ITCHY FEET TRAVELS

Wroclaw, Poland

July 9, 2025

Gray skies, spitting rain and blustery wind accompanied the bus ride from Berlin into Wroclaw. It may not be the best for travel, but flip side is using the fleece and rainjacket I have been carting around for a month and a half.

A large town like all the others, this too is centered around the Old Town Square. Hood up, layers on, I set out to explore. And came across a series of figures that looked like they were emerging out of the pavement. Named Monument to the Anonymous Passerby, it is one of a pair, each on the corner of a busy intersection. The figures are life-sized and across the social spectrum. At one corner they disappear into the ground.

And at the other corner, they seem to emerge out of the pavement. Look closely and you see the faces wearing a mixture of resignation and stoicism. Perhaps that is not so surprising given that this is interpreted as a memorial to those that were killed or disappeared during the martial law of the 1980s.

Walking on, I head to the heart of the Old Town, the Rynek of Wroclaw. Nestled between the Salt Market and the New Market is the Market Square or Rynek of Wroclaw.  Probably created in the 14^th century in the heart of Wroclaw’s Old Town, it was almost completely destroyed during WWII. Rebuilt over time with houses for citizens built around it, it is gigantic and one of the largest in Europe. The east side is dominated by the Old Town Hall with its distinctive roofline and gables.

The northern end is lined by a row of houses stretching all the way to the west corner. At the corner are where conjoined tenement houses that look like they are holding hands. Affectionately called Hansel and Gretel, they conjure up images of folklore and fairytales. Behind them rises the tall tower of the Basilica of St. Elizabeth.

Down the west side are another series of tenements in a seamless line of beauty until it ends in a grotesquely ugly concrete building, home to Santander Bank. Across the plaza is the New Town Hall, backing onto its older showier cousin.

Just beyond the main square is another smaller one, also lined with beautiful buildings, each a showcase in its own right. The smaller square is home to a tiny flower market set around a fountain. The blooms vie in colors with the houses around the square.

The palette continues on the south side of the square to complete the first inner ring. But the market is much bigger, with more buildings and lanes forming two more concentric rings.

For an older market, the streets are strangely not the usual spaghetti of narrow lanes. They are narrow at times but oddly, they are straight and mostly run parallel to others. Perhaps they were made so during the re-building. I wander in my usual aimless way among the crowds. The crowds here are nowhere near as frenetic as most of the other cities I have been to so far. I pause in my wanderings to do my tourist duty to Polish cuisine.

Zurek is a traditional soup made of various cereal such as rye, oats or wheat. These are fermented to create a tangy soup base in which float chunks of sausage, bacon and a hard-boiled egg. It was tasty, so much so that I had no need to pull out my bottle of hot sauce. A perfect meal for a blustery day!

What better to end it than with an espresso paired with Cherry crumble?