Category: Poland

Although most of the famous Wrocław gnomes are male, there are also representations of females and this is the Advocate, or Attorney, gnome. It’s located at Bolesława Prusa 1/50 and it’s hear because there is a legal office (or advocate office) inside the building.

The last time that I was in Wrocław I visited the Browar Stu Mostów bistro in the city centre. This time I headed out on the tram to visit their taproom and brewery, located to the north of the city.

The taproom offers views over their brewery and it all feels modern and organised.

I was the only customer throughout the entirety of my visit and I thought it might be slightly busier on an evening, but at least that meant it was peaceful. Well, peaceful in the tap room, they were busy in the brewery itself which was quite loud, but that adds to the authenticity.

The beer list is on Untappd and it’s also displayed here behind the bar, although I found it easier to just look at the online list. It’s a very competent brewery and I’ve had their beers many times in Poland and the UK, although I confess that I only relatively recently realised that they were based in Wrocław.

I ordered a flight of beers from the brewery and these were from left to right:

• WRCLW Schops which was an intriguing beer as it had caramel and banana notes, but was a wheat beer with hints of being a brown beer. It’s not a beer style that I’ve tried before, but that’s not entirely surprising as this is an historical recipe which the brewery are using, bringing back something from the past and I found it very agreeable.
• Lush Lime which was a nicely balanced pastry sour with a lot of gentle lime flavour, even pushing towards being decadent.
• Coco Drift which was my favourite of the four, it was thick like a smoothie with tropical fruit flavours, it was quite a robust pastry sour with just a little tartness.
• The Pumpkin Spice Sour tasted of cinnamon and apricots to ne, it was smooth, rich and pleasant.

The four beers were excellent, all of them of a high standard and I was impressed at the broad range of beer styles that the brewery was producing.

I very much like tartare sauce, so this was an agreeable amount to serve with the fish and chips I ordered. The meal was fine, I’m not sure what kind of fish it was and it was a little bland, but the batter had a depth of flavour, the chips were fluffy inside and the coleslaw added texture. It went well with the beers and the pricing for the whole arrangement was reasonable.

It’s worth the trip out to visit this brewery, it’s a clean and comfortable little taproom and the staff were friendly and engaging. I thought that it would be busier, but I’m sure that it gets quite packed on weekend evenings as it isn’t that large. They also have Concept Stu Mostów next door which is open from 08:00 until 21:00 every day of the week and is more of a restaurant. I think they offer the same beers there, so this is another option for those who don’t want to visit the taproom.

This is from the British press in May 1933, so early on in the Nazi party’s attack on freedoms. Breslau was then part of Germany, but is now Polish Wrocław, and the warning signs of the terror are apparent very early on. The burnings were organised by Deutsche Studentenschaft, a Nazi controlled umbrella organisation for students, and there were around 34 of them across the country on the same evening.

The book burnings were attended by an alarming number of younger people, this wasn’t just a stage managed event, with the whole process being turned into something of an evening out with procession and nationalism along the way.

The Nazi Alfred Rosenberg apparently tried to save sections of Jewish libraries. He didn’t have motives of tolerance and understanding though, he wanted to seize them so that he could use them as research material for his ideological “studies” into why the Jews needed to be destroyed.

Rosenberg was executed by the allies after the Nuremberg trials, but there’s one interesting story relating to him which also took place in May 1933. Rosenberg came to the UK and tried to show that the Nazis weren’t a threat and he laid a wreath at the cenotaph with a swastika on it. James Edmond Sears, a Labour Party candidate for South West St. Pancras, cut it up and had it chucked in the River Thames. He was fined and Sears was widely condemned in the media for his actions. History perhaps now shows that he was one of the forward thinking heroes, one of the few to call Rosenberg and the Nazi regime out so early.

This article is from June 1933 and it’s a warning from history about how dictators begin their work. Putting to one side the suppression of the boy scouts into what became the Hitler Youth, there’s a story here about Hermann Lüdemann (1880-1959).

He was arrested in June 1933 and sent to Breslau (now Wrocław in Poland) concentration camp, but the process was designed to be humiliating because he was a socialist and so somehow an enemy of the people in Hitler’s eyes. Lüdemann was ‘greeted’ at the concentration camp by the new Nazi chief of police for Breslau, Edmund Heines, who had formerly spent time in prison for murder. Heines was a thug by any measure and his political career was brought to an end by Hitler, who had him arrested and assassinated in 1934.

