In December I visited Wroclaw for Christmas. I decided to pay a visit to the Jewish Cemetery, because it is old, grand, and in ruins. After the events of the Holocaust there was no-one to take care of the Cemetery, and it fell into ruin. Today it is a museum and you can pay a small fee to go in and walk around, take pictures, etc. It receives only minimum maintenance – as the derelict state of the cemetery is considered to be part of the memorial to the Jews of Wroclaw. I went two days after Christmas… it was cloudy, cold, and nearly empty – I only had to share the large cemetery with a British couple (they still managed to get in the way of some of my photos, however). Many of the fancy tombs are falling apart, and some areas are so overgrown that you can’t even see the stones, just lumps under the ivy.
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Published February 22, 2014 by kurolaceSooo… I’ve been back in the USA for one week now. Yeah, I decided not to stay on at my job in Poland. The situation wasn’t all that great (although it improved dramatically during Jan and the beginning of Feb), and I was homesick. Unfortunately that means I’ll miss out on WGT, but I had to be serious with myself and realize that just that festival couldn’t possibly be worth putting up with another 5 months of shit treatment, stress, and low, low pay. I barely broke even and have a grand total of about 600 dollars of savings to show for the last 6 months. Oh well. At least I managed to leave on a fairly good note, without losing my ability to use them as a reference (the same cannot be said for 3 of my cohorts – two who left in December on 2 weeks notice, and 1 who was fired 2 weeks away from the end of his contract).
Anyways… plans for the future:
– Get my bedroom at my parent’s house cleaned and organized. Its a horrendous disaster and safety hazard at the moment. No joke.
– Apply for my old computer job, and maybe a few new computer jobs, as well as some real teaching jobs if I can find any that are suitable.
– Pursue my artistic endeavors as usual. I’m adding writing to the list – fantasy / horror short stories. Writing is something that I keep thinking about and dabbling at – but I’ve decided that I need to give it some serious effort at least for a month or two and see what happens….
– Fun stuff for this blog! Its been neglected for a long time 😦 So sorry. I’ll start with a “Poland Haul” post with all the stuff I bought in Poland….coming soon!
Well, that’s it for now lovelies! Mwah!
Wrocław Dwarves / Gnomes
Published January 11, 2014 by kurolace
I’ve seen them described as dwarves, and as gnomes…one thing is sure: Wrocław, Poland, has a lot of them! Oh, and the city’s name is pronounced “Rots-wahv”. Previous known as Breslau, when it was part of pre-ww2 Germany. I spent 5 days at Christmas there, and since most everything was closed for 3 of those days, I did a lot of Gnome hunting. These are a few of the pictures I took during my trip. (Wroclaw has at least 100 gnomes, some reports even say 250)
All Saints’ Day
Published November 4, 2013 by kurolace
All Saints Day (Nov. 1) varies from country to country. Here businesses close and everyone goes to the cemetery and spends much of the day visiting graves, tidying the grave, and placing flowers and candles for the departed. All the Catholic cemeteries, which are much much bigger, are a bus ride away, so I found a smaller, “Evangelical” (historically Lutheran) one only a few walking minutes from our home, and made my flatmates take me there on their way to a bar that night. At first we couldn’t figure out where the entrance was, then we finally got inside and walked around a bit. All of the graves were lite, except the very old historical section. It was very lovely and of course a bit creepy. 🙂
Recent graves are most abundantly decorated.
Kurolace 