Wrocław, Poland

I said goodbye to Sofia on Tuesday, and to Colleen on Wednesday. By the time you read this, Colleen will be back in Asheville. I took a bus from Prague to Wrocław (pronounced like “vroht-swav”, with the ł character sounding like w), enjoying several hours of the Czech and Polish countryside.

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Back in November 2017, I attended a patent information conference in Sofia, Bulgaria. While there, I spoke with a Polish woman, and she asked if I’d ever visited Poland. I said I’d only been to Krakow, and she strongly suggested Wrocław. I’d never heard of it before, but I mentally recorded her recommendation, and now I’m finally visiting. She wasn’t joking around — this place is clearly underrated and not yet on the main tourist scene. It’s a city in southern Poland, not far from the border with Czechia, and it has about 650,000 inhabitants.

Wrocław is very photogenic with its numerous old buildings, huge town squares, and the river Oder. Most European cities have one main square, but Wrocław seems to have several!

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As I get closer to the Ukrainian border, I’m seeing more refugee signs:

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I can appreciate a culture who prominently advertises a future metal cello concert with four cellists!

In fact, I can hear a band (albeit not metal, but heavy jazz) playing at a venue across the street from my Airbnb as I write.

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Today’s dad joke: What do you call it when people move to the music in Wrocław?

Pole dancing!

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Today’s travel quote:

But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.

Bill Bryson