are seriously everywhere. It would be fun to go around and just find them all, but obviously our tour guide was not cool enough to do something like that. In fact, tour guide, didn't even explain the background of these gnomes.

We saw some churches and whatnot (the usual European tour), but the most beautiful room was this ornate room in the university. Evidently people have real life experiences in this room. It's not just for show. Notre Dame needs to get on this. We have a large endowment, right?