Daily Wroc-love Sunrisers and Gnome-age

I spent the first week at my grandmother’s house in my village, reconnecting with the streets, mountains, family and friends. Leisure; strolling through the forest, fixing up a mountain bike, jogging, mowing my grandmother’s 8 hectares of lawn, biking from one grandmother’s house to the other. I didn’t talk to anyone my age until the weekend when I called Damian, an old childhood friend. Whenever we get together we paint the town red. Our three-day streak ended with me coming home at 8am, to my grandmother’s great disappointment, yelling and screaming. Therefore, I hightailed it up to Karpacz, a mountain town 2 hours away, where my aunt owns a bed and breakfast. During the summer, my cousin Malwina, one year my junior, runs the place. For two days we did some great hiking in the Karkonoszy National Park... climbed Sniezka (the highest peak) and won a bet which we had placed the night before. Some boys said that we couldn't make it up and down Sniezka in 4.5 hours. We ran a ton, but we made it... incidentally we were too tired to pick up our prize, a 24 case of beer. The next day we headed over to Wroclaw.

Ah the joys of Wroclaw. I love spending time here. Malwina’s apartment is conveniently located close to the city centre, the best knysze stand in the world, a large mall, a park, a sweet Gothic church, the blood bank, the tram stop, etc. Always something to visit, something to do. This year, I decided to hunt for gnomes. There are about 150 small iron gnomes scattered about the city commemorating the “Orange Alternative” anti-Communist underground movement that started in Wroclaw. The member would take on names of gnomes in order to disguise themselves and fool Commie patrols. The Wroclaw gnomes are hidden all around the city… hanging on lamp posts, sitting in front of stores, on top of windowsills, chilling in the park. Malwina and I found about 50 in a three-day hunt. Of course, we pulled the usual all-weeklong barhopping streak, frequenting the usual haunts and some new ones. Look at the picture of me laying in front of a tram stop in order to gauge the caliber of our outings.

The week ended (Sunday) with my brother and his girlfriend Lyndsey (who had just flown in the states via Frankfurt) coming to stay with us in Wroclaw. I got to show off all my historical, cultural and gnomy knowledge of Wroclaw for the day. The next day, Malwina had to take her driver’s license exam for the fifth time (no joke). It was a rainy Monday and there were about fifty people in the observation square; family and friends of the test-takers. Everyone was silent, smoking incessantly, looking at the plaza where the examinees were maneuvering between the cones. I sat nervously watching her maneuver through the plaza. She failed for the fifth time as her tire grazed the corner of a cone. After the exam, Malwina, Pawel, Lyndsey and I all headed over to Pieszyce (our village). They only had three days in Poland and my brother wanted Lynds to meet our family.

On Tuesday, incidentally my golden birthday, the four of us headed back to Karpacz to show Lyndsey around. We ate a nice dinner at the rustic Duch Gor, then drove back Pieszyce via Walbrzych where the centuries old and imposing Ksiaz Castle stands. As it was 8PM, the castle was closed, but we parked somewhere on its forest grounds and trekked to it in dusk. It was an eerie experience because the castle seemed abandoned… it was dark, it was just us and this massive beautiful structure. We walked through the grounds and imagined what it must have felt like to actually live there. Quite lonely, I presume.

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