In the early part of the week we had our monthly book club meeting, then there was a charity run at the office to raise funds for NGOs supporting victims of cancer, and on Friday morning I flew to Poland–I was speaking at a conference in Warsaw the following Tuesday, and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and spend the weekend visiting my sister in Wrocław, the city where I was born.
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The week started with a misty Monday morning, and I stopped by the beach on my way to work to have a look at the light:
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Suddenly I was accosted by this cute creature:
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Then his human arrived and they walked towards the water’s edge:
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On Tuesday evening, our book club met at the Madness café in the centre of Alicante:
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The book of the month was a bit of a departure from the usual novel–it was a collection of poems by the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, selected by Eri:
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Madness is mainly a coffee/tea place, but they also have beer, and with a funny label too:
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Catherine and Eri, listening to someone:
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Now Eri speaks:
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Maria was the only person who did not like Cavafy’s poems that much. But that is fine, we all have different tastes:
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Pauliina had really prepared:
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Besides Eri, we have another Greek in the group, Dimitrios:
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Eri was the last person to speak, and she did so with a lot of emotion, explaining how much Cavafy’s poetry means to her:
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Later in the week, we had the annual charity run at the office, raising funds for local cancer charities. One of the people involved in the organisation, Ann, was retiring at the end of the month, and she asked me to take a group picture of the department:
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I hung around a bit to photograph the people getting ready to run. Here, my colleague Véronique:
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Two of my favourite people, Carolina and Stephanie:
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My trainee Romy, getting her number adjusted:
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One of our other trainees, Laura, helps one of her colleagues with his number:
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The registration table, with the collection box (many of us gave our donations electronically in advance). Altogether, about 4000 Euro was raised:
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One day I stopped by the 100 Montaditos bar on the beach for a beer and saw this delightful guest at the neighbouring table:
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On Friday morning I flew to Wrocław, the city in Poland where I was born and where my sister lives with her husband. They met me at the airport, we drove to their apartment in the centre of the city, and had a typical Polish lunch:
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After lunch, I went for a walk in the neighbourhood. My sister lives close to the Odra river and as always, I walked across the Grunwaldzki Bridge, one of the city’s major landmarks. It was opened in 1910 under the name Kaiserbrücke (Emperor Bridge), when Wrocław was the German city of Breslau:
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Also near my sister’s apartment is Ostrów Tumski, an island on the Odra river which houses Wrocław’s cathedral, the residence of the archbishop and many other church properties. The Polish Pope John Paul II is everywhere there, including this large mural sponsored by Wrocław’s football club Śląsk Wrocław:
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I walked back to my sister’s place, passing this building on Szczytnicka Street. When I was last here a few months ago, it was an abandoned building inhabited by squatters. Now it is being converted to nice apartments in an attractive neighbourhood:
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The apartment building where my sister lives. There are several 16-story buildings like this between the Grunwaldzki Square and the river, known as Wrocław’s Manhattan. They were built during the early 1970s and are a fine example of architecture during Communist times:
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On Saturday morning, I went to the centre with my sister and walked around a bit. Here she is, in front of some wall art:
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A common sight in Poland on a Saturday morning:
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Dogs and people meet in the street:
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A bookstore cat:
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There are many interesting beers in Poland, produced by small and large breweries. This one is called PRL, the abbreviation for Poland’s name in Communist times (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa = Polish People’s Republic). The bad times ended 35 years ago, sufficient distance to exploit them in a marketing context:
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On the rear label there is a photo of one of the defining features of Communist life, queues outside a grocery store:
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In the evening, I went back to the centre by myself. I wanted to get a feel of the place on a Saturday night. This is the central square Rynek:
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Next to Rynek is Plac Solny (“salt square”) with a flower market open late into the night, just the thing if you decide to propose at the last moment:
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On my way back to the tram stop, these three guys asked me to photograph them. I happily obliged:
More photos from Wrocław can be seen here.