Lois and Dr Anne

 Dr Anne has been mixed up in an amazing adventure these last four weeks which has taken her around Central Europe.

It is an area steeped in history - the Holy Roman Empire,  August the Strong, the Hapsburgs, Napoleon, Hitler, the Soviets.  For centuries there have been wars and rumours of wars, uprisings and rumours of uprisings. There have been the disasterous results affecting millions of people.  

Who was there? Slavs... Sorbs...  Germans... Prussians... Soviets... Who was fighting who?  How did the boundaries change?  What was the impact on the people?

It was a longstanding commitment for Dr Anne to go with Lois to follow in the footsteps of her ancestors - the Kleinigs, the Zwars, the Pecks and the Wursts.  Although records were destroyed in the Nazi and Soviet eras the ladies were able to visit the villages and museums and walk the walk.  

Johann Zwar (Lois' great grandfather) led a party of 100 people from the Bautzen area to Hamburg and then to South Australia on the Helena in 1850.  Evidence was found in the Sorb Museum in Bautzen.  

How different life would have been for Lois if the migrations had not taken place...

Eight Cities - Six Rivers

Dr Anne and Lois visited eight cities on their recent trip.  A river flowed through each city.

Dresden - The Elbe

Meissen - The Elbe

Bautzen - The Spree

Prague - The Vltava

Vienna - The Danube

Krackow - The Vistula

Wrocklaw - The Oder

Warsaw - The Vistula   

The Geneva Trap

Remington, Stella. The Geneva Trap. London: Bloomsbury.  (No date)

Dr Anne read the two novels she had taken with her.  Greygranite was always telling her to download books.  She went into iBooks and downloaded for e first time.

After I am Pilgrim and The Officer and the Spy, this was tame and slow.  She awards 5/10.

Will she won't she buy a Kindle?

Warsaw

Following the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 the Germans destroyed Warsaw as punishment.  Bridges and buildings were flattened to the ground. Of 1.3 million people living in Warsaw in 1939 only 1000 were left in the city after the Uprising.

The Soviets built the Palace of Culture and Science in the early 1950s as a 'gift of friendship'.  They did not rebuild the old town. 

Below are pictures around Warsaw:

Tomb of the Unknown Warrier.

Chopin's Museum

The President's Palace.

A monument commemorating the Jews who made their way out of the Ghetto through the drains and sewers.

A view over the River Vistula from the 'old town'.

An Uprising?

For a month now, Dr Anne and Lois have been researching wars and rumours of wars across Eastern Europe.  There have been more uprisings there than hot dinners.  Today they learned about the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.  

Afterwards Dr Anne and Lois went to the 'old town' to find the city swarming with kilted Scots drinking, singing and playing the bagpipes.  Are they here to learn about uprisings?  Is that the way forward in Scotland?

Lois photographing the kilted Scots.

The Bus Pass Tartan Army

Wrocklaw to Warsaw

Wrocklaw to Warsaw is seven hours on the train,  Dr Anne and Lois boarded at 0925 for the journey.  

There was a turntable to take the luggage up the stairs. Excellent...

Lois was heavily into 'I am a Pilgrim'.  

The journey was slow, stopping and starting.  There were many goods' trains. 

The countryside was flat, either cultivated or forested.  There were multitudes of corn fields ready for ploughing.  

At Łódź a party of Scouts arrived and the carriage was packed.   Fun came.  Dr Anne tested their English to the limit.  Suddenly the train stopped.  The Scouts translated the messages.  There was an accident up the line.  We would be delayed for 2 hours.  Two accidents in one week... so much for Polish trains... This time, people could go onto the platform and walk around.  One of the Scouts phoned Dr Anne's accommodation in Warsaw to let them know of the late arrival. Eventually after almost nine hours Dr Anne and Lois arrived in Warsaw. The Warsaw apartment was beside the station.  However, fatigue had set in and it took ages to find the street.

Tonight in the Square

Farewell, Wrocklaw

These past few days have been a joy.  Our pace has been slow but our enthusiasm high level.

Highlights:

Pope John Paul in the City Hall

St John the Baptist Church with the River Oder.

The People's Passage Sculptures.  Some people are on one side of the street and some are on the other.  

The University Halls. Nine Nobel Prizes have been awarded in the last century, mostly in the sciences.

The Dove is the Holy Spirit.

The City Hall in the main square.

A Trip to the Country

Dr Anne and Lois took an early train to Sčinawa which is an hour's train journey from Wrocklaw. It was a rickety old train but then the fare was just pennies.  Lois' mother's family, the Wursts went to South Australia from this area.  It was a beautiful day for a stroll around this town.  They imagined life in the late 1860s when the family decided to emigrate.  

The church

The houses with the barn and outhouses.

The farmland.

The railway.

Houses

Wrocklaw is a relaxed and happy city.  The houses are cool.

O

Then there are the Soviet flats...

A-gnome-ilies

A llittle known fact about Wrocklaw is that it is home to a population of Ancient Gnomes...some of these little critters jump right out at you but most of them are hidden quite well... Nobody knows how many there are in total, even Wroclovers, they are spread all over the city, finding a new one is always a big deal...They all have their own names, professions and stories.  

Seriously, these little dudes actually have a lot of symbolic meaning.  In the 1980's a group of anarcho - performance artists called the Orange Alternative staged anti communist protests, one of which was to dress up like gnomes and run around the city...in warm underwear.

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