Staying as a guest in a home was a welcome respite from the rigors of the road. Jary was dead silent and I slept like a rock. The morning was spent observing Robert performing some basic maintenance on the bike. Tires got rotated, a tube was patched (I did that), chains were lubed and by noon, I was all set for the second half of my trip.
Robert's friend Peter showed up and we did a quickie 20 miles through the area with Robert's daughter asleep in a trailer behind him. The afternoon was spent lazing around, with me pestering everybody with questions about Poland, Norway (Peter is from there), bicycles etc. At night, a few of the neighbors came over and we all gorged ourselves (well, I gorged myself) on habanero-rubbed chicken that had just been cooked in a brand new smokehouse. I listened to stories of the changes Poland has gone through over the last 25 years. I heard great stories from the communist era of hilariously non-functional factories, black markets, dollar stores and bootleg liquor. Once Poland got free from the influence of the Soviet Union, it seems that it's undergone a complete transformation: consistently improving economy, highly educated and skilled workforce, improving infrastructure. A German fellow I fell into conversation with a few days later told me that he expects wages and cost-of-living in Poland to approach parity with Germany in about five years.
The next day I said goodbye to Robert and went into Wroclaw (pronounced "Vross-lahv") with Peter. He showed me around the city, told me lots about the history of the city, about Poland and what it's like living and doing business there. All very interesting, and a lot of what I learned ran contrary to my original assumptions.
The center of town was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever been to. Of all the big cities I've seen so far on this trip (Zurich, Basel, Vienna, Regensburg) Wroclaw had the best feeling to it. My impression was of a colorful, lively and fun town in the midst of a major urban renewal.
I received a stark reminder of the recent past when Peter pointed out the Albert Speer-designed county seat.
This building creeped me out. Peter mentioned that they were on the verge of tearing it down, but it got saved somehow. I'm glad they kept it. History is history after all...
That night, I watched the returns of the Polish presidential elections. While the returns were coming in, I studied up on the various political parties and their candidates. As you'll remember, there was a recent plane crash which killed the president along with most of the heads of the Polish government. This was a special election to replace him. The main contenders were the current Marshall of the Sejm (kind of like Speaker of the House), Bronislaw Komoroski and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of the deceased president. Komoroski won, but didn't get the 50% necessary to avoid a run-off. Here's a good English-language webpage with news on the election.
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