There’s a strange magnetic force that exists in Poland. Any unsuspecting male who enters the country is almost immediately overcome by a feeling that can only be described as “chafing.” Some people completely ignore the force while others chalk it up to a hangover from cheap Polish vodka. But, being that that majority of my family can trace its roots back to Polish soil, I knew different. I had been to Poland before several times and had felt the undeniably hale power of The Force – the power to compel Polish males to take their shirts off in public.
It’s a little known fact that Polish men in Poland are only rarely seen with shirts on. And, unluckily for those men and women who’d prefer to see a nice, trim man shirtless, weight seems to be directly proportional to weakness against The Force.
Yes, in cars, on the street, in a house, or on farm equipment, Polish men love taking their shirts off. Especially fat men. We noticed this not too long after entering the country after leaving the German city of Dresden. It was then Kate threw up a little in her mouth.
Our destination that day was Wroclaw, a mid-sized city (650,000) in southern Poland that had been under the jurisdiction of the Germans (who actually wear shirts thank you very much) since 1262. This leg of the trip was about four hours and almost solely based on logistics, as there wasn’t much we really wanted to see here. It was simply halfway between Dresden and Krakow, two historic cities that were high on our “to-see-before-we-leave-Europe” list.
But what the city lacked in reputation, it made up for in charm. And little gnome-like statues, which were everywhere, yet weren't mentioned in anything we read.
When we drove in, we’d noticed that the city was abuzz with commerce, especially the clothing stores (where the women were probably looking for shirts for their husbands who inexplicably keep “losing” them).
After checking into our hotel – which was an insane room, with two separate and cavernous bedrooms, three beds, and a complete living room set – we started the 10-minute walk down the quaint commercial street to the main town square.
Once over a small bridge and officially in the pedestrian-only old town, we stopped by a “You-are-here” map to get bearings and headed in. After stopping at what is perhaps the tallest church I’ve ever seen, we ambled closer to the square, which is the second largest in Poland, and started hearing street music. Accordions, guitars, brass instruments, you name it, somewhere in the square it was being played. Here's the bottom half of the tall church.
Outdoor cafes and bars were overstuffed with locals drinking one of several varieties of very smooth Polish beer with names like ZWYCSZIESCZSY and DWZDYSACSDZ. It was about 6 p.m. and still very sunny and warm, but no one was eating. Almost everyone at every table (and there were A LOT of tables) was drinking beer.
In any normal situation, without seeing or smelling food, I probably could have kept walking around this cobble-stony square for hours. But the favorable exchange rate to Polish Zlotys and the idea of freshly made pierogis were weighing heavy on my brain, like a fat shirtless Pole.
After finding a couple seats, fumbling through a Polish menu to find the word pierogi, and gulping down some beer, we began to relax and think about how perfect this place seemed. With the ambient foreign chatter and the radiant later-afternoon light bouncing off the beautiful buildings in the square, I began to wonder about why this city had been overlooked by guidebooks.
The town square itself was diverse, with architectural styles representing Prussian influences (tall, angular buildings with red slate roofs), gothic influences, and Austrian influences (large pastel buildings trimmed with white) no doubt enforced by Habsburg rule.
Most of these buildings, though, had been restored. About two-thirds of the city was destroyed during the war in what’s now called the Battle of Breslau (the much more pronounceable German name for the city).
Before the war, the city was a mélange of German, Jewish, and Polish culture, language, and art. In the late 1930s, Breslau rallied behind Hitler, though, offering him honorary citizenship and carrying out heinous actions in his name against Poles and Jews living there. This included burning shops, destroying schools, and arresting innocent citizens for such things as using the Polish language in public. Today it’s called ethnic cleansing.
In 1945, the Soviet Red Army’s stopover on their way to Berlin restored some order, but only through absolute domination. The Soviets held innocent civilians hostage, mass raped female Germans, and killed simple laborers who were thought potentially capable of forming a militia. Just before the war ended, in the dead of winter, restrictions eased and allowed for the untimely release of ill-prepared imprisoned civilians. About 18,000 people, mostly children and babies, froze. The remaining Germans were expelled.
In their place were resettled Poles from central Poland and former areas of their country in the east that were annexed by the Soviet Union.
Today, no one speaks German. The last German school was closed in 1963 and all the German names used for over 800 years have changed.
One of those names is Dominsel (Cathedral Island), now called Ostrów Tumski in Polish, where we went after dinner. This five-minute walk from the town square is the oldest part of the city, where the original fortification against invading tribes was built, but it’s really kind of boring, dirty, and forgotten. Aside from a large cathedral, we didn’t find much there. So we headed back.
It’s then that I realized that, yes, the restored town square was gorgeous; the live music, flowing beer, and cheap pierogis were wonderful; and the ubiquitous fat shirtless men were funny in an “ew gross” kind of way, but it didn’t seem real. The “real” Poland consists of poor Catholic families living in boring, dirty, and forgotten places like the old Ostrów Tumski island. The hyped up and commercialized town square, while nice, is a façade of concentrated wealth. It was charming, to be sure, but it wasn’t real. And I’m glad I got that insight.
