{"id":4280,"date":"2024-04-10T21:09:32","date_gmt":"2024-04-10T20:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4280"},"modified":"2024-04-10T21:09:32","modified_gmt":"2024-04-10T20:09:32","slug":"week-12-book-club-charity-run-weekend-in-wroclaw","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4280","title":{"rendered":"Week 12: Book club, charity run, weekend in Wroc\u00c5\u201aaw"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the early part of the week we had our monthly book club meeting, then there was a charity run at the office to raise funds for NGOs supporting victims of cancer, and on Friday morning I flew to Poland–I was speaking at a conference in Warsaw the following Tuesday, and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and spend the weekend visiting my sister in Wroc\u00c5\u201aaw, the city where I was born. <\/p>\n

12_1<\/strong>
\nThe week started with a misty Monday morning, and I stopped by the beach on my way to work to have a look at the light:
\n\"DSF8523\"<\/p>\n

12_2<\/strong>
\nSuddenly I was accosted by this cute creature:
\n\"DSF8525\"<\/p>\n

12_3<\/strong>
\nThen his human arrived and they walked towards the water’s edge:
\n\"DSF8527\"<\/p>\n

12_4<\/strong>
\nOn Tuesday evening, our book club met at the Madness caf\u00c3\u00a9 in the centre of Alicante:
\n\"DSF8544\"<\/p>\n

12_5<\/strong>
\nThe book of the month was a bit of a departure from the usual novel–it was a collection of poems by the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, selected by Eri:
\n\"DSF8531\"<\/p>\n

12_6<\/strong>
\nMadness is mainly a coffee\/tea place, but they also have beer, and with a funny label too:
\n\"DSF8535\"<\/p>\n

12_7<\/strong>
\nCatherine and Eri, listening to someone:
\n\"DSF8539\"<\/p>\n

12_8<\/strong>
\nNow Eri speaks:
\n\"DSF8539\"<\/p>\n

12_9<\/strong>
\nMaria was the only person who did not like Cavafy’s poems that much. But that is fine, we all have different tastes:
\n\"DSF8558\"<\/p>\n

12_10<\/strong>
\nPauliina had really prepared:
\n\"DSF8560\"<\/p>\n

12_11<\/strong>
\nBesides Eri, we have another Greek in the group, Dimitrios:
\n\"DSF8571\"<\/p>\n

12_12<\/strong>
\nEri was the last person to speak, and she did so with a lot of emotion, explaining how much Cavafy’s poetry means to her:
\n\"DSF8578\"<\/p>\n

12_13<\/strong>
\nLater in the week, we had the annual charity run at the office, raising funds for local cancer charities. One of the people involved in the organisation, Ann, was retiring at the end of the month, and she asked me to take a group picture of the department:
\n\"DSF8590\"<\/p>\n

12_14<\/strong>
\nI hung around a bit to photograph the people getting ready to run. Here, my colleague V\u00c3\u00a9ronique:
\n\"DSF8596\"<\/p>\n

12_15<\/strong>
\nTwo of my favourite people, Carolina and Stephanie:
\n\"DSF8610\"<\/p>\n

12_16<\/strong>
\nMy trainee Romy, getting her number adjusted:
\n\"DSF8615\"<\/p>\n

12_17<\/strong>
\nOne of our other trainees, Laura, helps one of her colleagues with his number:
\n\"DSF8623\"<\/p>\n

12_18<\/strong>
\nThe registration table, with the collection box (many of us gave our donations electronically in advance). Altogether, about 4000 Euro was raised:
\n\"DSF8625\"<\/p>\n

12_19<\/strong>
\nOne day I stopped by the 100 Montaditos bar on the beach for a beer and saw this delightful guest at the neighbouring table:
\n\"DSF8584\"<\/p>\n

12_20<\/strong>
\nOn Friday morning I flew to Wroc\u00c5\u201aaw, the city in Poland where I was born and where my sister lives with her husband. They met me at the airport, we drove to their apartment in the centre of the city, and had a typical Polish lunch:
\n\"DSF8628\"<\/p>\n

12_21<\/strong>
\nAfter lunch, I went for a walk in the neighbourhood. My sister lives close to the Odra river and as always, I walked across the Grunwaldzki Bridge, one of the city’s major landmarks. It was opened in 1910 under the name Kaiserbr\u00c3\u00bccke (Emperor Bridge), when Wroc\u00c5\u201aaw was the German city of Breslau:
\n\"DSF8631\"<\/p>\n

12_22<\/strong>
\nAlso near my sister’s apartment is Ostr\u00c3\u00b3w Tumski, an island on the Odra river which houses Wroc\u00c5\u201aaw’s cathedral, the residence of the archbishop and many other church properties. The Polish Pope John Paul II is everywhere there, including this large mural sponsored by Wroc\u00c5\u201aaw’s football club \u00c5\u0161l\u00c4\u2026sk Wroc\u00c5\u201aaw:
\n\"DSF8650\"<\/p>\n

12_23<\/strong>
\nI walked back to my sister’s place, passing this building on Szczytnicka Street. When I was last here a few months ago, it was an abandoned building inhabited by squatters. Now it is being converted to nice apartments in an attractive neighbourhood:
\n\"DSF8660\"<\/p>\n

12_24<\/strong>
\nThe apartment building where my sister lives. There are several 16-story buildings like this between the Grunwaldzki Square and the river, known as Wroc\u00c5\u201aaw’s Manhattan. They were built during the early 1970s and are a fine example of architecture during Communist times:
\n\"DSF8675\"<\/p>\n

12_25<\/strong>
\nOn Saturday morning, I went to the centre with my sister and walked around a bit. Here she is, in front of some wall art:
\n\"DSF8677\"<\/p>\n

12_26<\/strong>
\nA common sight in Poland on a Saturday morning:
\n\"DSF8679\"<\/p>\n

12_27<\/strong>
\nDogs and people meet in the street:
\n\"DSF8682\"<\/p>\n

12_28<\/strong>
\nA bookstore cat:
\n\"DSF8685\"<\/p>\n

12_29<\/strong>
\nThere are many interesting beers in Poland, produced by small and large breweries. This one is called PRL, the abbreviation for Poland’s name in Communist times (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa = Polish People’s Republic). The bad times ended 35 years ago, sufficient distance to exploit them in a marketing context:
\n\"R000344\"<\/p>\n

12_30<\/strong>
\nOn the rear label there is a photo of one of the defining features of Communist life, queues outside a grocery store:
\n\"R000345\"<\/p>\n

12_31<\/strong>
\nIn the evening, I went back to the centre by myself. I wanted to get a feel of the place on a Saturday night. This is the central square Rynek:
\n\"DSF8731\"<\/p>\n

12_32<\/strong>
\nNext to Rynek is Plac Solny (“salt square”) with a flower market open late into the night, just the thing if you decide to propose at the last moment:
\n\"DSF8735\"<\/p>\n

12_33<\/strong>
\nOn my way back to the tram stop, these three guys asked me to photograph them. I happily obliged:
\n\"DSF8737\"<\/p>\n

More photos from Wroc\u00c5\u201aaw can be seen here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the early part of the week we had our monthly book club meeting, then there was a charity run at the office to raise funds for NGOs supporting victims of cancer, and on Friday morning I flew to Poland–I was speaking at a conference in Warsaw the following Tuesday, and I decided to take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4205,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4280"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4280"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4287,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4280\/revisions\/4287"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}