We are back home now. But before moving on from the topic of Wroclaw I should say a few words about where we stayed.

I hadn’t really given too much thought to where we were going to sleep for our three nights there until a day or so before we left. I knew a place had been booked but the fact that it was a hostel did not really register. As we got closer to the day of the flight out vague ideas to do with bunk beds and dormitories started to float up from the back of my mind. I was was reassured by the fact that where we were staying had top billing in the only guide book to Poland we had been able to find.

Less that 24 hours out I was told to bear in mind we were all to be sleeping in the same room. I thought back to the Cottage in Ireland and how the bedrooms all run into each other so every grunt could be heard from the other. This wouldn’t be too much different.

Arriving at the airport it quickly became apparent there were no taxis big enough to take five. So we split up and I found myself in charge of the taxi in which no-one spoke Polish and no-one knew where we were going apart from the taxi driver who had apparently been told. It transpired that did not matter as he had also been told to follow the taxi in front. This instruction had not been passed on to the driver of the taxi in front. So we had a mad chase from the airport to the centre of Wroclaw in which one or two roundabouts were cut up on the inside edge.

Eventually the two taxis pulled up short in an unprepossessing street, we were ushered out and pointed in the direction of a small square. We walked into the square and looked for a hostel. In one corner busy chairs and tables spilled out of a door and were filled with people having a good time. The sign over their heads read Mleczarnia. There was no obvious way in from the bar so we walked back out to the street and after some peering at various doorways came across a bell for hostel that seemed to back on to where the bar. We pressed the bell and were let inside.

There was a chair outside of our room and for most of our stay it was inhabited by an elderly man who wore an ever differing combination of pyjamas and dressing down. There was always a laptop on a small table in front of him which flickered and spat out its light. He hardly seemed to notice as we passed in and out although he did acknowledge our goodbye when we finally moved on three days later.

The room itself was almost big enough to fit in all three bedrooms from the cottage with a ceiling as high as its roof. There were large double glazed windows that opened out to the square and the bar underneath, three single beds and a sofa bed that had been made up from an awkwardly shaped sofa. As a sofa I suspect it was very comfortable. Unfortunately my half of the sofa made up the less comfortable side of the bed. I made up for this with late night explorations of the bar downstairs.

Sunday night and the bar was still busy and we sat at a table with a candle and after a beer and glass of wine we passed round a shot of vodka.

In the morning the bar was swept out and made up the room for breakfast. There was a small menu. Coffee (very good and strong) came with everything. After that it was scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs and bacon or sausages. I had sausages both days. Two thin fingers of pork with mustard, bread and salad.

As we left late on Tuesday afternoon we were told about the parties they had on New Year’s Eve. Each year was fancy dress and they went on until 7.00 in the morning by which time everybody was too tired to dance but could still talk and laugh and all of the beds in the hostel were full. New Year’s Day was the only morning they didn’t do breakfast because of the clearing up and sleep that was needed.

The final day in Wroclaw took a different turn.

There were slightly less than there had been and we started the day off walking slowly through an at gallery looking at notebooks of photos about Poland and then going along the walls on which had been pinned more photos. Each photo was by a different artist and the pictures were arranged so as to try and provide some juxtaposition through each the images. It worked very well and there was much sketching in notebooks.

After the art gallery we headed to a church. The intention was to just look inside but once in the vestibule crowded with things to buy we were drawn inexorably towards the signs for a bridge. I had seen the bridge a day or so before but didn’t give it too much thought as I handed over my money to a man in the corner who pointed us in the direction of more signs that pointed us up.

These signs took us to a set of concrete stairs that led up three or four stories through the interior one of the church’s towers. So far so good. But then the concrete stairs stopped and it became apparent that the only other stairs up were rickety and made of an iron mesh which provided an imperfect view down from where we had just come.

Teeth were gritted and I continued on up glad for the bannister that gave something to hold onto. The iron mesh steps carried on for another four or five, maybe more stories, doubling back on themselves to taking us ever further up the tower that until we came to a door that led out to the bridge.

The bridge was a thin structure that led from one of the church’s towers to the other. It was about twenty foot long and some one hundred and fifty foot up from the ground.

It gave views over the city included a view of the other great church tower in Wroclaw that was almost twice the height. There was talk of a walk up that but, giving thought of the walk back down, I muttered about planes and lack of time.

Later, and with the benefit of the guidebook, I worked out that we had walked up to the top of one of the two towers of the Saint Mary Magdalene Church. The bridge was The Penitent Bridge, connected one tower to the other.

