Week in Wroclaw, pt 2

*Nick in Vienna

Bit late getting this up, but oh well, you all are patient. Last time I wrote about the library and the area surrounding it in Wroclaw, Poland. Now I want to say a bit about the downtown and show a few pictures. The short version is that I really liked Wroclaw, and the next time you find yourself in Central or Eastern Europe you really should visit it. Wroclaw is a little tougher to get to, but if you want something that isn't crazy with tourists, but still very lovely and enjoyable (not to mention dirt cheap), then you can't go wrong with Wroclaw.





The main square is huge. It is a square like ones in the states where there is a big building in the middle and four blocks around it (meaning, it is not like Brussels, where the square is a big empty lot surrounded by buildings). Unlike American squares, though, it is only for pedestrians and bicycles. It's pretty hard to capture in a picture.
This one shows maybe 1/2 of one side of the square. The buildings around the edge are very colorful and cheery. The next picture is the building in the middle. I wish I could tell you what it was, but I have no idea.

Also in the square was a shrine for the recently deceased Polish President and his wife. I was there a little less than a week after it happened. The mood around the shrine was very somber. I saw many people bringing candles and a handful crying.


This next picture captures what I oddly loved about Wroclaw, pristine beauty next to decaying Communist buildings. I tried to capture it in one shot as best I could. On the left is the main university building. On the right is what I guess an apartment building built during the Communist era when Poland was under Soviet rule. All over town it is quite evident that the Poles have made no effort whatsoever in keeping up the building constructed by the Reds. I didn't get many pictures of it, but scattered throughout the town are crumbling and ugly reminders of Wroclaw's bleak past.




A more cheerful reminder of that past, and a far better story is captured in the many gnome statues scattered throughout the city. I read online that these actually have a very interesting story. Apparently during Russian rule in the 1980s a group of students and professors started protesting the communists by making colorful, happy garden gnomes and placing them throughout the city. This seriously upset the Russians (who put out patrols to destroy all garden gnomes...seriously) but I think it is a brilliant and creative form of protest and truly captures what I love about the Poles. A few years ago the city commissioned some local artists to built bronze gnome statues to be placed throughout the city as a reminder of the revolution against the Russians. This picture was taken on the square. I read there are websites where all 150ish gnomes are marked on a map with gps coordinates. It is like that super weird hunting thing I did with Zack and Eve last summer (can't remember what it was called), except it is for victims of communist rule. Finally, the last picture I took facing out from the square, and I didn't even realize until I got home that one of the gnomes is hanging on the street light on the right.

Week in Wroclaw pt. 1

*Nick in Vienna

I spent the last week in Wroclaw (pronounced vroat-suave), Poland working in their music history archive. My trip was cut a little short for a few reasons - I worked faster than I thought I would, they had less stuff than I though, and there was a techno festival in town during the weekend and I couldn't find an empty bed.

As some of you might know Krakow and Warsaw were two of our favorite places during our honeymoon, so I was excited to see more of Poland. My night bus from Vienna arrived at 4 am, though, so I wasn't that thrilled when I got there. I found a train station nearby and sat for a few hours before heading into town. The area around the train station is not very pretty and is mostly crumbling communist buildings. Once I made it downtown, though, Wroclaw revealed itself as a beautiful city with all the charm of Krakow. Wroclaw is much smaller, around 200,000 people. It is a university town and there were tons of students everywhere. Basically everything for a tourist is within walking distance, and there are very few cars downtown. Instead there are mostly trams and bikes.



I made it to the library at 8:00 and spent the day transcribing a set of madrigals from the 1580s. The music library is on a little island and in a former monastery. This picture is of the courtyard and the huge church that it is attached to. To get in I had to show my passport to a couple security guards who didn't speak any English. Luckily there was a woman nearby who spoke German, so she translated for me. It is always so much easier to speak German with people who don't speak it as their native language. I'm not really sure why there needed to be so much security. I saw hardly anyone all week in the library, and I was the only visitor for the whole week in the music collection. Jane thought it might be a communist holdover of having a bunch of jobs that aren't really necessary but keep people eating.

The main music librarian was very friendly, like most Polish people, and spoke some English. He sat by me almost the whole day and when I wanted to go get lunch he walked outside with me to show me how to get to the best places. Near the library is the main cathedral of Wroclaw. I took relaxing walks during lunch most days near the library. Here are some pictures, including one of a statue of Pope John Paul II, who lived in Wroclaw at one point. Tomorrow I'll post pics and description of downtown and the many gnomes of Wroclaw, so look forward to that.

Brussels and Passion Week in France

*Jane in Paris*

I'm actually going to start with the second topic. The main thing I wanted to share about Easter in Paris is that it's not Easter! No bunnies, no eggs, no one trying to get me to buy things to celebrate one of the holiest days on the church calendar. Here Easter is called "Pâques," meaning Passover. From what Nick tells me about Easter in Vienna, it sounds like the cute pastel animals come from our Germanic heritage. The church that I've been attending held a special service on Palm Sunday that featured a beautiful Passion cantata by one of the many artistic people in the congregation, John Featherstone. This helped me to start off Holy Week with a sense of solemnity. The other special thing I did that week was to go to Good Friday (here called "Holy Friday") mass at Sacre Coeur basilica. It's one of the larger Catholic churches in Paris, but it lacks the touristy atmosphere of Notre Dame. The most powerful moment for me was when the priests and attendants processed down the aisle, empty handed, and then all prostrated themselves on the floor of the sanctuary for two minutes. We in the crowd immediately dropped to our knees and it seemed like no one moved in the church until the celebrants stood up. I'll also always remember watching the nuns process up to the choir (the nice older woman sitting next to me brought their movements to my attention), all of them in white dresses and black head-coverings. The simple color combination seemed to encapsulate the sentiment of Good Friday. In short, it seemed much easier in Paris to have a meaningful Passion Week than I find it to be in the U.S. It is too bad that the nation's companies have managed to turn it into just another day for Americans to buy things.

Nick visited me in Paris last week, and our biggest adventure was a day trip to Brussels, Belgium. We took an early morning train from Paris and found ourselves at the South Train Station after just 1.5 hours. Right away seeing all of the signs in Dutch and French captivated me, because Dutch seems like a comical, corrupted form of German that I can almost understand. We made our way to the famous Grand Place, snapped some pictures, and then visited the church on the square, St. Nicholas. The priest was standing at the door, greeting people who passed by. Parts of the church had been built in the 13th century and other buildings on the square were actually attached to the walls of the church and obscured parts of the windows. Later in the day we visited another church that we happened upon on the way to a museum, St. Michael. The stained glass inside the church was beautiful and reminded me of the windows of Chartres. All around the outer aisle of the church were paintings that had been inspired by a particular religious poem. I really like that churches in Europe so often support the arts (for instance Notre Dame's participation in Nuit Blanche). One of my favorite paintings was Pâques. We also saw the Atomium, Brussels's version of the Eiffel Tower: a huge model of an atom (mercury I think) also built for a World's Fair.

It was nice to visit a country that was brand new to me but where I could still communicate; despite what I had heard, French in Brussels didn't seem to differ noticeably from Parisian French. Nick and I liked that new and old building mixed fairly freely in this city, which isn't the case in Vienna nor in Paris. Our last activity there was eating Belgian waffles topped with chocolate sauce and fruit.