Poland for lunch and a bit more

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Today is the day I went to Poland for lunch. Why not…..the bus fare was all of $1.80 USD. I think I threw the bus off its’ 10 minute schedule cause my being on it meant that they had to check my passport and stamp me out of Germany and into Poland before the bus could proceed. Stanislaw, the bus driver, just gave a blank look at anyone who spoke to him in German about directions. Maybe it’s a national pride type thing, but most of the people I approached seemed not to know a word of German.

Back to history for a minute. A couple days ago I told you that prior to WW2, Gorlitz was on both sides of the Niesse River, but that after the war, the eastern side was given to Poland and the river became the border. Gorlitz now has about 65,000 people and the Polish city of Zgorzelec (go ahead, try and pronounce it) has about 35,000 people. The German city, of course, has had 16 years of west German taxes to spruce up, fix up and determine who owns what. Not so on the Polish side. They have barely made a dent in the spruce up, fix up department. Cigarets must be cheaper in Poland cause the stores and stands reminded me of the Indians along 441 in Hollywood. Food can’t be that expensive either cause I found a place that served 6 pirogis (if that is what mashed potatoes wrapped by a dumpling is) and a coke for less than the bus fare…..1.50 Euros!

I had wanted to see a couple pre-WW2 buildings in Zgorzelec, one being the former Hall of Rememberance built in the early 1900s to honor the Kaisers Wilhelm and Friederick.
Take a really grand building, take out all the major art work and statuary, give to the Poles and turn into a function and cultural center Oh, the pedestals are still there and you can see the glue or cement that held the statues down some 50 years ago and the dome and the gold is still there, but the building just seems to be a shell.

I then walked about 2.5 kilometers to the newly built pedestrian bridge that connects the two cities. Showing my passport to the officers, I received sad looks from both the Polish and the German officers as they said that this particular bridge was only for EU residents. I didn’t have a resident card nor did they have the proper stamping or passport reading equipment and……hey……the other bridge (which I had come over on the bus) was only 2 kilometers away!!!!!! Those guys were really cool and told me that my name did not show up on any Interpol, FBI or CIA list, they duly stamped my passport (wow….4 stamps in one day…..sort of like the 70s) and I walked the additional kilometer or so back to my hotel in Gorlitz. The good hotel folk fixed me a tall glass of ice water (the Americans like a lot of ice they said) to help cool me down. Today was pushing 90 degrees but although the sun was very hot, there was virtually no humidity!!!!!

I’m going to again attempt to attach some photos of Gorlitz, Zgorzelec, my hotel (the 3 legged dog) and of the Karstadt department store. This store is pretty much the only remaining original example of that 1920s modern department store architecture. Gorlitz survived WW2 pretty much intact (even the synagog was left pretty much alone), but was basically was left to rot during the 45 years of Communist rule.

This will probably be the last blog from mainland Europe for a while. I’m off to England tomorrow.

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Photos

Myhotel
They found stuff from 1400s when they rebuilt this place

1920s department store
Wanna shop here