The other tower was covered in scaffolding and mesh to the top. As we stood to admire the view a man walk out onto the scaffolding a few feet from where we were standing with the drop in-between. He looked at us and waved and then leaned out his hands on one of the scaffolding poles enjoying the worried looks on our faces.

Apparently on the bridge you can see the souls of young women who preferred to have fun and gaieties with men rather than look after their children and do house duties. As punishment, they had to walk the narrow gangway between the towers.

There was punishment enough in the walk down. I realised that the walk up had been okay because my eyes were always up and ahead. On the way down my eyes were down and looking at where my feet should go on to the next step which took them to the view through the iron mesh and the long way down underneath. It took a sheer effort to lift the eyes up from around my feet and to convince myself that at the end of the day I knew how to walk down stairs without looking and these ones were not about to collapse around me.

Even so a large part of the walk down felt like that moment a planes lands and there is a bump on the runway and there is an involuntary tightening of the hand on the armrest. On a plane that lasts the second or two before you know it is all in control. The walk down the tower took a bit longer.

Back on the ground we found time to walk through the church before finding ourselves another bar. This one was in the courtyard of the city’s old prison. It was warm enough to sit outside in the shade and talk about nothing and drink our beer.

We then went on to lunch and were able to squeeze round a table looking out over the square. There had been a temptation to go back to the beer hall from the night before. They had tables out in the square as well but it seemed clear that whilst food might be an option, it would be frowned upon, in a place where the main business was beer.

And so we whiled away our last couple of ours in Wroclaw. Eating outside in the sun drinking good beer and wondering when there might be a chance to to it again.

We had almost run out of options to eat when I noticed that one of the best bars in Wroclaw also did food.

So after some time sat in chairs admiring the great square and the people who walked through it we made our way down. Spiz was positioned on a corner by the town hall. Outside there were benches and tables and signs that didn’t give a great deal away. We made our way down a stone staircase. On one side there was a great vaulted basement room full of people drinking beer and then down a short dark corridor another room full of people eating food.

As it was food we were after I strode into the room down the corridor and past a table filled with plates of salad. As I did so a lady got up from her chair and started to remonstrate. We quickly established that I didn’t speak Polish but that she she spoke enough English to tell me the place was closed. It appeared we had walked into a private party and wooden doors were pulled across the end of the corridor as we walked out.

In the big vaulted room people were still drinking beer but there were tables with chairs free and the odd empty plate to indicate that food could be had.

We sidled in and sat ourselves down and waited. It wasn’t long before a man in a white shirt came over to see what we wanted. All was communicated with the word “Eat!!” and he was back with a pile of black covered menus. On the drinks order we were just about able to get away with a request for. A glass of water but the suggestion that we should have a bottle of wine from the list in the menu was met with ridicule. Couldn’t we see that they made beer here. Who needed wine. So beer it was all round.

The food did the place proud. A trout fried with potatoes, a rack of pork ribs with pickles and spicy sauce and a pork snietzel. We ate it all washed down with beer that had been made in the copper vats that surrounded us.

Opposite from where we sat a group of men crowded about a round table in the middle of which there was a large China beer tap with half a dozen taps there to keep your glasses full. We looked on with some envy.

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After lunch in a place called Bad Meat it was difficult to tell if the man who had helped us through our order was congratulating me, or perhaps there was more sorrow in his voice, as he told me that the tin robot into which I had been shovelling my coins by way of a tip was a collection tin for a local dog’s home. All being in Polish it was difficult to tell.

Notwithstanding that confusion we had a sustaining vegetarian lunch helped along with a pint from the bar next door.

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The day had started with a trip to the Panarama of Raclawice, a painting in the round some 15 metres tall and 152 metres long, celebrating a famous Polish victory over the Russians from the 18th century.

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Suitably bucked up with the epic vision of war and death we carried on walking through the back streets of Wroclaw occasionally finding ourselves surrounded by flats of communist grey concrete some of which looked as if they might be about to crumble into the ground.

We walked past a bar from which we could hear some vaguely cool music. There was a model of a crocodile outside holding a balloon. We promised ourselves that we would go back that evening knowing that we wouldn’t and then thought that the bar looked too good to miss out on. So, although the sun was shining and it was warm enough to sit outside, we turned round and went inside. It was suitably dark and dingy but there were coloured reliefs on the ceiling and gold Art Deco light fittings of scantily clad women. There were booths with tattered leather seats, a window of coloured glass and a small bar with heavy iron seats. They were selling a dark heavy Polish beer and playing of kilter music.

It was a happy place to while away an hour or so as the world passed by outside.

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