Goats, dwarves and shooting stars - Poland week 2

From Torun we headed south to Poznan, one of the oldest chartered cities in Poland. It was granted city status in 1253. Poznan is also renowned for its goats. The story goes that the mayor of the town wanted a feast to commemorate the new town tall and clock tower being built. A young cook called Pietrek was put in charge of the main dish, a venison leg. While the meat was cooking, the young lad stepped outside to look at the new clock. When he returned to the kitchen he found the venison leg had fallen into the fire and was inedible. In desperation, he ran to nearby fields and stole two billy goats. When they arrived back in the kitchen, the goats escaped and took off up the stairs. When they got to the top of the tower, they started fighting and butting heads. The mayor thought this was hilarious so asked that a pair of mechanical goats be added to the clock. Every day at noon, two billy goats appear and butt heads 12 times

On the day we visited, the weather was cold and wet but that doesn't usually stop us from seeing places. While we were waiting for the tram to take us from the campground into town, we both got alerts on our phones warning of torrential rain and possible flooding. How bad can it be? We've got coats, waterproof (allegedly) boots and big umbrellas. After a few hours of walking around the old town, we were soaked through so took shelter in a very nice bar/restaurant where we stayed until early evening. We had some of the tastiest food so far this trip and was well worth the deviation. 

Here are a few photos of the rest of the old town

After Poznan we headed further south to Wroclaw. A large part of the old town was destroyed during WWII and has been beautifully restored. Below are a few pics

Small sculptures of dwarfs have been placed in Wrocław since 2005. It all started in the 1980s as part of the Orange Alternative movement, which peacefully ridiculed the communist government.  Anti-communist graffiti was regularly painted over so that its unwanted message was no longer visible. In August 1982, members of the movement began painting pictures of dwarfs over the painted-over graffiti. At that time,  there were no bronze statues. It began in June 2001 when Papa Krasnal (Papa Dwarf), a commemorative figure of the protests at that time, was erected.

The dwarfs were forgotten until 2005, when a sculptor from Wrocław set up the first five dwarfs. Since then, the dwarfs have multiplied and there are around 500 on the official map of the city. Here are just a few of the ones we found. 

The 3 wise dwarves 

Relaxing on the phone 

Outside a shop selling pretzals

Taking out the rubbish

Outside a newsagents 

Festival ready (he's got his wellies on)

In the window ledge of a jewellers 

On the window ledge of an ice-cream shop 

Outside a bar

Inside an ATM

Above and below - cutting locks off a bridge

It made a nice change looking for these characters rather than church spotting.

From Wroclaw we went to Auschwitz Birkenau. You can read all about the atrocities online so I'm not going to go into detail here. What was astounding was the sheer scale of these places. 

We needed somewhere beautiful to follow that, so we headed south once more to the Tatra mountains national park. We took the cable car to the top and the views were lovely 

We were lucky enough to be there during the peak time of the Perseids meteor shower. We had clear skies and saw some excellent fireballs. This time, no migrating tarantulas.

We've now run out of Poland heading south so start the long slog north. Next stop, Krakow.