Lüdemann was ultimately treated very badly during the war, although perhaps on balance he was fortunate to survive it at all. His bravery and strength was rewarded after the end of the Second World War by political promotion and in 1947 he became the Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein.

But, it’s evidence that the actions of dictators shouldn’t be ignored early on. The marching through the city of men such as Lüdemann was part of a general policy of intimidation, attempting to intimidate the population and limit the opposition to the Government. He remained a stoic hero, many others sadly lost their lives. Perhaps the world should have done much more in 1933….

There’s something wonderfully noir about this mural in Wrocław, which celebrates the crime novelist Marek Krajewski (1966-). It’s painted on the side of an otherwise unassuming yellow building, yet it completely transforms the place into something atmospheric, cinematic and indeed distinctly Wrocławian.

Krajewski’s novels are largely set in Breslau, the old German incarnation of Wrocław. His detective, Eberhard Mock, apparently prowls through a 1930s world of corruption, decadence and decaying grandeur, although it’s not a series of books that I’ve yet read. The city is though evidently very proud of their crime novelist who was born in the city as he was given the title of an honorary citizen of Wrocław in 2023. I will try and get hold of one of his books now…..

This Indian restaurant on Wyspa Piasek in central Wrocław was very well reviewed online and it seemed a suitable lunch stop whilst it poured down with rain.

It would be wrong of me to suggest that the restaurant was packed, but there were a couple more customers who came in and a couple of delivery orders went out as well. It’s a functional and clean interior, I thought it was rather understated and pleasant. I do know from the reviews that advance reservations are recommended here in the evening and it’s quite a small set-up, so I imagine it can fill quickly.

The chicken dishes and these all came with free rice.

It’s not a very good photo, but there were seven different beers available including some craft beer selections. Indian restaurants in Poland offer this with much more regularity than Indian restaurants in the UK, as well as actually opening at lunchtime which isn’t very common here.

Firstly, the beer is the Okocim Porter from Browar Okocim, this was a really quite decent beer which was smooth with a bit of liquorice, bit of tree (or whatever that flavour was) and some maltiness. At 8.3% it was a robust beer to go with the curry.

I went for the Nepali chicken curry and this transpired to be a delight, with tender pieces of chicken in a creamy sauce which had some spice to it. The days when Indian restaurants in Poland catered for a less spice craving palate seem to have gone, with the result here having a depth of taste and flavour. There was some what I think was lemongrass added which possibly overpowered things slightly, but I like strong flavours.

The naan was sizeable, as is evident from the photo, with a crispiness and decadence that went really well with the curry. The rice was also cooked well, with the whole arrangement being a sufficiently large portion and everything was at the appropriate hot temperature.

The service was timely and friendly, I never felt rushed and the environment was relaxed. Customers seemed to just go to the counter when they wanted to pay, so I did that and found the whole set-up really quite agreeable. This was a really positive experience, with the bill coming to around £15 which for a top-rated restaurant in the city centre with such a decent beer seemed very reasonable to me.

There’s a certain charm to Wrocław Świebodzki, a railway station built between 1842 and 1843 when the line from Wrocław to Świebodzice was opened when both cities were part of Prussia. That changed after World War Two, when both locations became part of Poland. Long since the second railway station of Wrocław, it closed in 1991 although there are active plans to bring the line back into use. It’s not clear to me whether they’re taking the station buildings back as well, slightly awkward as they’ve been repurposed.

Here’s the rear of the railway station which is now being used as a food court, but more on that in a moment.

Quite a lot of clutter has been added to the rear of the building, but the railway station arches are still visible.

The station canopies are still in situ.

Under the canopies, looking away from the railway station.

And looking towards the railway station.

Known as Hala Świebodzki, there are now two food halls and this is the main one which was once the main railway ticket hall. Some of the original fittings are still here, rather hidden away behind the modern structures, but they could be restored if the station does come back into use.

The second food hall which is located in the wing of the former station which is next to the tracks.

I visited at lunchtime and only a few of the outlets were open, although there were a few diners dotted around the place. It apparently gets rather busier in the evening and seemingly plays some loud music judging from the reviews. There are QR codes on the tables where customers can order, although I decided against purchasing anything until there were a few more food outlets open. They’re trying to push some lunchtime offers, but it will perhaps be hard to get more customers into the building if most of the venues aren’t routinely opening.

Anyway, architecturally it’s a fascinating site and I very much like food courts like this, so I will be back…..