Back at our chasmal hotel cave, we rested peacefully for the night and woke up ready to continue our adventure.The next day’s journey would involve snaking through backwoods roads and squinting at foreign maps on our way to a boring, dirty, and forgotten Polish-Czech border town called Glucholazy. Up until 60 years ago it was a German town called Bad Ziegenhals. This is where my Opa grew up. And this was our next stop.
It’s a little known fact that Polish men in Poland are only rarely seen with shirts on. And, unluckily for those men and women who’d prefer to see a nice, trim man shirtless, weight seems to be directly proportional to weakness against The Force.
Yes, in cars, on the street, in a house, or on farm equipment, Polish men love taking their shirts off. Especially fat men. We noticed this not too long after entering the country after leaving the German city of Dresden. It was then Kate threw up a little in her mouth.
Our destination that day was Wroclaw, a mid-sized city (650,000) in southern Poland that had been under the jurisdiction of the Germans (who actually wear shirts thank you very much) since 1262. This leg of the trip was about four hours and almost solely based on logistics, as there wasn’t much we really wanted to see here. It was simply halfway between Dresden and Krakow, two historic cities that were high on our “to-see-before-we-leave-Europe” list.But what the city lacked in reputation, it made up for in charm. And little gnome-like statues, which were everywhere, yet weren't mentioned in anything we read.
When we drove in, we’d noticed that the city was abuzz with commerce, especially the clothing stores (where the women were probably looking for shirts for their husbands who inexplicably keep “losing” them).After checking into our hotel – which was an insane room, with two separate and cavernous bedrooms, three beds, and a complete living room set – we started the 10-minute walk down the quaint commercial street to the main town square.
Once over a small bridge and officially in the pedestrian-only old town, we stopped by a “You-are-here” map to get bearings and headed in. After stopping at what is perhaps the tallest church I’ve ever seen, we ambled closer to the square, which is the second largest in Poland, and started hearing street music. Accordions, guitars, brass instruments, you name it, somewhere in the square it was being played. Here's the bottom half of the tall church.
Outdoor cafes and bars were overstuffed with locals drinking one of several varieties of very smooth Polish beer with names like ZWYCSZIESCZSY and DWZDYSACSDZ. It was about 6 p.m. and still very sunny and warm, but no one was eating. Almost everyone at every table (and there were A LOT of tables) was drinking beer.In any normal situation, without seeing or smelling food, I probably could have kept walking around this cobble-stony square for hours. But the favorable exchange rate to Polish Zlotys and the idea of freshly made pierogis were weighing heavy on my brain, like a fat shirtless Pole.
After finding a couple seats, fumbling through a Polish menu to find the word pierogi, and gulping down some beer, we began to relax and think about how perfect this place seemed. With the ambient foreign chatter and the radiant later-afternoon light bouncing off the beautiful buildings in the square, I began to wonder about why this city had been overlooked by guidebooks.
The town square itself was diverse, with architectural styles representing Prussian influences (tall, angular buildings with red slate roofs), gothic influences, and Austrian influences (large pastel buildings trimmed with white) no doubt enforced by Habsburg rule.Most of these buildings, though, had been restored. About two-thirds of the city was destroyed during the war in what’s now called the Battle of Breslau (the much more pronounceable German name for the city).
Before the war, the city was a mélange of German, Jewish, and Polish culture, language, and art. In the late 1930s, Breslau rallied behind Hitler, though, offering him honorary citizenship and carrying out heinous actions in his name against Poles and Jews living there. This included burning shops, destroying schools, and arresting innocent citizens for such things as using the Polish language in public. Today it’s called ethnic cleansing.In 1945, the Soviet Red Army’s stopover on their way to Berlin restored some order, but only through absolute domination. The Soviets held innocent civilians hostage, mass raped female Germans, and killed simple laborers who were thought potentially capable of forming a militia. Just before the war ended, in the dead of winter, restrictions eased and allowed for the untimely release of ill-prepared imprisoned civilians. About 18,000 people, mostly children and babies, froze. The remaining Germans were expelled.
In their place were resettled Poles from central Poland and former areas of their country in the east that were annexed by the Soviet Union.Today, no one speaks German. The last German school was closed in 1963 and all the German names used for over 800 years have changed.
One of those names is Dominsel (Cathedral Island), now called Ostrów Tumski in Polish, where we went after dinner. This five-minute walk from the town square is the oldest part of the city, where the original fortification against invading tribes was built, but it’s really kind of boring, dirty, and forgotten. Aside from a large cathedral, we didn’t find much there. So we headed back.
It’s then that I realized that, yes, the restored town square was gorgeous; the live music, flowing beer, and cheap pierogis were wonderful; and the ubiquitous fat shirtless men were funny in an “ew gross” kind of way, but it didn’t seem real. The “real” Poland consists of poor Catholic families living in boring, dirty, and forgotten places like the old Ostrów Tumski island. The hyped up and commercialized town square, while nice, is a façade of concentrated wealth. It was charming, to be sure, but it wasn’t real. And I’m glad I got that insight.
Back at our chasmal hotel cave, we rested peacefully for the night and woke up ready to continue our adventure.The next day’s journey would involve snaking through backwoods roads and squinting at foreign maps on our way to a boring, dirty, and forgotten Polish-Czech border town called Glucholazy. Up until 60 years ago it was a German town called Bad Ziegenhals. This is where my Opa grew up. And this was our next stop.
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