The Gnomes are Revolting

In the 1980s an undergraduate at Wroclaw University created a group called the Orange Alternative that mocked the current communist regime by painting pictures of gnomes over areas where the government had painted-out anti-regime graffiti. They later graduated to pranks like handing out free toilet paper and dressing entirely in red on the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Today, to memorialize this, all around the city you'll find tiny bronze gnomes in the most unlikely places. You can actually purchase a "gnome map" from the tourist center. We wanted to have the fun of finding them ourselves.

After breakfast at our hotel, we started out on a "Foundations of Wroclaw" walking tour that visits most of the oldest churches and buildings.

We began by hopping on a tram to go over to the Ecclesiastical District where the tour started. Along the way we found a "green" farmers market selling all natural foods and clothing from little stalls in the squares next to a church. There were huge sunflowers and the street-sweepers were using the old-fashioned twig brooms.

 We saw a lot of churches. There weren't nearly as many tourists as Krakow, and all of the groups we saw seemed to be Polish or German (Wroclaw is known as Breslau in German). The church below is the main Wroclaw Cathedral.

Some of the interiors were very ornate (especially one Baroque church that looked like something from Italy), but we didn't take any pictures inside.

The Ecclesiastical District is on a series of islands in the Oder River, so we had to cross several bridges back and forth. This one had more locks than the Pont des Artes bridge in Paris. (Of course, now that's true of any bridge, since the Paris police removed all the locks there.)

Once we had seen all of the churches on the islands, we went back across to the center of town and visited some of the memorials there. This memorial is the victims of the Kaytn Forest massacre when Stalin ordered about 22,000 Polish officers and others who were in POW camps in Russia summarily executed.

By this time it was nearly 11:00 and it was time for some coffee. We found a chalkboard sign in front of St. Adlebert's Church beside a Vespa with a fish on its mudflap. We made our way downstairs and had coffee in the crypt. (Well, maybe just the basement.)

Revived, we continued on our trip and saw some other amazing creatures (besides the gnomes Kathy had collected.) There was a giant dragonfly on one wall...

...and another wall had a bronze or iron crocodile floating with its snout suspended by a balloon. Very fun.

By this time, it was almost 1:00 PM and time for lunch; so, we headed back to STP, which you met yesterday, to see if the food was as good the second time around.

It wasn't quite as good because we weren't as ravenous as we'd been last night. But, it was good, and worth every penny of the $7.00 we spend for the food. (As I mentioned, you pay by the kilogram. Kathy and I ate about a kilo between us. It's only fair to mention that mine weighed twice what hers did.)

After lunch, we continued on our walk. We saw the Opera, and interesting covered market built in the early 1900s and still used today, and, of course, more churches.

We saw the University of Wroclaw's library, which rivals some of the churches.

We also found interesting sculptures and other kinds of public art all over town. The city map even has the most interesting graffiti murals marked on it.

By 4:00 PM we had absorbed all we could and were happy to return to our room and veg-out over chips and some grapefruit soda. Tomorrow we might go to the zoo!