22 - Next Day in Wroclaw (pronounced vrotsrwav in English)

We arrived in the evening, around 9 PM. The brothers remembered much of the streets as we strolled into town, but some had changed (It had been 5 years since their previous visit). We first stopped by Darek's place (a boyhood friend of Oskar's) who does some computer work of sorts (which I later found out to be something with Novell), he had a nice friendly cat too. The building and apartments here are pretty worn down, and indicative of post-communist living.

23 - Still in Wroclaw

Looks like the trip is nearing and end. Tonight we will drive all through the night to Oskar's uncle in Germany, stay for the day, maybe night? And then back to Amsterdam. I am back in Kudla's grandmother's apartment, they are visiting and we're fixing to eat some soup.

Polish Statue Bear
Darek & Oskar in Wroclaw

We spent some time with Darek in the town center, and I bought a few things for my siblings and mom, since they have August birthdays. At one point we had to walk another way to the car because they found a WW2 bomb during some construction, which I hear happens from time to time. Last night I noticed that Sebastian (Oskar's step-cousin) has a wedding ring on his right hand, which I commented about. Apparently in Europe the hand is reversed than what is used in the US (so that's what's been scaring all the girls away!). Yesterday we also did some shopping, but didn't buy anything. Yesterday morning and afternoon we left Robert with his grandmother and then Oskar, myself, and Darekn went and saw several churches, which were very nice. A couple of these churches still had bullet holes on the sides. Apparently Wroslaw was German occupied during the war.

Polish Bar

Last night we went bar hopping with Sebastian, his wife of 1 year, and a couple of his friends. By the last bar I did some dancing, and met a couple Polish girls, one of which spoke some English. And I've learned some new terminology this trip: ass and pimp. For instance, most of what I've seen around the city and pretty much everything on the way in, ranks high on the ass factor. In the city center things are pretty well improved, and it looks similar to many European cities we've seen. It seems communism takes some good time to go away and improve the surroundings. And as for pimp, the churches we have seen could be described as pimpy, like the expensive hotels in downtown Prague.

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