September 11th is always a surreal day of reflection, of profound sadness. It’s why I was hoping… with hope being a weird way of phrasing this… to get out to Auschwitz today. As I said before, about the only way I could see touring that low point of humanity was to view it as a thing overcome… at great cost, but overcome. And I thought that might be a good thing to remember on 9/11. Others far more eloquent than I, others with far more personal stories about that day 17 years ago, will write, discuss, and deal with the day in a much more profound and meaningful way. All I can do is mark it as the day, consider how much time has passed and yet how little, and hope that moment to moment, day to day, and year to year, we strive to do better as humans the world over and never allow evil to knock us back from doing what is right — namely to enable people to maximize their hopes and dreams and succeed in whatever positive manner they can. That’s my viewpoint and that’s what I hope humankind’s legacy might one day be. That we did better. Maybe that’s naive and foolish. But the alternative, to ignore or dismiss evil as fake or not our collective problem, is only to enable evil to grow and do more harm, to effectively give evil the win. And I hate losing.
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Regrettably, I didn’t make it on a tour to Auschwitz. As much as I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed the experience, I’m bummed not to have been there, to have stood in that spot, to have looked upon the ground and had nowhere to hide from that failing in our history. There’s something in the tangible, in touching, feeling, smelling, hearing, a place and having its existence be made more real. I’ve read the history books, I’ve seen the movies, both narrative an documentary. I’ve heard the stories. And while there’s heroic acts to endure such hardship and suffering and betrayal of fellow people, it would’ve been… not “nice” I guess… but it would’ve been important to be there. I’m disappointed I couldn’t make it happen. It wasn’t for lack of trying… although maybe I should have just paid the $700 single supplement and done a private tour… but that just seemed… beyond what I was willing to do.
In any case, I spent the day wandering around the city again. As is often the case on my solo runcations, I often wind up in a town just a day longer than I really should. This day was kind of a wash as I just ambled, stopped and read while sitting outside, had a few carbonated beverages, and ate some food. I also mentally composed a bit of this post in my head (failing to put my Surface into my backpack for the walkabout).
I thought maybe I’d include some “cut scenes” and photos that didn’t make it into previous posts for one reason or another. So this post now becomes something of a bonus material entry for Wroclaw. There’s no overarching theme, no real connective tissue between moments other than, “hey — this either made me laugh, made me think of someone, made me sigh, or impressed me, or just generally made me think, ‘I’m in Poland!'”
Previously I posted a shot of me sitting atop this “dwarf boulder.” I thought it warranted it’s own shot.
Here are the golden arches in Wroclaw…
…and the Golden Arches in Wroclaw. I was really hoping this McDonald’s had a cabaret club, a McCabaret if you will, but sadly it’s just an adjacent business.
There’s some amazing architecture here, just a real vibe I enjoyed wandering past:
Quick note on this building below. It was built by the Third Reich in their militaristic, functional style. As I tried to explain above regarding my intentions at Auschwitz, it was visceral and surreal and impactful to see such a thing in person. And this was just a regular old administrative building. My mind boggles at how I would’ve felt at a death camp.
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The street art graffiti of various underpasses. One seems to feature the artwork of this Playstation Game a college classmate used to play all the time — Worms I think it was called.
And then there’s I guess a slice of bread who is a huge fan of Mercedes?
And this mouse/rat. He looks familiar but I can’t quite place where I’ve seen him before. I just know that now is the time in Wroclaw when we dance.
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I like to imagine that if I were producing a Polish based Saturday Night Live, I’d have a John Belushi type running this place and a customer would come in trying to order something. Belushi Polishi would say, “No pierogis. Only haggis!” And then they’d try and order wine and he’d say, “No vino. Only Pepsi.”
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I walked over tot he Hydropolis, an interactive museum on the history and power of water. I like water. Sounded interesting… and it wasn’t the 28 zlotny for admission that I balked at. A massive school group of pre-pubecent, loud kids were going in just as I arrived. And I thought, “ya know, I’m not really feeling this at the moment.” So I skipped it.
I regret not going though as one reviewer had this to say about it:
“Like a museum but not boring at all….” Originally I had planned on a snarky comment clapback for this but ya know what? I kinda know what Ahactacir Pr64ehko is saying — some museums *are* super boring. Apparently this water place is not.
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Canada gave the world Trivial Pursuit. We gave it Marshmallow Fluff. You’re welcome, Earth.
Punny Kebab place.
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I walked down to the bus depot to make sure I knew where I was going for tomorrow’s ride to Berlin. It’s apparently a four star depot?
I can see why — it’s inside a big shopping mall.
It’s also adjacent to the central train station… which features luggage lockers. I always think of espionage or heist movies when I see bus lockers. So in my Polish spy story, this is where I hide the diamonds that we’ll trade for the microfilm.
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The food in Wroclaw was pretty tasty — I’ll admit, I had far too many steamed pierogis, a delightful Polish dish akin to dumplings, potstickers, momos, and more. I also may have had carafe or two of wine. I know I should say mistakes were made, but honestly the only mistake was that I probably should have gone for the black currant one by the glass. This strawberry one in the carafe was what you’d expect a spiked high school punch bowl to be like.
The gelato is also quite good here. I desperately was google translating flavors… but had to ask what Jack Sparrow’s was, figuring it was rum based. Turns out it was coconut. Good thing I didn’t have that. With my allergy it could’ve killed me.
Tonight’s special off-menu gelato flavor? Nutella!
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This is the last of the petty cash. This 10 zlotny needs to get me though until tomorrow’s 1 PM bus to Berlin.
This would either make a great movie… or maybe a really boring one in which I just opt not to buy anything else for the next 14 hours.