Wroclaw: Family Style

My tour guides: Ciocia Janka and Wujek Bolek on the tram.

I had read the Wroclaw section in my Lonely Planet "Poland" guidebook, but as soon as I got there, I tossed it into my backpack and forgot about it. Here, I would be getting a tour of the city that wouldn't be explained in a book.

On the first day, Ciocia Janka, Wujek Bolek and I took the tram into the center of town. We started by walking around the famous Rynek filled with the old-style, rainbow of houses and the magnificent town hall plopped in the center. We ventured into the Museum Narodowe to look at Polish fine art, but we only glanced around one wing. Sometimes our tour ventured off course and we would end up walking through giant shopping malls.

"Poland has everything," Bolek bragged, pointing to the stores, "just like America."

We walked slowly, deliberately; I the only one with young legs. (Though Bolek would beg to differ. At one point of the weekend, he lifted up his pants to show me his still shapely 75-year-old calves.) Conversations were quaint. As we walked by a government building, Bolek explained to me that in these offices, no one wrote by hand anymore. All work was done on the computer. I wanted to hug him right there.

While we were in the second mall of the day, with Bolek pointing out the architecture, the three levels of stores, the elevator, the parking garage--I realized the malls weren't a detour. They were part of the tour. Bolek seemed genuinely proud how modern this mall was and for him, it was something to show off. Throughout my stay, I had noticed that much of Wroclaw is under construction, with thanks to new development and Poland's recent inclusion the European Union. This mall was just a small part of the new Poland. We didn't go into any stores, rather we just walked by them as if we were still in the museum, pausing to stop and look as if they were works of art to be admired themselves.

As for me, hanging out in Ania and Bolek's tiny apartment offered more of a glimpse of the way they live than walking through a mall. The apartment was of New York City proportions, very neat, styled in the typical Polish fashion--filled with dark brown furniture, frilly white curtains and not one, but two places to store bottles of vodka. Some items in the apartment utterly perplexed and amused me: the frayed Mickey Mouse sticker pasted on the hand towel hook, the collection of soda-themed shot glasses, the radio that looked like it came straight from 1980.

Ania is the type of woman who can't sit still for a second. Running to the kitchen and back again, she is always cooking, cleaning, fixing, talking, doing something. In addition to cooking us a delicious assortment of meals--such as red borsct, chicken cutlets and potatoes sprinkled with dill, pancakes (from America!) topped with homemade jam)--her project this weekend was creating apple sauces and juices out of giant barrels of apples they had picked before I had gotten there.

"See," she said to me, "nothing here is ever wasted." She opened up her cabinet to reveal about three dozen jars of jams and pickles and fruits and other concoctions she had created. I was charmed by the idea, but most of the contents looked a little scary to me.

Bolek is a little more laid-back. He would sort of drift around the apartment, disappearing once in a while. I would find him observing me, and so I would smile and he would smile back. He has a great, warm smile. Sometimes he could come over to me to sit on the couch and discuss Poland, their life, his memories. He often did not understand what I was saying, so I tried to have simple conversations with him.

"How did you sleep?" I once asked, in Polish.

"Pretty good," he answered. "I woke up."

He and his son Jarek can sure drink a lot of vodka. The first evening, everyone came to the apartment to see me and have dinner. We ate Polish ham and watched a badly dubbed version of Legally Blonde 2 on the television. I am not one to do shots, so during dinner I nursed a little glass of blackberry flavored vodka. In utter amazement, I watched father and son down one drink after another--while still managing to act completely sober.

For two days, I lived like an old person. Waking up at 7 and going to bed at 9:30 or 10. We spoke Polish slowly. We walked slowly. We ate slowly. I listened to them fret about things only old people fret about. But after two weeks of go-go-go, there was something relaxing about this way of life and I was happy to sink right in.


Colorful Wroclaw.


Bolek: A man of the mall.


Dinner and vodka. (From left to right) Ania (my aunt), Janka (my aunt), Jola (my cousin Jarek's wife), Justyna (Jarek and Jola's daughter), Jarek (my cousin) and Bolek (my uncle).