Thursday, 7. July: Part I: Getting to Wroclaw

We packed, took the S-Bahn (city train) to the Hauptbahnhof, and waited for 9:35 train. A 79 yo man from Poland sat down next to us and started talking to us in German. He was very friendly , helping us figure out where to sit in train and talking to us much of the 6 hour train ride. Usually seats which are reserved are indicated, but not on this train. After we had moved twice because people had a reservation for our seats, he left us in charge of his luggage, scouted out a better compartment and came to get us and the luggage. The train stopped for about 10 minutes in the middle at a train station which had originally had been ornately decorated.

He said that he had traveled all over in Russia and had gone to North Korea—very sad, the people are very poor, all starving. Then he told us about his family. This was a huge contrast to previous train rides where the German people kept to themselves and didn’t speak more than necessary although on later trains we met some friendly Germans.

An Aussie couple came on board a few stops later so we talked to them also. He must have initially thought we were German (I was talking to the Polish man in German; Kristen was trying out her Russian and Polish) so he spoke to us half in English and half in German, and we answered in English. After about 20 minutes he asked us where we were from and then changed completely over to English. The Aussies like traveling and had gone all over the world but not the US or Canada. He told about a friend who was anti American but whose 90 yo grandfather had fought in WWII and told her that he liked the Americans because the allies would have lost WWII if the Americans hadn’t joined the war when they did. When we crossed over border to Poland, the buildings were different. We passed more woods and fewer fields. The further away from the city, the poorer the buildings. The train arrived in Wroclaw (German name Breslau) at 3:40, a half hour late. We said goodbye to our new friends and exited the train where our friends Ted and Wendy were waiting for us. Ted had arrived from the states only about 2 hours earlier.

We dropped our stuff off at their house, a really nice 4 level house near the center of the city. The house was built during Communist times in the 70s when everything was prescribed. The maximum size was 60 square meters per level, so the houses built at this time are all the same size. Normally they are only allowed 2 levels. But the level we slept on—what would generally be the basement--had a slightly lower ceiling, so it didn’t count, and the level below that wasn’t on the house plans, so it was snuck in somehow. The house shared a wall with the house immediately next to it, but the architecture was entirely different.